William Blake and the Body

William Blake and the Body Tristanne J. Connolly

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William Blake and the Body

10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion. Plate 2(1).

10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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Frontispiece

Tristanne J. Connolly Department of English Butler University Indianapolis

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William Blake and the Body

© Tristanne J. Connolly 2002

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–96848–4 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Connolly, Tristanne, J., 1970– William Blake and the body / Tristanne J. Connolly. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-333-96848-4 1. Blake, William, 1757–1827 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Blake, William, 1757–1827 – Knowledge – Anatomy. 3. Body, Human, in literature. 4. Body, Human, in art. I. Title. PR4148.B57 .C66 2002 821¢.7 – dc21 2002025210 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

Contents vi

Preface

vii

List of Abbreviations

xvii

1 Textual Bodies

1

2 Graphic Bodies

25

3 Embodiment: Urizen

73

4 Embodiment: Reuben

95

5 Divisions and Comminglings: Sons and Daughters

125

6 Divisions and Comminglings: Emanations and Spectres

155

7 The Eternal Body

192

Notes

222

Bibliography

232

Index

241

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List of Illustrations

Frontispiece William Blake. Visions of the Daughters of Albion. Plate 2(1). Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. ii 2.1 William Blake. Elohim Creating Adam. © Tate, London 2001. 26 2.2 W. Pink after Agostino Carlini. Smugglerius. Royal Academy of Arts, London. 36 2.3 William Cowper. Myotomia Reformata. Page 8. The Wellcome Library, London. 49 2.4 William Cowper. Anatomy of Humane Bodies. Table 45. The Wellcome Library, London. 50 2.5 William Cowper. Anatomy of Humane Bodies. Appendix 3. The Wellcome Library, London. 51 2.6 William Blake. Jerusalem. Plate 25. Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. 52 2.7 William Blake. Jerusalem. Plate 24. Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. 54 2.8 William Blake. Visions of the Daughters of Albion. Plate 6. Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. 55 2.9 William Cowper. Anatomy of Humane Bodies. Table 60. The Wellcome Library, London. 56 2.10 William Cowper. Anatomy of Humane Bodies. Table 62. The Wellcome Library, London. 57 5.1 William Blake. Jerusalem. Plate 69. Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. 150 5.2 Francesco Saverio Clavigero. A History of Mexico. 1787. Plate viii, page 279. Benson Latin American Collection. University of Texas at Austin. 151 6.1 William Blake. Jerusalem. Plate 35 [31]. Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. 161 7.1 William Blake. Jerusalem. Plate 95. Reproduced with permission from the William Blake Trust’s edition of Blake’s Illuminated Books. 200

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List of Illustrations

One would think there would be nothing more to say about the body in general, or the body in Blake. ‘The Human Form Divine’ is Blake’s selfproclaimed central image and ultimate reality; the human body is what we live in every day, what we are, what is most familiar to us. Yet, the body is as alien as it is commonplace, as unfathomable as it is known: think of how many involuntary movements, such as heartbeat, are essential to its regular functioning, and how unexpectedly and inexorably disease and death can overtake the body. Blake’s depiction of the body communicates this: the body both provides and threatens identity. The simple question, ‘What does Blake think of the body?’, is difficult to answer, even though understanding the significance of his main preoccupation would be essential to understanding his work. The body is Blake’s preoccupation not because of a confident admiration of it, but rather a troubled obsession. He has a love/hate relationship with his favourite image; he at once reviles and glorifies the human body. This paradox could be swiftly resolved by claiming that, in fact, there are not really any bodies in Blake at all. The things that happen to Blake’s characters could not happen to real bodies: wives do not burst from their husbands’ chests in globes of blood; poets do not possess other poets by entering their left feet in the form of falling stars; and the city of London is not normally accessed by entering anyone’s bosom. These are symbolic characters, it could be argued: allegories whose bodies are mere vehicles for meaning. If Blake’s were a simple dualism, then not only his characters’ bodies, but also the real human body, would be only vehicles which could be discarded for the sake of their more valuable contents. However, not even the most stilted allegory can completely transcend the symbols which embody its meaning, and Blake’s allegory is much more a tangled web than a nut in a shell. He takes his symbols very seriously. Coleridge saw in Blake a ‘despotism of symbols’, and Yeats christened Blake with the title, ‘literal realist of the imagination’ (Coleridge, in Bentley, Critical Heritage 55; Yeats 119). Blake’s allegorical characters are endowed in both design and verse with bones and blood, fibres and flesh; indeed, they are depicted in all gory detail. Because of this, I take them as bodies; because Blake presents them as bodies, he must be making statements on the body through his choice of images. The statements he makes do not boil down to another possible simple answer, that the physical body is bad and the spiritual body good and both ultimately separate from each other. Blake often caricatures the mortal body as pathetic, restrictive and painful, and there is truth in his exaggeration: again, think of all that cannot be controlled and all that must be suffered in mortal human form. Yet, his adulation is not saved exclusively for incorporeal spiritual vii 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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Preface

forms. He often celebrates sexuality, and even admires nerves and organs. In the end, those nerves and organs are immortalized, making Blake’s eternal body most definitely a body. Because the body is basic to human experience and fundamental to Blake’s art and verse, it is an inexhaustible topic. Anthropologist Mary Douglas argues that ‘the body is a model which can stand for any bounded system’ (115). Because the range of the body’s symbolism is so broad, thinking about the body involves thinking about other things. The result is that, though there has been recently a tangible wave of interest in writing about the body, the works which represent it do not necessarily cohere into a body of work on one subject. Of course they do not all see the body as having the same significance, because they study the body through various disciplines, and in various cultures of various eras. But even beyond this variation, different works on the body attach themselves to vastly different issues. There are economic bodies, political bodies, medical bodies, sexual bodies, and more, each with numerous subdivisions and interrelations. A book on Blake and the body could be about many things; too many things. The way I approached the topic was to read Blake’s works and categorize the different kinds of bodies I perceived there; having categorized them, I would try to determine the characteristics of each category, and explore the significance of those characteristics through whichever historical, cultural and literary contexts they suggested. The general categories I deduced were: texts as bodies; bodies in Blake’s designs; bodies coming into existence, or being shaped; bodies which split off from or fuse with other bodies; the ideal, eternal body; bodies which dissolve into landscapes; bodies which are also places, such as cities or countries. To focus the project, I decided that its border would be the border between the body and the world. Considering Blake’s bodies in relationship to their environment, and as symbols of nations or political systems, would be a fruitful topic for a separate study; there is a wealth of material, some of it already approached from a different direction in Jason Whittaker’s William Blake and the Myths of Britain. That the remaining categories continued to shape my work will be seen from a glance at the Contents list, and the chapter outline provided at the end of this preface. Concentrating on how bodies are formed and connect with each other lent itself to a number of contexts, one of the most central being gender. Gender has been a tortured topic in Blake studies, until recently stymied by the division between critics who see Blake offering an ideal, liberating vision of equality between the sexes, and those who consider that vision to be fundamentally misogynistic. There is evidence to support both stances in Blake, and the factors involved in interpreting the evidence allow much leeway for personal critical desires. Many passages central to the question are placed in the mouths of ‘fallen’ characters who could be speaking under delusions the reader is meant to catch and disapprove. The fallen/eternal

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viii William Blake and the Body

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distinction in Blake can be a convenient trapdoor to save him from many sins: anything unpalatable can be explained away as fallen. Because one might hope to find Blake’s ideals, unfiltered through any point of view, in the eternal realm, the question of Blake’s feminism or lack of it devolves to a great extent on the place of the female in eternity. Though Blake creates a seemingly equal unification of male and female in eternity, that ‘human’ is overridingly male. Jean Hagstrum, in The Romantic Body, contends that ‘Blake did break away from the prison of his own sex long enough to define and envision an intersexual world of intense mutuality and equality’ (140), but his arguments are undermined by embarrassed explanations of exceptions. A good example of the difficulties Hagstrum runs into is found in his response to the most problematic passage for defenders of a non-misogynist Blake: It is true that Blake says that in Eternity woman ‘has no Will of her own’ (Last Judgment, E., 562). But if woman is denied will in Eternity, we should remember that under the Covenant of Forgiveness the new and gentle Jehovah also lacks will. . . . Will tends to be absent from the state of highest fulfillment: other qualities and other quests and a different orientation toward the self make it irrelevant or obtrusive. So it is no loss that Jerusalem in particular and idealized women in general lack it. (138) Hagstrum must fudge definitions to hold his point; and he does not take on Blake’s preceding words which indicate that the absence of will is due to ‘Woman’ being ‘the Emanation of Man’. Brenda Webster finds, ‘although Blake announces the end of sexual organization, male sexuality continues to stand as a model for the human, while the female is either incorporated or isolated restrictively in Beulah’. She holds that ‘in his late Christian prophecies, Milton and Jerusalem, [Blake] suggests that the female should cease even to exist independently and become reabsorbed into the body of man where she belongs’ (‘Sexuality’ 203, 194). Alicia Ostriker agrees: ‘at its most extreme, Blake’s vision goes beyond proposing an ideal of dominancesubmission or priority-inferiority between the genders’ (which is bad enough). ‘Blake wishfully imagines that the female can be re-absorbed by the male, be contained within him, and exist Edenically not as a substantial being but as an attribute . . . the ideal female functions as a medium of interchange among real, that is to say male, beings’ (163). Essick, in his article, ‘William Blake’s “Female Will” and its Biographical Context’, considers the argument that females in Blake’s allegorical poetry must be understood metaphorically. They are the representatives of otherness within the human psyche and its projection into an alienated nature. He is making use of sexual divi-

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Preface

x

William Blake and the Body

One might ask, what is a more fundamental problem than sexual division? One might also ask, if ‘they’ figure forth otherness in the ‘human’ psyche, does that not exclude ‘females’ from the category of the ‘human’? From a female point of view, the female is not other. Essick finds ‘forceful rebuttals’ offered by ‘feminist critics’, including this: ‘the argument that females are the metaphoric vehicles for genderless meanings is blind to how tropes, and a poet’s choice of the lingual signs he manipulates into tropes, carry unavoidable ideological orientations, in part through their non-metaphoric references’ (Essick, ‘Female Will’ 617). Especially since Blake’s personifications are so fleshy, it is difficult to consider his use of gender as mere metaphor. There is nothing ‘mere’ about metaphors, which can turn the supposedly genderless Christian God into a father and an old man. The critics Essick refers to are David Aers, Diana Hume George and Susan Fox. Aers finds that Blake’s use of ‘dominant male ideology . . . inevitably feeds back into the realm of human interrelations from which it has been derived’ (37). For George, ‘Blake’s portrayals of sexuality and of women . . . are problems of symbol formation that express themselves in the limitations of language’ (199). Fox will not discount either of two ‘conflicting attitudes’: metaphor cannot ‘apologize away Blake’s occasional shrillness towards women’, yet ‘one cannot ignore the abstract quality of his sexual divisions, because to do so is to miss the vastest implications of his observations and to make those observations much more strident and condemnatory than we have evidence they were meant to be’ (509). Such equivocation weakens her position, falling into apology. Shrillness may be part of Blake’s ‘vastest implications’. Going to Blake’s prose to avoid statements in the mouths of unreliable characters does not result in a clear, definitive picture because in works such as A Vision of the Last Judgment he is writing for a particular purpose, and at a particular time, so his statements may not be equally applicable to his whole oeuvre. Another trapdoor for any unattractive opinions in Blake is the traditional theory that Blake changed between his early and late works, becoming more otherworldly and misogynistic, transferring his radical desires for liberty to the spiritual realm and consigning the evil natural world and women to each other. I call this a trapdoor not because I believe Blake never altered his opinions; after all, that would breed reptiles of the mind (MHH 19:7–9). However, in Blake’s case, it is the changing opinions that apparently produce mental reptiles. It seems to me it would be helpful to come up with a way to account for the relationship between his apparently contradictory assertions, rather than to say he changed his mind, or even to look for what caused him to change his mind. This is not asking for a

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sion to figure forth more fundamental psychological and metaphysical problems. (616)

xi

reconciliation of contraries so that one of them disappears; rather, it is an attempt to answer a rather Lockean personal identity question posed by David Punter, which for me sums up the Blake gender debate: ‘We are forced to ask how it can be that the same writer who sees so acutely into the pressures on individuals caused by ethical rigidity and repression seems at the same time to construct such an apparently male supremacist space’ (‘Trauma’ 481). Like Punter, I feel disappointed in Blake, because he makes a conscientious effort toward gender inclusiveness, and to a certain extent succeeds, but not completely. He does not go far enough. What blocks him? A dark epiphany, placed at a certain historical moment, is not a fully adequate answer. His later works are not devoid of fervour for sexual and political liberty combined: there is the response to trials of homosexuals in Milton found by Christopher Hobson; there are the eloquent pleas of Jerusalem and Mary for forgiveness of sexual sin and against warlike sacrificial violence (Hobson, 113–43; J 20–2, 61). Likewise, his earlier works are not devoid of misogynist hints, or at least bugs in any system of Blakean feminism. There is in Visions of the Daughters of Albion the ‘harem fantasy’ which, for Helen Bruder, ‘marks the moment of Oothoon’s most acute apostasy, as she offers to become an energetically ensnaring procuress’ (82) as an early indication that if Blake’s women are liberated, they are liberated to give sexual pleasure to men. There is in The First Book of Urizen Enitharmon as ‘the first female now separate’ (16:10) as a foreshadowing echo of that embarrassing later statement that in Eternity the female has no will of her own. More arguably, there is the failure of both Thel and Oothoon to get what they want – perhaps a compassionate presentation of women’s frustration, perhaps even an endorsement of female community among the daughters of Albion and in the vales of Har – but why not an imagining of female freedom? Why only sympathy for women in a female sphere, and women who fail? If Blake does not envision a full equality between genders and liberation for both, it is not because he could not, but because he would not. As Punter suggests, Blake was able to see through many values which were imposed as unquestionable by his society. Other concerns more important to him clashed with the project of imagining female equality and liberty, and delineating these concerns will be a task of the following chapters. What has recently given a kick-start to the study of Blake and gender and sent it in new and prolific directions is the application of new historicism and cultural studies, and the shift from feminist criticism to gender studies. These developments occurred since the two landmark books on Blake and the body appeared: Thomas Frosch’s Awakening of Albion and Anne Mellor’s Blake’s Human Form Divine, both published in 1974. These new approaches provide new opportunities to rethink Blake’s most central image. My concerns and methods in doing so are comparable to those of the two important recent studies mentioned above: Helen Bruder’s William Blake and the Daughters of Albion and Christopher Hobson’s Blake and Homosexuality.

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Preface

William Blake and the Body

Bruder’s book is a masterwork of new historicist criticism. She takes by the scruff of its neck the rather flabby argument that apologizes for Blake’s views of women by appealing to the limitations of his historical context, and tests it mercilessly, with positive and fascinating results. She pursues in detail the question of what feminism was in the 1790s, and places Blake in it as a rather forward-looking figure. However, she still finds flaws in Blake’s feminism, such as that action of Oothoon’s; she ascribes Oothoon’s failure to ‘historical considerations’ which forbid the conception of a solution (88). Other scholars notable for historicizing Blake are Jon Mee and David Worrall. In order to give precision to their researches, it was wise for them to concentrate on Blake’s earlier works. Their practice of contextualizing Blake in the high and low culture of Britain of his time is illuminating, though, not just to works produced in the 1790s; my study, taking in Blake’s whole oeuvre, carries this approach through his later prophecies (countering their reputation as otherworldly). Hobson and I both take advantage of the best of both worlds, combining gender criticism with historicism. Hobson takes a queer theory perspective on Blake, while mine is a wider gender studies one; Hobson considers Blake to succeed in endorsing and empowering liberty for male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, while I examine the shortcomings of his ideals, and the motivations which contribute to them. Though it was back in 1982 that W.J.T. Mitchell predicted critics would ‘rediscover the dangerous Blake’ since he was ‘now safely canonized’ and ‘ready to take a little abuse’, the need and profit of such an approach continues (Mitchell 410–11). Hobson, who notes that critics in the 1980s and 1990s largely ignored Mitchell’s exhortations, explicitly responds to the questions Mitchell asks about Blake’s obscenity (Hobson xii). My impulse to confront the dangerous Blake comes from a deep conviction of the strangeness of his work, that to normalize him is to lose something valuable, even at the price of finding something undesirable. Blake is scary; a good part of the power of his work derives from its bizarreness, a good part of which in turn derives from his simultaneous adoration and abomination of the human body. As explained above, this book is organized around five of the categories of somatic imagery I found in Blake’s works: the categories dealing with the body’s relationship to itself, to the self it embodies, and to other bodies. The text as body is the first category of imagery, explored in the first chapter and throughout. One substantial chapter is then devoted to a particular aspect of Blake’s textual bodies: the human figures in Blake’s graphic art. Then, in two chapters on Urizen and Reuben, I discuss central passages describing how Blake envisions the beginnings of the material body. The birth imagery involved in those passages becomes more alienating as I move on to treat in two chapters multiple bodies which split from and unify with each other. The fifth kind of body imagery, upon which the others rely as either imi-

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tations or parodies, is that of the ideal, eternal body, which occupies the study’s final chapter. The questions of whether identity is defined or protean, how identity is affected by birth, and how language and literature are affected by these concerns, beg for comparison with Julia Kristeva’s theories of the semiotic, the symbolic, and the abject. Despite their similar concerns, Kristeva is rarely considered in relation to Blake. They both struggle with the advantages of having a flexible identity, and the dangers of being scattered and undefined. Digging back into the origins of Kristeva’s thought, I find that Mary Douglas’ theories in Purity and Danger (which Kristeva makes use of in Powers of Horror) are also a valuable way to explain the dynamic of the relationship Blake envisions between his bodily text and its reader. Blake makes use of what Douglas would call the sacredness of bodily borders to gain a certain degree of control over who his audience is and how they read his works. Blake creates different kinds of entry points, or orifices, in his works: while they allow readers access to the body that is the text, the transgression they require of readers ensures that the squeamish are repulsed, while the brave are challenged. In the chapter entitled ‘Graphic Bodies’, I examine anatomical art as an influence on Blake. His graphic figures involve criticism of eighteenthcentury anatomy books. With particular reference to William Cowper (an anatomist who drew many of his own figures) and William Hunter (Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy while Blake attended), I assert that Blake uses echoes of anatomical art to question empirical observation of the body, and offer the possibility of dissection by imagination. The art theories of Joshua Reynolds, William Hogarth and Johann Winckelmann contextualize Blake’s radical contribution to controversies over representation, and pain in art, while psychological and physiological theories of sympathy (Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Robert Whytt) elucidate the powerful and intimate reactions Blake sought for his works. A comparison of how Burke and Blake use the terms ‘pity’ and ‘delight’ reveals that Blake sees sympathy as a threat to individual identity. True sympathy is not enabled by putting oneself in the place of another, but rather by becoming fully oneself. The relationship between body and soul is central to my commentary on Blake’s graphic bodies. That chapter begins with a discussion of Blake’s print, Elohim Creating Adam, an important visual depiction of how the physical body comes to be. In the two following chapters, I explicate central verse passages on the human body’s beginnings: the embodiment narratives of Urizen and Reuben. While these embodiments borrow images from foetal development and birth, they are not ordinary births. I claim that Blake’s variations on the childbearing process betray an obsession with birth. This obsession arises from a recognition of the problems of parturition: the limitations of physical existence, the pitfalls of parent-child relationships,

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Preface

William Blake and the Body

and the possibilities of malformation and miscarriage. Blake’s metamorphic foetal imagery takes off from Ovid’s process-fascinated descriptions of change to suggest that the new, strange form is our familiar human body. It also reflects the protean nature of Blake’s creative works; the meaning of Blake’s birth imagery applies equally to humans and artworks. The terrifying aspect of uncanny growth and change culminates in miscarriage imagery through which Blake depicts the failure of creation, both human and artistic. I offer some evidence for a biographical basis for Blake’s treatment of miscarriage in his poetry (Catherine Blake possibly suffering one or more failed pregnancies), but I concentrate on explicating Blake’s poetic imagery. From it I conclude that Blake ‘perversely’ values nonreproductive sexuality. He expands the possibilities of what sexual activity can produce, such as personified emotions and artworks. From the bizarre birth of Urizen and the failed birth of Reuben, I move on to examine one of the few Blake characters born normally, from a woman’s womb: Orc. Through studying the Oedipal suggestions of his nativity, alongside its origins in Satan’s family romance with Sin and Death in Paradise Lost, I demonstrate that in Blake, children (and mothers) can be seen as facets of the father’s personality: each human is a family. At times proliferating, and at times reuniting in monstrous conglomerated forms, the children of Albion enable Blake to present a vast confusion of diversification and unification. I argue that sons and daughters (along with emanations and spectres, the subject of the next chapter) dramatize the multiplicity inherent in the Blakean human. The work of RenJ Girard allows me to connect the identity-blurring involved in Oedipal relationships to the acts of human sacrifice perpetrated by the Sons and Daughters of Albion in Blake’s Jerusalem. They are flesh-bound attempts to establish individual identity and cross bodily borders. That Blake’s human is manifold in itself, not just in its offspring or its fallen manifestations, is revealed by his depiction of emanations and spectres. Emanations and spectres split, painfully and gorily, from the human of whom they are constituent parts: psychic components separate and become independent personifications. This divisibility of both flesh and spirit I show to be an exaggerated outgrowth of Locke’s and Hume’s questioning of personal identity. Unlike the emanations of another manifold being – Wisdom and the Devil, and the Son and the Spirit as personified aspects of God – the intellectual births from Blake’s ‘Human Form Divine’ are depicted viscerally. Their separations are fantasies of male mothering which reflect on other creative processes, especially that of Blake’s illuminated books in which they are described and pictured. Emanations and spectres, like God’s hypostases, can help, hinder, and even become, creative productions. Blake suggests that the multiple aspects of the human personality, which in the fallen world may work against each other, in eternity are reunified in the human form while retaining their individuality. My final chapter con-

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centrates on Blake’s few tantalizing suggestions of what life in eternity is like. From these I attempt to describe the appearance and function of the resurrected body. The presence of organs of sense indicates that for Blake the ideal human form is not a disembodied spirit. The imaginings of Locke, Berkeley, Swedenborg, St Teresa and St Paul on eternal bodies inspire an original ideal in which transparency and interpenetrability are valued as highly as individual identity. The conversational and sexual ‘intercourse’ through which ideas are embodied in eternity is an apotheosis of male homosexual relations which harnesses the power of female sexuality. This leads me to confront the question of why androgyny often veils a male form which incorporates the female, rather than a genderless, or equally male and female, ideal. I suggest that Blake’s final triumph over dualism is made possible, yet made incomplete, by subordination.

I would like to thank my supervisors and examiners, Kathleen Wheeler, Simon Jarvis, John Beer, John Harvey and Andrew Lincoln, for their guidance of this project as it took shape. Scholars who provided assistance and encouragement were Steve Clark, Jon Mee, David Worrall, Keri Davies, Bill Goldman, and everyone at the Blake Society, Simon Szreter, Jeremy Boulton, Ruth Richardson, John Sargent, and G.E. Bentley, Jr. Many thanks. Special gratitude goes to my conscientious and constructive readers at Palgrave and my sympathetic editors, Eleanor Birne and Rebecca Mashayekh. Portions of Chapter 4 were first published in Romanticism 7.2 in the article ‘Miscarriage Imagery in Blake’, and appear here by permission of the editors. I would like to express my appreciation for the feedback and support I received from Nicholas Roe and the reader he chose for the article. Sharon Ruston and Lidia Garbin organized a British Association for Romanticism Studies conference and edited an essay collection, Spectres of Romanticism: the Influence and Anxiety of the British Romantics, which were venues for a piece, ‘William Blake and the Spectre of Anatomy’, which grew into Chapter 2: my thanks for the excellent chance to share ideas, and again, for perceptive reading. The William Blake Trust, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Tate Gallery, the Wellcome Library, and the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin kindly granted permission to reproduce the illustrations. Many thanks to John Commander and the Blake Trust for generosity as well as assistance, and Laura Valentine at the RA, Anna Sheppard at the Tate, Matilde Nardelli at Wellcome, and Michael Hironymous at Austin, for their speed, skill and helpfulness in providing pictures and permissions. The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, The National Chapter of Canada IODE, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, King’s College and the Cambridge University English Faculty granted financial support. Thanks to all at McMaster University who

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Preface

William Blake and the Body

have continued to aid and advise me, especially Alvin Lee and David Clark; and, at Auburn, Paula Backscheider for her unbeatable mentoring. Thanks to Patricia Simmons for, in so many ways through good and ill, being my fellow Daughter of the Empire. To those who often provided practical help as well as warm friendship – Leo Sharpston and (in honoured memory) David Lyon, George and Hilary Pattison, Margaret Watson (as well as Linda, Josie and Marleen) – thanks. To Krista Johansen, for friendship: swylc sceolde secg wesan, þegn æt Qearfe! Heartfelt thanks to my family: all the Noreyko and Connolly clans, but most of all my parents Gaiyle and Robert Connolly, my grandmother Margaret Noreyko, my brother and sister-in-law Cal and Gillian Connolly, and my godparents John and Kae Noreyko, not least for supplying the computers on which this was written, but also for their patience, enthusiasm and love. The final thank you goes to my husband, Ken Robinson.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Blake’s unengraved writings are taken from Erdman’s edition and cited by page number (except for The Four Zoas for which Night and line numbers are also provided), and all references to Blake’s illuminated books are taken from the Blake Trust series and cited by plate and line number. References to the notes from the Blake Trust edition will be introduced as such, and cited by page number. E

Erdman, Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake.

In Erdman: FZ The Four Zoas AR Annotations to Reynolds DC A Descriptive Catalogue VLJ A Vision of the Last Judgment PA Public Address In the Blake Trust editions: SIE Songs of Innocence and of Experience BT The Book of Thel MHH The Marriage of Heaven and Hell VDA Visions of the Daughters of Albion E Europe: a Prophecy A America: a Prophecy BU The First Book of Urizen BL The Book of Los BA The Book of Ahania M Milton: a Poem L Laocöon J Jerusalem Unless otherwise indicated, definitions and biblical quotations are taken from the following, which, when mentioned, are named by these abbreviations: OED Oxford English Dictionary KJV The Bible, King James Version

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List of Abbreviations

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When Ezekiel is called to be a prophet, to speak to the hard-hearted children of Israel, the voice that speaks to him from his vision makes a remarkable request: But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee. And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and lo, a roll of a book was therein; And he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll. And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness. (Ezek. 2:8–3:3) In Ezekiel’s introduction to his mission, there is an emphasis on rebellion versus obedience, and the unlikelihood that his audience will listen to him. Eating the scroll goes against the usual rules; something is ingested which normally remains outside the body. However, reading is an ingestion, if not usually such a complete one: a reader eats up written words with his or her eyes. This episode suggests becoming one with the text, making it completely part of oneself in order to deliver its message loyally and powerfully under circumstances adverse to communication. It also suggests that going against the common conventions of what remains inside and what outside the body is part of prophecy. The voice also assures Ezekiel, ‘And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them’ (Ezek. 2:5). Ezekiel will affect his audience – make them react, leave an impression on them – even if they do not wish to listen. According to the voice, someone who is not rebellious eats what is given, receives completely 1 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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without questioning or being picky. This is what the prophet should do, but this is not what his audience will do. The strange crossing of bodily borders, in eating the scroll, has something to do with getting through to an unreceptive audience. The unreceptive audience is a dilemma of prophecy: why would redemptive words be needed if all were already open to divine truth? William Blake’s illuminated books are also prophecies which try to work a redemptive purpose, and recognize that they are not preaching to the converted. However, Blake’s books are the opposite of Ezekiel’s scroll: they are more likely to swallow up their readers. Blake sees his illuminated books as human forms. When, at the beginning of his final prophecy Jerusalem, he announces, ‘I again display my Giant Forms to the Public’, he refers at once to his illuminated books, and the titanic characters they contain. Reading the weighty Jerusalem, then, is like being swallowed up by a Giant Form, entering its body. Blake continues, ‘My former Giants & Fairies having reciev’d the highest reward possible’, connecting the personification of his books to their appreciation by his audience. He strongly asserts the salvific potential of his writing: he claims to hear God speak, and proclaims, ‘Therefore I print; nor vain my types shall be: / Heaven, Earth & Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony’ (J 3). By using vocabulary specific to his medium, ‘print’ and ‘types’, Blake links the supposed power of his work to its form. However, this sanguine attitude is marred by the gouging out of words from the engraving plate. For example, one line with deletions reads, ‘Therefore Reader, what you do not approve, & me for this energetic exertion of my talent’ (3). Friendliness toward the reader is struck out, as is confidence in the reader’s reaction. The fact that Blake created his own books, designing, writing, engraving, printing, finishing and binding them, at once enables him to claim an intimate relationship with, and strong influence over, his reader, and to illustrate dramatically the failure of that claim on plate 3 of Jerusalem. The unique form of Blake’s illuminated books makes them at first glance a different kind of text, a corpus embodied in a different way. They require awareness of the textual body. Unlike poetry embodied in words only, Blake’s illuminated works cannot be fully reincarnated in any typeface; their body and soul are integrated. Handmade, they include hints of the process of their making. Existing between print and manuscript, they emphasize transgression of categories. Depicting characters who enter each other and are part of each other, they dramatize the instability of bodily borders. From these characteristics Blake draws prophetic powers for his illuminated books, to achieve a transformative purpose, and to gain some control over his audience: what kind of readers he will have, and how they will be affected. As a starting point for understanding the significance of the crossing of bodily borders which Blake seems to demand of his readers, it is helpful to turn to two thinkers who offer two different, but interrelated, theories

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on that subject: Mary Douglas and Julia Kristeva. Douglas, writing from an anthropological point of view and thus focusing on the social meaning of the body, seeks in her study Purity and Danger to unravel the relationship between the unclean and the sacred. She looks at the abominations of Leviticus, among other purity laws, to discover what characteristics cause the unclean to be considered unclean. She comes to the conclusion that ‘holiness is exemplified by completeness. Holiness requires that individuals shall conform to the class to which they belong. And holiness requires that different classes of things shall not be confused’ (53). Conversely, anything that crosses categories or borders is an abomination. Douglas pays particular attention to defilement that relates to the body. When writing about ‘the symbolism worked upon the human body’ in ritual, she argues: the body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious. The body is a complex structure. The functions of its different parts and their relation afford a source of symbols for other complex structures. We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body. (115) As an anthropologist, she concentrates on society as the system symbolized by the body, but indicates that the body can stand for any system: for instance, a system of language or of thought. By saying ‘powers and dangers’ are ‘credited to social structure’, she implies that these are not absolute, but rather invented to support the system. Perhaps, then, this can be applied to other systems: the borders of language, mental operations, and the body itself can be seen as arbitrary, kept in place through the threat of danger. It is possible to distort these boundaries since they are not absolute. Douglas writes: all margins are dangerous. If they are pulled this way or that the shape of fundamental experience is altered. Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins. We should expect the orifices of the body to symbolise its specially vulnerable points. Matter issuing from them is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind. Spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body. (121) When orifices and bodily fluids figure in a prohibition, a ritual, a text, then that is a sign that the vulnerability of margins is at issue. As this study will show, Blake’s illuminated books are preoccupied with the orifices of the

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body, particularly in the shape of sense organs, and fascinated with blood. Investing the text with these images gives the text human attributes, and it reinforces the idea that reading a Blake text means crossing bodily perimeters. The power Douglas sees in this crossing provides a way to understand Blake’s prophetic purpose. Like the borders of social and other systems, Blake’s claim to transformation may be arbitrary. As he recognizes, there is always the possibility of failure; perhaps an encounter with his work will not produce enlightenment or improvement, or even comprehension. By dramatizing the taboos of the body’s limits, especially when he often depicts bodies as not final in their form but metamorphosing and splitting, Blake acknowledges this arbitrariness, but also borrows the power invested in borders. By recreating the body in textual form, and encouraging the reader to cross its borders as well as depicting border crossing within the text, Blake demonstrates that the shape of the body as we know it is not absolute. This makes possible a vision of a transformed body. Not only can the human form exceed its present potentialities, but anything the body can stand for – according to Douglas, any system of society or ideas – thus can also potentially be transformed. Douglas explains, ‘though we seek to create order, we do not simply condemn disorder’ (94). What lies beyond, or threatens, the margins of a system is not got rid of, but has a relationship to the ordered system, to which ‘it symbolises both danger and power’. Douglas gives examples of rituals in which a journey is made outside the system, whether into the wilderness of a forest or desert, or the mental wilderness of dreams or irrationality. What is gained by such a journey include ‘powers and truths which cannot be reached by conscious effort’ such as ‘energy to command and special powers of healing’ (94). Transformative power is found by transgressing the limits of the system, or the body. This power is not gained without risk: there is also danger on the margins. Rites of passage are a variety of ritual which requires a journey outside the system. Because those being initiated are in a transitional state, they themselves are dangerous, ‘simply because transition is neither one state nor the next, it is undefinable’. While in that ‘marginal period . . . the novices in initiation are temporarily outcast’. Such rites are often said to be highly dangerous, even deadly, to an extent out of proportion to what actually occurs in the ceremony. ‘To say that the boys risk their lives says precisely that to go out of the formal structure and to enter the margins is to be exposed to power that is enough to kill them or make their manhood’ (96). Here again are the ‘powers and dangers’ which are ‘credited to social structure’: the power seems to reside more in the idea of danger than actual danger. Blake, who, as we shall see, likens entering his text to entering a human body or even the underworld, must know that there is little actual, physical danger in reading a book. To compensate for this inoffensiveness, he borrows the imaginary power of transgression, and of spiritual journeys, so that his

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audience, even if not attentive, ‘shall know that there hath been a prophet among them’. Additionally, the danger (even if imaginary) of such a rite of initiation helps ensure that those unfit to receive the transformative power of Blake’s prophetic books will fail, as unfit initiates will purportedly ‘die from hardship or fright, or by supernatural punishment for their misdeeds’ (Douglas 96). Julia Kristeva takes Douglas’ anthropological observations and applies them to the individual psyche, and to writing. In Revolution in Poetic Language, through her theory of the semiotic and the symbolic, she considers disruptions of the system of language, while in Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection, Kristeva confronts threats to the borders of personal identity. To build her theory of the semiotic and the symbolic, Kristeva begins with ideas from Lacan: that the child is originally one with its mother and only later realizes its separate identity. A separate identity is a condition of being able to use language: one needs a position from which to speak, and an understanding of the existence of objects to be able to form a statement. Kristeva imagines the characteristics of that pre-linguistic state, as far as they can be imagined. She calls that state the semiotic chora, and explains, ‘the drives, which are “energy” charges as well as “psychical” marks, articulate what we call a chora: a nonexpressive totality formed by the drives and their stases in a motility that is as full of movement as it is regulated’ (Revolution 25). It is ‘nonexpressive’, being pre-linguistic, yet it is not totally without structure. It is ‘regulated’; the mother’s body (around which the child’s drives are oriented) gives it order (27). Kristeva argues that: the chora is not yet a position that represents something for someone (i.e. it is not a sign); nor is it a position that represents someone for another position (i.e. it is not yet a signifier either); it is, however, generated in order to attain to this signifying position. Neither model nor copy, the chora precedes and underlies figuration and thus specularization, and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm. (26) The semiotic, then, is associated with drives and rhythm, and is a basis for proceeding to independent identity and the use of language. Since it is a basis for language, it continues to exist and occasionally show itself in language. The semiotic underlies, and as drives is perhaps the impulse or fuel that powers symbolic language, which in turn is associated with order and meaning. To proceed from the semiotic to the symbolic a child must master the thetic: being able to have a thesis, make a judgment, take a position in relation to an object. Though absolutely necessary, the thetic is not exclusive: the semiotic, which also proceeds it, constantly tears it open, and this transgression

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brings about all the various transformations of the signifying practice that are called ‘creation.’ Whether in the realm of metalanguage (mathematics, for example) or literature, what remodels the symbolic order is always the influx of the semiotic. This is particularly evident in poetic language since, for there to be a transgression of the symbolic, there must be an irruption of drives in the universal signifying order, that of ‘natural’ language which binds together the social unit. (62) Being concerned with music as well as meaning, poetic language is a suitable place to find eruptions of the symbolic, of drives, of speaking to express an urge. When looking at texts, Kristeva denotes as ‘genotext’ passages which ‘include semiotic processes but also the advent of the symbolic’; the ‘drive energy’ they hold can be detected, for instance, in ‘the accumulation and repetition of phonemes or rhyme’ as well as ‘melodic devices (such as intonation or rhythm)’ (86). What she calls the ‘phenotext’ shows symbolic language: ‘language which serves to communicate’, which ‘obeys rules of communication and presupposes a subject of enunciation and an addressee’ (87). Kristeva argues that ‘the signifying process . . . includes both the genotext and the phenotext; indeed it could not do otherwise’ (87–8). However, ‘every signifying practice does not encompass the infinite totality of that process’ (88). That is, the semiotic and symbolic are both involved in all writing, and each are revealed to a greater or lesser extent in genotext and phenotext. In much writing the phenotext dominates because of sociopolitical constraints that make the signifying process fixed, that ‘obliterate the infinity of the process’ (88). Kristeva insists that the semiotic is a process, and reading texts which reveal the influence of the semiotic (an example she gives is James Joyce) ‘means giving up the lexical, syntactic, and semantic operation of deciphering, and instead retracing the path of their production’ (103). Kristeva uses words which emphasize the transgression involved in the semiotic disrupting the symbolic. Though the symbolic relies on the semiotic, it is ‘torn’ by it. Like the wilderness that lies outside of Douglas’ systems, the semiotic is a powerful threat to the symbolic, and writers who tap into it harness its power, yet not without risk of the symbolic being wholly ‘torn’. If there is ‘an attempt to hypostasize semiotic motility as autonomous from the thetic – capable of doing without it or unaware of it’, that is, if the play of the semiotic is pursued so far that the writer no longer has a position to speak from nor any concept of a listener, then a ‘text as signifying practice’ will no longer be a text but fall into the category of ‘drifting-into-non-sense’, the babble of madness (50–1). For Kristeva, only some texts ‘manage to cover the infinity of the process, that is, reach the semiotic chora, which modifies linguistic structures’: she concentrates on ‘certain literary texts of the avant-garde (Mallarmé, Joyce)’, but also finds that in ‘revolutionary periods . . . signifying practice has

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inscribed within the phenotext the plural, heterogenous, and contradictory process of signification, encompassing the flow of drives, material discontinuity, political struggle, and the pulverization of language’ (88). Blake lived in a revolutionary period and seemed to many to be teetering on the edge of madness. Few readers of Blake have considered how Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and symbolic might shed light on his work, but Thomas Vogler finds the semiotic operating in Milton where Blake puts symbolic language on hold to transcribe a lark singing ‘trill, trill, trill, trill’. Vogler argues, ‘the “high ton’d Song” of the “loud voic’d Bard” gives way to “this little Bird”, whose trill, though not “words”, may concern our “eternal salvation” ’ (146). There is a hint here of the redemptive capacity of the disruption of language. Vogler also notes the similarity between Blake’s description of Beulah and Kristeva’s concept of the chora: ‘As the beloved infant in his mothers bosom round incircled / With arms of love & pity & sweet compassion’ (Vogler 144, M 30:10–12); ‘Infant Joy’ also shows Blake’s interest in the infant time before, and transition to, expression and identity. Much earlier than Vogler, Swinburne, making an admirable effort to describe the character of Blake’s prophetic books, finds in them something similar to the music of the semiotic. Notably, he places his observation in the realm of child development: ‘Blake was often taken off his feet by the strong currents of fancy, and indulged, like a child during its first humour of invention, in wild byplay and erratic excess of simple sound’ (194). He detects not just this impulse, but also a contrary one existing alongside it. ‘At one time we have mere music, chains of ringing names, scattered jewels of sound without a thread, tortuous network of harmonies without a clue; and again we have passages, not always unworthy of an Æschylean chorus, full of fate and fear; words that are strained wellnigh in sunder by strong significance and earnest passion’ (Swinburne 195). For Swinburne, at times, Blake’s verse collapses under meaninglessness; at others, under excess of meaning. Because Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic offers a concept of a text that is manifold, made up of different layers of language, and is not entirely fixed but resists finality, it is a useful model or parallel for understanding the struggle between didacticism and openness in Blake’s poetry. Having a prophetic purpose, he decidedly has a message to get across. However, Blake is reluctant to simply offer a new fixed dogma to replace the old one. He is faced with the challenge of being didactic against didacticism. An early reader of The Book of Thel, Garth Wilkinson, puts his finger on Blake’s combination of definite message and invitation to interpret freely: though Thel is ‘partly, an exception to the general badness or unintelligibility of [Blake’s] verse and designs’, writes Wilkinson, ‘I can see some glimmer of meaning in it, and some warmth of religion and of goodness; but beginning to be obscured and lost under the infatuating phantasies which at length possessed its author. I should say sanity predominates in it, rather than that the work was a sane one’ (in Bentley, Critical Heritage 50).

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Wilkinson recognizes the threat to sanity inherent in mixing message with openness, and his description echoes Kristeva’s idea that a revolutionary poetic text is not fully symbolic, or sane, or communicative, but rather is disrupted, or obscured, by the phantasies of the semiotic. Kristeva’s emphasis on signification as a process can also be related to Blake’s apparent reluctance to give final form to a text. He uses his control over every stage of the process in making his illuminated books to ensure that no two copies are the same, and he takes advantage of his license to make changes during the production of his work in a continuous creation rather than a mere reproduction. Blake draws attention to the process of the work’s making to emphasize that it is not final, not written in stone. Yet, it is written in metal, almost as solid as stone; to that extent it is ‘fixed’ like Kristeva’s symbolic, but Blake’s process, his self-awareness of that process, and the steps he takes to remind the reader of it, mitigate and disrupt that fixity. Revolution in Poetic Language was originally published in French in 1974, while Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection was published later, in 1980. Kristeva does not weave the theory of the semiotic and the symbolic together with the theory of abjection, and it can at times be difficult to see how their terms relate to each other since they cover similar ground from different angles. However, one might be able to differentiate the semiotic from abjection by looking at the powers she expects of each. What the symbolic offers is positive change, seen in a social context: texts which show the influence of the symbolic can cause ‘the production of a different kind of subject, one capable of bringing about new social relations, and thus joining in the process of capitalism’s subversion’ (Revolution 105). Though in excess it threatens language and even sanity, the symbolic is a necessary part of language, and shows itself playfully within the restrained system of symbolic language. Abjection, however, is not so benign. It does not seem to have a transformative power, but rather, as the title suggests, a power of horror, of repulsion; yet it can never be completely thrown away, it affects the self too closely. What comes of abjection is apparently a facing of reality. Kristeva in her discussion of abjection rejects the idea of catharsis, because it implies becoming rid of impurities, and because it is too ideal, too transcendent (Horror 27–30). Abjection is an open wound (27). The benefits of abjection are cast not in social but in analytical terms. It is a way to name a psychological problem, recognize its causes, and find a way to live with its results, rather than a way to transform the individual or the society. In contrast, I would suggest that when Blake faces the abject reality of the body, he does so in a transformative way. In his prophetic books, as shall be seen in coming chapters, he displays the horrors of physical existence in order to recognize them; not to learn to live with them but to dispel the misconception that life on earth is the best and only life. Yet he also questions the unadulterated idealism of transcendence. Confronting the pain and disgust

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of bodily existence is not a move to reject the body, but rather a step in the process of transforming the body. To explicate the concept of abjection, Kristeva begins with ‘food loathing’ which she argues ‘is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection’. Kristeva describes reactions of physical disgust to ‘that skin on the surface of milk’. Milk is, of course, a bodily fluid, one of those things that crosses bodily borders; it is involved in a repeated Biblical prohibition, ‘thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk’ (Exod. 23:19, 34:26, Deut. 14:21). The milk skin Kristeva focuses on also shows signs of categorycrossing. Contradicting milk’s liquidity, its skin is somewhere in the viscous area between solid and liquid, that slimy territory often found disgusting, perhaps because of other bodily fluids which are thick and can harden, such as blood and mucus. Kristeva writes, from the point of view of the child reacting to its parents’ offer of milk, ‘I’ want none of that element, sign of their desire; ‘I’ do not want to listen, ‘I’ do not assimilate it, ‘I’ expel it. But since the food is not an ‘other’ for ‘me,’ who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which ‘I’ claim to establish myself. (3) The problem is, what is rejected in order to define the self is really part of the self: here, nourishment. Kristeva pictures a body, an identity that is not permanently defined. Abjection is about deciding, labelling what is ‘me’ and what is ‘not me’, but as Kristeva says, this time considering the corpse as an example of the abject, ‘it is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object’ (4). Like the nourishment that builds the body, rejecting it means rejecting the self. With the body, this is inevitable: one day, in death, it will be ‘not me’. The abject, like Douglas’ abomination, is caused not by ‘lack of cleanliness or health . . . but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’ (Kristeva, Horror 4). By this definition, Blake’s illuminated books, being in between the categories of manuscript and print, partly hand-done and partly reproduced, and being between the categories of word and picture, are abominations. Kristeva, perhaps to help differentiate her theory from that of Douglas, turns to examples from the world of crime. When Douglas considers the complex relationship between morality and pollution, she finds that ‘pollution tends to support moral values’, and presupposes a desire to resolve moral wrongs. ‘There must be an advantage for society at large in attempting to reduce moral offences to pollution offences which can be instantly scrubbed out

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by ritual’ (135–6). This view is in line with her anthropological perspective: she is concerned with whole societies, their functioning and selfpreservation. Kristeva, as an analyst, focuses more on the individual psyche; not only that, but on the malfunctioning psyche which does not necessarily have any care for gaining moral approval or aiding the smooth functioning of society, and so she finds the apex of abjection in amorality. ‘The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a saviour. . . . Any crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they highten the display of such fragility’ (4). Jerusalem’s plate 3 could be an example of abjection. Blake has perpetrated premeditated violence upon his ‘human’ creation. Granted, it is not as dire a crime as assault on an actual human being, but Blake is using his text to symbolize the human body, to avail himself of the powers of that ultimate symbol. In plate 3 he also approaches his audience with abjection: he is addressing us (‘To the Public’), confusing us (with fractured sentences) and insulting us (by refusing to call us ‘Friend’) all at once. It is a friendly overture, marred, and left contradictory, reaching out and pulling back, rejecting but not fully able to reject. Jerome McGann observes, in Toward a Literature of Knowledge, Blake’s gouging of letters from ‘To the Public’ without replacing them with anything causes ‘not simply a set of awkward transitions and distracting blank spaces’ but ‘positive incoherence’ (10). McGann argues that since Blake worked on Jerusalem for at least ten years . . . he might have changed plate 3, given it some kind of verbal coherence. But he preserved a scarred discourse as the opening of his text, so that plate 3 must be regarded as what textual scholars sometimes call ‘the author’s final intentions’. (Knowledge 10) To be true to Blake’s intention, the text must be left as it is, but curiosity is sorely tempted. The sentence fragments hint at what kind of words or phrases belong in the blanks, and portions of the excised letters are visible, spurring the reader to reconstruct. Is Blake asking us to read under the page and down into the depths of his copper plate, beyond the page into what created it? John Wright does this, emphasizing that such a practice ‘has a geological or archeological relation to the finished pages’ (114), his vocabulary reflecting his (and Blake’s) view of the plates as a ‘terrain’ (96). Are we to read back in time before the changes were made? Keynes reconstructed most of plate 3’s single-word deletions; Swinburne and Damon guessed (wrongly) at missing words in the plate’s verses. Erdman has caused the ‘large erasure of nearly four lines in the centre of the first paragraph’ to yield ‘to ocular and photographic attack’, but concedes that there are some

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passages in Jerusalem he cannot restore (Erdman, ‘Suppressed’ 2–4). The lines are not there. Filling them in means reading another page. Yet, as it stands, the page could be called unreadable. We are not presented with the copper plates as reading material, but read the printed page embellished with watercolour and pen and ink. Still, Blake does not let the reader forget the process which created the page. Erdman sees that ‘a vigorous gouging could level these surfaces beyond recovery . . . but in many instances Blake did not carry his negating beyond a few strokes, leaving a stubble of metal that would print broken outlines of letters and ghosts of words’ (‘Suppressed’ 2). The process of the creation, and the destruction of the page, is made visible in the scars from the gouging. They are nonverbal elements which seem to require interpretation, because without explaining them the sentences they affect are unreadable. Interpretation most often follows two roads, one toward reconstruction and one toward motivation, but both go back to the making of the page: what did it say before, or what caused these deletions to be made? Joseph Viscomi finds that Blake deletes ‘words that connote connection, even at the cost of rendering [sentences] meaningless’. He guesses that ‘the deletions almost certainly were made after Blake’s failed exhibition and estrangement from Cromek, Stothard, and possibly even Butts. It appears to have been especially disturbing to Blake to have his works owned by people he no longer liked or trusted’ (339). Though this might seem to be an excessive desire for control over his audience – a desire for control which works against the desire to be heard – it is understandable, considering the time and care required by Blake’s handmade illuminated books, as well as their personal character as compared to the work that Blake did for commerical purposes. There is also Blake’s prophetic purpose. Viscomi turns this spiritual aspect invested in Blake’s illuminated books into an intriguing explanation: Ideally, the study of art is analogous to the study of Christ; the student, disciple or reader undergoes a transformation or conversion; one comes to perceive self and world differently. In this sense, Blake’s audience was select, but also made select through reading and owning Blake’s works. The problem is that bad people sometimes own good work, which is as troubling as Job’s undeserved afflictions. In both cases self-defining beliefs, whether about God’s existence or goodness, the value and power of one’s own work, or the meaning of imagination, can be cast in doubt. (339) The incisions in plate 3, then, would be scars of affliction on the body of the text, marks of violence done to it out of frustration, a self-laceration of Blake’s corpus enacting despair and calling for attention. On the other hand, they may be openings in the text, orifices, entry points.

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Textual Bodies

William Blake and the Body

Perhaps in deleting the words that denote the reader as ‘friend’, Blake shows in plate 3 that he is not going to assume the reader is a friend, but rather allow (or force) the reader to fill in the blanks and decide what kind of a relationship this will be. Blake is not doing all the work of reading, or of transformation, for the reader but requiring that the reader fulfil his or her side of the bargain. In his introduction to the text, Detlef Dörrbecker argues, about the ending of Europe: a Prophecy, that ‘Blake’s poetic strategy forces his audience to take sides’; ‘one reads one’s own hopes into the text’ and ‘it is only by bending the evidence that some commentators assume that their preferred understanding is identical with any straightforward “meaning” of these concluding lines’ which leave the reader on the brink of ‘the strife of blood’ with no certainty of its result (152–3). The measured amount of openness left in the text puts the onus on the reader to interpret, and to be aware that the interpretation must be tentative, a revelation of the reader’s desires as well as the ‘meaning’ of the text. Ironically, Blake’s deletion of relationship-words from plate 3 requires an added emotional investment from the reader: an admission of what he or she wants to read, wants to believe to be the message of the text. Neither Europe nor Jerusalem nor any of Blake’s illuminated books is an infinitely open text. They do not go so far into Kristeva’s realm of the semiotic as to abandon completely even the rules of grammar and prosody, let alone accommodate any meaning a reader may wish. The texts are participatory, though, inviting the reader to fill in the blanks of missing words, or the possible meanings of archetypal characters and situations, working with the many variables the system allows. In Jerusalem 3, it is in an address to the reader that he leaves these blanks, and in Europe it is in his rousing conclusion that he leaves significance undecided. Points in the text where a didactic purpose is being served, where the message all previous or following hints should add up to is to be revealed: those are the points at which Blake inserts openings. In this way he dramatizes the tension between didacticism and openness which is inevitable to his prophetic project. Openness is necessary, but it is dangerous, especially if one feels as Viscomi argues Blake does about bad people owning good work. The apertures Blake leaves in his texts serve as possible entry points, but they are also attempts to ensure that the right reader will continue and the wrong one will give up. A reader unwilling to fill in the blanks, to participate, to take that risk of emotional investment in the text, may be frustrated and repulsed by the demands and the dangers imposed by the orifices of the illuminated books. Of course, such guarding devices could never be infallible, but they can be at least an attempt to control who Blake’s audience will be. Especially given Blake’s gnostic leanings, the salvation held by his texts may well be meant only for initiates, for those who can understand. In Blake studies, the need to learn the associations of Blake’s cryptic, invented mythology can make Blakeans seem like a cult of magi holding secret knowledge unknown (and quite possibly undesired) by the

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You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients considerd what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction because it rouzes the faculties to act. (E 702) Blake is not creating his works for the weak, or for idiots, but rather for those willing to be roused. Being ‘not too Explicit’ is an essential strategy for his illuminating purpose – it is ‘fittest for Instruction’ – and it also aids him in making sure that his audience will be, as Viscomi calls it, ‘select’. Jon Mee sees Blake’s obscurity from a less exclusive point of view; necessarily, because of the context of popular prophecy in which he places Blake in Dangerous Enthusiasm. Mee finds that obscurity (for example, allegories which do not clearly match up to particular historical events) is, according to Robert Lowth in his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, an essential characteristic of prophecy. Lowth’s reasons are similar to Blake’s: ‘it whets the understanding, excites an appetite for knowledge, keeps alive the attention, and exercises the genius by the labour of the imagination’ (in Mee 27). Mee argues that Lowth’s opinion ‘exemplifies and indeed profoundly influenced the common eighteenth-century notion of the public and even political nature of the prophetic office’ (27). He finds that Blake agrees with a view of prophecy as ‘an attempt to persuade the people to act in a particular way’ in his ‘most direct definition of the prophetic role: “Every honest man is a Prophet he utters his opinion both of private & public matters” ’ (E 617, Mee 27–8). The political role of prophets is clear from the Hebrew bible in which they advise kings and berate Israel’s public for their erring ways. However, in Ezekiel’s example we saw that this persuasion was not always effective on the majority of hearers. Every honest man is a prophet, but how many men are honest? In his annotations to Watson’s An Apology for the Bible Blake begins with the statement, ‘To defend the Bible in this year 1798 would cost a man his life’ (E 611). Though the Bible is the ultimate popular text in Judeo-Christian culture, it may have many readers but in Blake’s terms not so many true adherents. Perhaps the honestspeaking prophet addressing the public is like that prophet of Christ, John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness. In an early illuminated book, and a late one, Blake alludes to this marginal prophet: the first plate of All Religions are One is inscribed, ‘The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness’, and The Ghost of Abel is dedicated ‘To LORD BYRON in the Wilderness’ (1:1).1

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uninitiated, and it does keep Blake’s later works secret from most who have not proceeded to the cloister of postgraduate study. Blake himself professes a belief in exclusive understanding, when he counters Dr Trusler’s criticisms of his otherworldly art:

William Blake and the Body

As Mee also contends, Blake’s obscurity reflects ‘his desire to stimulate the reader into a fuller hermeneutic engagement with the text’ (27). What seems to constitute membership in this elite audience is responsiveness to the text. On Jerusalem plate 3, at the top, before the title, ‘To the Public’, are two words: ‘SHEEP’ on the left, ‘GOATS’ on the right. Though the words strangely float without context, they are an allusion, a precedented literary device. Separating sheep from goats is a metaphor for separating saved from damned in Matt. 25:31–33. Does Blake threaten to separate sheep from goats among his readers? Erdman finds that the words ‘SHEEP’ and ‘GOATS’ were ‘added to Plate 3 with the same tool, perhaps with the same impulse, that deleted [Blake’s] expressions of love and friendship’ (Erdman, ‘Suppressed’ 2–4). The connection has been cut, a friendly impulse edited to a judgmental one. How can we know what will ‘save’ us here, what kind of reading is expected and considered the ‘righteous’ kind? Or, in a book about the disastrous folly of Albion’s separation from his friends, is this image of judgment presented to be undermined? Blake’s book itself defies categories, so why would it want to categorize its readers? In Christianity too, divisions are supposed to be disregarded: ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3:28). However, there remains the distinction between saved and damned. Perhaps in Blake as in the New Testament all categories are blurred, in favour of this one big distinction, central to the transformative purpose of both. ‘SHEEP’ is on the viewer’s left, while in the gospel passage they are placed at the right hand of God. ‘SHEEP’ and ‘GOATS’ have to be read reversed. ‘SHEEP’ is on the right, looking out from the page. The reader is being judged by the text itself. Is Blake looking out from his creation to see how the reader fares?2 Is this page a human, giant form? The bible passage describing the separation of sheep from goats directly follows the parable of the talents in which the ‘unprofitable servant’ is ‘cast . . . into outer darkness’ (Matt. 25:30). The reader has bravely cast him or herself into the inner darkness of the text behind the door. Apparently the reader came from outer darkness: ignorance, sleep, or Ulro as Blake names the dull state of ordinary existence. The unprofitable reader, presumably, will be cast by the text back into outer darkness. Jerusalem tells of chaos reigning during Albion’s sleep, and culminates in his awakening. The body of Albion contains all, and reading Jerusalem, the sheep and goats imply, involves a participation in Albion’s redemption. Swinburne, writing about Jerusalem, pinpoints at once its evangelism and its difficulty: ‘Supra hanc petram – and such a rock it is to begin any church-building upon! Many of the unwary have stumbled over it and broken their wits. Seriously, one cannot imagine that people will ever read through this vast poem with pleasure enough to warrant them in having patience with it’ (276). Few are called to read Jerusalem, and fewer are chosen, by the challenging text itself, to be illuminated through it.

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In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the prophetic purpose of Blake’s engraving is explicitly linked to the body. On plate 14 Blake predicts ‘the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt’. This transformation of the body of creation will not arise from denial of the human body but rather ‘an improvement of sensual enjoyment’. Blake has a part in bringing about this apocalypse: ‘But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid’ (14:6–16). Blake claims for himself and his printing the ability to spark this transformation. His illuminated book argues for the unity of soul and body; it also demonstrates it. The illuminated books depend on their medium, their physical form or body. If they are reincarnated in another form, for instance ordinary typeface, part of their being is left behind: they are no longer the same. The intertwining between word and image parallels, or even dramatizes, the mutual dependence in Blake’s works between content and form, soul and body. Content could be called soul, infusing and giving life and meaning to the body of the text, and form could be called body, giving shape to otherwise amorphous ideas. However, since they are so interdependent it is difficult to consider final a parallel which assumes the body is a mere container for the soul. For Blake, between the body and the soul, which gives form and which gives meaning? The parallel seems to hold in the fallen world, where bodies serve to save from nonentity; their limitations are lesser evils than entire shapelessness. But as we will see, considering Blake’s belief in physiognomy, and his ideal of a transparent body like a transparent garment which reveals rather than covers, perhaps it is the soul which provides the true form. And, since Blake idealizes the Human Form Divine, and holds that conception and execution are inseparable,3 how could the body not participate in providing meaning? Similarly, both design and verse give shape and meaning to Blake’s illuminated books, and sometimes it is difficult to tell where one begins and one ends. Many readers have found the bodies of Blake’s works to be unusually infused with life, in a way which blurs the distinction between image and language. Stephen Behrendt finds ‘the very letters that make up the words are themselves seemingly alive: serifs metamorphose into leaves and tendrils, dependers sprout branches that hold tiny birds or shelter minuscule humans’ (16). Erdman, in his reconstruction of Jerusalem 3’s gougings, has difficulty differentiating a small snake from a two-letter word (‘Suppressed’ 5). Easson and Easson, in their commentary on The First Book of Urizen, emphasize how Blake’s lively decorations positivize negative space: ‘Blake clutters up the text with life, so that birds, butterflies, serpentine tendrils, flowers and occasionally little people populate these usually bleak

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Textual Bodies

William Blake and the Body

deserts between the furrows of letters’ (91). As for Marriage 14, leaves grow from ‘sensual enjoyment’, and a horse gallops in a blue space as if about to leap the ‘-finite’ which comes at the end of the famed assertion, ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite’ (14:17–19). At the top of the plate, a male figure lies flat, and a female hovers above him, arms spread; flames envelop them both. These figures epitomize the process of revelation through cleansing with ‘salutary and medicinal’ corrosives; they also illustrate the identity of Blake’s plates as living things. The editors note that the design ‘plays on those metaphors’ in the text of ‘the consumption of the world by fire at the Last Judgment and the consumption of copper by acid’ (136); in fact, it personifies them. The world and plate consumed by fire are embodied by the recumbent figure: they have a human form. The fire that reveals the infinite is pictured as female. She, like the later emanation and the biblical Wisdom, is an element aiding in the creation of the world and the work of art. Also like the emanation and Wisdom, she is an aspect of the human or of God who only appears to have separate being. In reality, they are one. In reality, the process of creation is part of the text, pictured in it, embodied in it. The design, as the editors note, recalls ‘the conventional iconography of soul and body’, used by Blake in such works as his illustrations to Blair’s Grave (136). The plate, then, also reflects the relationship of soul and body explained earlier in the Marriage: ‘that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses’ (4:14–15). If the female soul is part of the engraving process, then it is creating through corrosion a body which reveals the infinite which was hid, the ideas and images which would otherwise remain hidden in the artist’s mind. The engraving metaphors in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell show that Blake’s self-conscious figuration of his texts within themselves extends to seeing his text as human. Just as ‘the Bible of Hell’ mentioned in Marriage 24 could refer not only to the text at hand, but to Blake’s view of his whole project of illuminated printing, so can the humanization of his works. David Erdman suggests that Los’s ‘numerous sons’ who ‘shook their bright fiery wings’ (or pages) in Europe 5[6] could be Blake’s illuminated books personified (in Tolley 127). Elsewhere, descriptions of Los and Enitharmon embodying their children can be parallelled to William and Catherine Blake creating illuminated books. As Essick argues, Los is a blacksmith, working in metal as Blake works with his metal engraving plates; he provides the form while Enitharmon provides the colour, as Catherine would help in the watercolour finishing (‘Female Will’ 620). A passage Essick offers as an example of this imagery makes clear the birthlike nature of this collaboration: So dread is Los’s fury. that none dare him to approach Without becoming his Children in the Furnaces of affliction

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And Enitharmon like a faint rainbow waved before him Filling with Fibres from his loins which reddend with desire Into a Globe of blood beneath his bosom.

There is, then, a sexual element to this creation, the books being sons and daughters of their co-creators or parents. Also in Europe there is a catalogue of sons and daughters of Los, some rarely seen again, like Manathu-Vorcyon, and some prominent characters in Blake’s myth, like Orc. There is a suggestion of a sprawling mythology. Each person in the lineage has a story and some of these stories are preserved in books while others remain mysterious. Oothoon, for instance, has her story told in five lines of description in Europe, but Visions of the Daughters of Albion is her own whole book. If this is true of Oothoon, then the other children also, here only abstracts, could elsewhere be whole books. It is as though books, as well as characters, are ‘offspring’ of each other.4 Vincent De Luca suggests another way in which the relationship between Enitharmon and her children is defined textually: they are born from her name. Their names – Oothoon, Theotormon, et cetera – ‘derive, anagrammatically or through slight phonetic shifts and condensations, portions of their own literal being’ from their mother’s name (97). In Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Oothoon, Theotormon and Bromion share letters in the composition of their names, and they each embody a different position in the interactive dynamics of the poem. On the frontispiece, Bromion and Oothoon are physically bound, while Theotormon is compositionally attached to them, his position completing the arc formed by the three figures, and his leg visually meeting Oothoon’s hair. In this design they show forth physically the different kinds of psychological anguish they undergo in the poem, Bromion bound and raging, Oothoon bound yet graceful, suffering, not seeing her binding as a necessity, and Theotormon wound up in self-torment (see Frontispiece). Eaves, Essick and Viscomi in their notes provide a different way to see the plate: ‘We can also take the sun for “an eye / In the eastern cloud” (5:35–6), consider its position relative to the shape of the cave, transform the vegetation dangling from the roof of the cavern into residual tufts of hair, and see the entire composition as the profile of a skull looking to the left, an image of the “narrow circle” into which “they inclos’d [Oothoon’s] infinite brain” ’ (236). Because of this, the editors, drawing on Youngquist’s Madness and Blake’s Myth, see the three characters as ‘the constituent parts of a single fragmented personality’ (Youngquist 66; VDA 236). Not only does a reader see a psychological drama acted out by personifications, but in reading Visions literally gets inside the human head. More than that, within the poem, ‘Oothoon sexualizes the connection between the subject who sees and the object of sight’, claiming that she is

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( J 86:48–52)

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William Blake and the Body

Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears If in the morning sun I find it; there my eyes are fix’d In happy copulation.

Beauty appears in the pages of the prophecy and the reader as perceiver is, by Oothoon’s definition of perception, copulating with the book. In return the book is also ‘screwing with your head’: if the reader accepts Oothoon’s suggestions, his or her view of sex and perception may be transformed. It could be a mutual, liberating and jealousy-free relationship as envisioned in the text. However, since Oothoon is a character from a psychological drama, it is difficult to know whether her view of things is to be so thoroughly embraced, or whether she is going too far: is she an ideal, or just a mental state? If Blake desires such abandon in participation in his texts, does he believe it is even possible? And if so, would Blake want everyone to become that intimate with his children? Can he gain any control over who does and who does not? In addition to weeding out the ‘GOATS’ from the ‘SHEEP’, Blake can control his audience simply through the fact that the labour-intensiveness of creating his hand-made books means small print runs. As Viscomi argues, Blake’s audience was ‘select’; individual copies, each different, of the illuminated books were purchased by individual collectors. Print versions of these books are a whole different incarnation of those works, and none appeared in Blake’s lifetime. Blake’s conventional publications are different from the illuminated books: Poetical Sketches, for example, was apparently published on his behalf by friends rather than at Blake’s own impetus, and the Descriptive Catalogue consists of prose to accompany his exhibition. The fact that conventional publishing was to some extent open to Blake, and that his illuminated books were not created in that way, suggests that Blake did not envision mass dissemination for them. Critics have struggled over Blake’s apparent desire for an audience – that didactic, prophetic desire to get a message across – and the practical fact that the medium he chose, illuminated printing, ruled out a large audience. Mitchell, for instance, sees the small print runs as a disappointment: ‘Blake was never able to mass-produce his books as he hoped, partly because the new method was not so easy as he supposed’ (Composite 43, in Viscomi 175). Viscomi, on the other hand, argues that ‘Blake advertised primarily to connoisseurs, collectors, and other artists . . . the same audience he sought for his watercolours, which by nature were usually unique and stored in portfolios or hung in parlours of private homes’ (174). Apparently, the illuminated books were, just as they seem, works of art. If they are not as completely unique as a watercolour, they are more unique than a published book, bought by collectors rather than the

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(9:22–10:1 and note)

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general public, and treated by collectors like a work of art: displayed in the home for the owners and their visitors. To see the work, one would have to see an original. Now, though, with the Blake Trust editions, and the Blake Archive, Blake’s children are becoming more promiscuous, which by Oothoon’s lights may be good. The Archive allows exciting manipulation of the images in a kind of cyber-sex perception which, ironically, allows one to handle the works more intimately while not providing any ‘real’ contact with them, only virtual. The Blake Trust editions are rich in colour and detail, and their copious and enthusiastic notes can provide an experience almost like an initiation – both overwhelming and enlightening – into the exclusive circle of Antients or Blakean friends familiar with the originals. However, if reading a translation is like kissing through a handkerchief, seeing Blake’s works in reproduction, even an excellent one, is likewise.5 The online Archive turns Blake’s works into light rather than texture, and the Blake Trust editions turn them to plain paper, again rather than texture. A reader cannot perceive the imprint of the plate’s pressure, or the thickness or thinness of ink and paint, or the inimitable substance and sparkle of gold leaf. Even with the privilege of seeing the originals, one must not touch works of art; still, the texture can be better perceived visually on the originals. The untouchability of Blake’s books, in libraries and museums or in reproductions, has repercussions for the sexual relationship of reader and book. It is an interesting reflection of the frequent omission of the skin and the sense of touch in Blake’s sense catalogues. In the past, for collectors anxious to preserve their Blake books, and now, for most readers, the skin of the text, its actual surface, is inaccessible to their sense organ of touch, their skin. Here is one way in which bodily borders do not brush up against one another in Blake’s texts, but perhaps the skin is a border which is not permeable enough compared to taste, sight, smell and hearing which all involve orifices rather than surfaces. Yet, the sense catalogue offered by the Fairy who supposedly dictates Europe to Blake lists five senses, not neglecting touch, and calls them ‘Five windows’ that ‘light the cavern’d Man’. The window that corresponds to touch is described thus: it is the one through which Man may ‘himself pass out what time he please, but he will not’ (Additional Plate 3:1, 5). This is not a surface, but rather an opening, and one which, along with its promise of liberation, is invested with anxiety and repression. The fairy, like Oothoon, may be considering the sex organs to be organs of perception. What is the relationship, then, between the sex organs and the skin? In Jerusalem Blake argues against exclusively genital sexuality to idealize polymorphous perversity. On plate 69 (an appropriate place for perversity), Blake writes, ‘Embraces are Cominglings: from the Head even to the Feet: / And not a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place’ (69:43–4). Blake seems to be disapproving of penetration here, associating

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Textual Bodies

William Blake and the Body

it with a negative kind of secret knowledge, one used to preserve traditional, hierarchical systems of thought and belief – and to enact repressed sexuality – rather than rousing the faculties. Yet if full-body embraces are comminglings, then the skin through contact is not just touching but somehow melding. The skin becomes an orifice. Applying this to the skin of the book, it is a surface with openings (painfully obvious in Jerusalem’s ‘To the Public’), not just one but many places for the reader to penetrate and commingle with the text in participatory perception. Though this seems rather a libertine model for a reading of Blake who desires a degree of control over his audience, it actually works as part of gaining that control. The surface of the text is untouchable, like the skin of a person with whom one has not become intimate. It is not as though the illuminated book is entirely inaccessible, like a vestal virgin, but it has to be approached through friendship and desire. By forcing the reader to participate in the text, to fill in the blanks or orifices of word or meaning left by Blake, he ensures that the reader must desire the text in order to join with it in happy copulation. In their original form, these texts as Viscomi argues were placed in the hands of friends: ‘friends were buyers but buyers became friends’ (339). The books also circulated through the hands of friends. The earliest comments on Songs of Innocence and of Experience are recorded in private writings: William Hazlitt was exposed to Blake’s work on a visit to Henry Crabb Robinson, who recorded Hazlitt’s reactions in his diary; Coleridge borrowed Charles Augustus Tulk’s copy of the Songs and in a ‘rude scrawl’ of thanks shared his estimation of the poems and designs (Bentley, Critical Heritage 54–5). Blake’s illuminated books gain their audience through a network of friendship, and the transformative powers they claim can serve to form and strengthen links between readers. They are able to do this through their status as books and human forms. Nelson Hilton, exploring the connotations of fibres in Blake’s works, meditates on these lines from Jerusalem: ‘I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine: / Fibres of love from man to man thro Albions pleasant land’. These fibres are, among other things, the bodily vehicle of feeling and sympathy: the nerves. Hilton finds that these physical fibres also have a textual counterpart: ‘As we are members of one body (“The IMAGINATION” [E273]), fibres – lines of text, for example – are the means by which we communicate with one another’ (Literal 95–6). Not only is Blake’s poetry made up of lines of verse, but also in his visual art Blake values line, and the ‘lineaments’ of his human figures, above all other elements. An additional association of the concept of fibres is a sexual one: it was ‘commonly believed that the brain was connected to the testes by the nerves, which transmitted “the white or spermatic components”. Fibre’s near synonym, “nerve”, was frequent in Latin for the penis (nervus), and so used in English by Dryden’ (Hilton, Literal 92). Ideally, Blake’s audience would be a community of eroticized friendship, energized by eroticized communication, much like the eternal community he envisions

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at the end of Jerusalem, conversing through ‘Visionary forms dramatic’ (98:28). The frontispiece of Jerusalem, Blake’s final prophecy, suggests that the reader should enter the book. It depicts a figure entering a Gothic door with darkness behind, carrying a light-giving globe. The figure looks around, as though entering with some trepidation. That this is a spiritual journey is suggested by the soul-like sphere, and its introduction of light into darkness. Ironically, though, it is usually the book that enlightens: here, it seems, the pilgrim must carry his own enlightenment, or be lost. Unlike another archway in another spiritual epic (‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here’), this one does not offer any (even despairing) verbal advice, again suggesting that he who enters is on his own. In an earlier version of the plate there were words written above and around the entry; as in ‘To the Public’ Blake takes away what might have eased interpretation for the reader. The obscured words include a line which indicates that Los ‘enterd the Door of Death for Albions sake’ (130). Like Dante’s, this is an entry into the world of the dead. While Dante’s inferno is a terrain which culminates in the body of the devil as a place to be tortured, for Blake the body plays a greater role in shaping the geography of hell. Another epigram reads, There is a Void outside of Existence, which if enterd into Englobes itself & becomes a Womb, such was Albions Couch A pleasant Shadow of Repose calld Albions lovely Land (130) The figure suggested to be Los enters the door of death, also a void which becomes a womb, also Albion’s resting place for his repeated death and dying in this book, also Albion as Blake’s mythological England. These lines link to others within the poem: Los took his globe of fire to search the interiors of Albion’s Bosom. in all the terrors of friendship. entering the caves Of despair & death. (31[45]:3–5) Los travels around the desolate London which is Albion’s interior: not just the caves of death (or womb of death), not just a city, but Albion’s bosom. Los enters the body of his friend and explores it. What kind of an entering is this? Since where Los enters is a space that becomes a womb, or is Albion’s bosom, it is a sexual entering. Yet, since he explores to see what is amiss with Albion’s interior, then it is a sort of autopsy, or vivisection as at this point Albion is dying rather than dead. If this is the way to approach Blake, then it is not for the faint of heart. A tour of someone else’s insides is not an attractive prospect, even if it is the body of a friend. A heroic braving of

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Textual Bodies

William Blake and the Body

death for a friend’s sake, as well as an intimacy comparable to sexual intimacy, might be more than a reader is willing to give. But, as the Jerusalem frontispiece suggests, Blake seems to expect a reader to come prepared, carrying his or her soul, or be expelled by the darkness of the text. These possibilities of a reader’s reluctance and expulsion arise in The Book of Thel, which faces the failure of poetry’s transforming power and also, as we shall see, considers the failure of human embodiment. Thel is in need of comfort because of a sense of purposelessness in life. She considers and rejects a range of advice from the inhabitants of her valley, advice which predominantly recommends giving of oneself: being eaten like the Lilly and dissolving like the Cloud. Like Los on the Jerusalem frontispiece, she takes an underworld journey. The matron Clay addresses her: I heard thy sighs. And all thy moans flew o’er my roof. but I have call’d them down: Wilt thou O Queen enter my house, ‘tis given thee to enter. And to return; fear nothing. enter with thy virgin feet. (7:14–17) Pursuing her special privilege, Thel wanders in the underworld ‘Till to her own grave plot she came, & there sat down, / And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit’ (8:9–10). She finds her own grave in the underworld, also ‘her own grave plot’ or her own engraven story, The Book of Thel. Again the reader has entered a Blake poem only to land up in hell. Thel, as audience to the various poetic musings of pastoral personifications, is like a reader. In the end she flees from the poem. The voice she hears – apparently her own voice re-echoed by the grave plot – intensifies the selfdissolution expressed throughout. The voice asks a series of questions, all concerning the senses as places where the body is permeable. It asks, ‘Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction? / Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile? / Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn’: arrows, an image of penetration (8:11–13). In the content of the questions there is an impression of lack of control over the body’s borders, of being helplessly overwhelmed by one’s environment and other human beings. All of these questions build up with no answers, and culminate in ‘Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy! / Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?’ (8:19–20), questioning the most intimate and intense of penetrations, and its apparent impediments. The sex organs appear at the end of the list of sense organs, suggesting like Oothoon and the fairy in Europe that they are organs of perception. In two copies of Thel, these two lines were ‘erased from the paper after printing and colouring’. Unlike in Jerusalem plate 3, the changes do not damage the plate itself; these lines are always present for reprinting. The editors guess that the delection ‘may have been motivated by Blake’s interpretation of the sensibilities of his customers for these two copies’ (110): readers who like Thel do not want to confront

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such questions. Compared to Jerusalem 3, this is a different kind of fill-inthe-blanks, more accommodating to the reader, but it is still an erasure which is obvious and makes one wonder what was there. The visible deletion of the offending lines is like a dramatization of the rejection of permeability in the poem, but it results in a space in the text that, as we have seen, is like an orifice. The Book of Thel, whose heroine Helen Bruder has found to evoke judgmental reactions of disgust from some readers and admiring feelings of liberation from others (Bruder 40, 45, 53, 200), functions like Dörrbecker says Europe does. It does not impose a particular reading but places the onus of interpretation on the reader in a way that forces the reader to confront his or her own desires for the text. Leaving those two lines blank, then, is like letting the reader fill in his or her own ultimate questions. The blankness may be motivated by concern for reader ‘sensibilities’, providing the option to leave penetrating questions repressed; however, this open text is not totally open. As syntax in ‘To the Public’ narrows the possibilities for what could appear in the spaces, here the gist of the list of questions leaves only so much leeway as to how to fill in the blanks: whatever it is, it must be a question about sense organs and the body’s vulnerable borders. After these questions, ‘The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek. / Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har’ (8:21–2). She rejects the body, and she rejects the body of the text – the kind of body Blake’s text claims to be – a permeable one, hellish and dangerous. Understandably, she is reluctant to make herself vulnerable in the ways enumerated in the sense catalogue, ambivalent about possibly being devoured or dissolved in communication. William Godwin recognizes this fear and treats it evenhandedly, in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: Every man that receives an impression from any external object has the current of his own thoughts modified by force; and yet without external impressions we should be nothing. We ought not, except under certain limitations, to endeavour to free ourselves from their approach. Every man that reads the composition of another, suffers the succession of his ideas to be in a considerable degree under the direction of his author. But it does not seem as if this would ever form a sufficent objection against reading. One man will always have stored up reflections and facts that another wants. . . . Conversation is a species of co-operation, one or the other party always yielding to have his ideas guided by the other: and yet conversation and the intercourse of mind with mind seem to be the most fertile sources of improvement. (452) These observations on reading and conversation come from a section in which he places together ‘Co-operation, Cohabitation and Marriage’ (450 n.); Godwin, like Blake, associates communication with copulation, using

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Textual Bodies

William Blake and the Body

the word ‘conversation’ for both (in Fleetwood for example [265]). Here, conversation is fertile intercourse. But how does one, as Godwin sets out to do here, ‘mark the limits of individuality’? Given such influence – given Thel’s worries about the orifices through which the outside floods in – is it possible? This is a problem which Blake’s works set out to solve. How can one have the best of both ideals, of dissolution in fellowship overcoming all separation and difference, and resolution in individuality overcoming all dependence and indefiniteness? Just as the body and soul of the text are one, content and form, design and verse, conception and execution, so the books become what they portray. The characteristics with which Blake invests his textual bodies reflect those of his vision of the eternal body. Ideas become human forms. Communication occurs through a kind of unjealous, orgiastic intercourse. Communication with the incompatible is avoided through the ability of emanations and children (or the illuminated works themselves) to repulse in sublime thunders those who would not understand. His ‘Visionary forms dramatic’ are, like his works, mixed media productions, conscious of themselves, their medium, and the process of their making. In reading a Blake text, one enters a human body. This transgression exacted of readers exposes them to the dangers of this forbidden territory and entails a confrontation of the threats to identity at its edges and orifices. If the reader braves the danger then there is a chance to gain exclusive understanding. Perhaps there are two interrelated areas of knowledge cut off from human perception. No mortal can have a full view of another person’s interior, nor a full view of eternity; the borders between bodies and the borders between life and death are both bournes from which no traveller returns. Blake’s illuminated books, however, open up these territories and their secrets to imaginative exploration. His readers can see the human body exceed its present capabilities in two opposite directions, toward the hell of pain and contortion, and the heavenly beauty of flexible grace.

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The colour print Elohim Creating Adam (Figure 2.1) is a visual statement about the human body at its creation. It reveals much about Blake’s opinion of the created body and contains many of his most puzzling graphic idiosyncrasies. Striking aspects of the picture include the inattentive violence with which the Elohim pushes back Adam’s head to a painful angle. The faces seem to reflect each other but are not exactly mirror images. Similarly, the two bodies are almost horizontally symmetrical: the chests are close while the rest of their bodies curve outward. In the perfectly round semisun hidden by the action, the straight rays and shapely clouds separated by the bodies from the rugged, sloppy ground and water at the base, careful geometry and dubious mistakes, order and chaos, strangely coexist. Christopher Heppner, in Reading Blake’s Designs, lists difficulties in Blake’s depiction of these human forms (52). The Elohim’s body has no middle: his shoulders are almost directly connected to his hips, with nothing in between but the locks of his long beard and the impractical tendons which attach the shoulders to the wings. These wings, according to Heppner, are neither aerodynamic nor modelled on the wings of any flying creature. Heppner suspects that Adam has suffered a severe beating; his ankle and wrist seem broken, or ‘re-attached by a careless surgeon after an accidental amputation’ (52). Heppner argues that these apparent mistakes invite interpretation; when such features appear in the works of Blake or any artist, ‘we would attempt to understand just why the body showed such a dislocation’ (52). For all its deformity and pain, Elohim Creating Adam is a powerful picture; grace accompanies this oddly violent act. The malfunctioning wings are beautifully patterned. The muscles and bones are indicated with loving delicacy, though incorrect, suggesting a passion for the human form, while its creation is depicted as a cosmic tragedy. Anne Mellor perceives a love-hate relationship with the body pervading Blake’s work, particularly in the Tate Gallery colour prints, of which Elohim Creating Adam is one. She writes that this series ‘reflects Blake’s philosophical condemnation of the human form. But this very condemnation is presented in visual terms that glorify the 25 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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Graphic Bodies

William Blake and the Body

Figure 2.1 William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam.

human form: the figures in the Tate Gallery series are uniformly large, muscular and heroic’ (Divine 103). Beyond the Tate prints, Mellor notices that Blake’s designs generally ‘are composed almost without exception around a distinctly outlined human figure’. She sees Jerusalem as a representative example of this and claims, ‘The visual world of Jerusalem, then, is the human form: here the human body creates its own pictorial space, its own compositional relationships’ (Divine 286–7). If Blake’s illuminated books are human forms, they are also organized around the human form at once despised and glorified, and made so as to show this full spectrum of bodily existence. Though Heppner seeks meaning in dislocation beyond the guess that Adam was beaten, this seemingly reductive interpretation has significance. When one falls into the mortal body, one gets hurt. Through portraying the vicissitudes of the flesh in a way so extreme it seems a mistake, yet imbuing broken bodies with elegance in composition and detail, Blake simultaneously depicts the suffering which comes, inescapably, with mortal life, and

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the connection of the mortal body to the ideal Human Form Divine. Blake’s illuminated books and artworks are populated by contorted figures in pain, and figures endowed with the ability to fly. Both exceed the possibilities of the mortal human frame, defying the limitations of movement imposed by bone and sinew, and defying the imprisoning weight imposed by gravity (and winglessness, often remedied by Blake). Janet Warner catalogues the recurring postures of Blake’s figures and, though she defines them as having largely positive or negative connotations (‘Figures of Despair’ and ‘Figures of Energy,’ for example), she recognizes that these archetypes are doubleedged. The outstretched arms, named the figure of Humanity Divine, can, in the variation of arms stretched forward seen in Elohim Creating Adam, ‘signify casting a spell or creating an error or a self-image’. Conversely, ‘the regenerative aspect of the symbol is blessing’ (105). Ambiguity, which Warner finds in the meaning of postures, and Mellor finds in the attitude to the body itself, is as central to Blake’s art as the human form which embodies it. Michelangelo, one of Blake’s heroes, was associated by writers on art such as Giorgio Vasari and Joshua Reynolds, with contortion, passion and wildness. Vasari, according to Heppner, was highly influential in forming popular opinion about Michelangelo despite the fact that his writings were not available in an English edition until 1850; William Aglionby’s Painting Illustrated in Three Diallogues . . . Together with the Lives of the Most Eminent Painters (London 1685) contained much of Vasari’s work. In that book, Heppner finds this comment by Vasari on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: he chose that Subject as the hardest to succeed in since it consists in showing the true proportions of the hardest of Subjects; which is, the Humane Body Naked. and that in the most difficult Aptitudes [sic], with the strongest affections and passions in the World, full of the greatest variety imaginable. In all which he has showed himself to be the greatest master in the World. (in Heppner 22) Michelangelo concentrates on what Aglionby calls ‘the most difficult things of the Art, in the contortions of Members, and Convulsions of the Muscles, Contractions of the Nerves, &c.’ (Heppner 23). Reynolds’ emphasis when discussing Michelangelo’s style is that it is not only difficult, but dangerous: That Michael Angelo was capricious in his inventions, cannot be denied; and this may make some circumspection necessary in studying his works; for though they appear to become him, an imitation of them is always dangerous, and will prove sometimes ridiculous. ‘Within that circle none durst walk but he’. To me, I confess, his caprice does not lower the esti-

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Reynolds goes on to say that if these are faults, they are the faults of a high and independent mind. He also cautions that young artists may be disappointed to find that they, at first sight, have no liking for Michelangelo, and that his style might appear ‘wild, mysterious and above [one’s] comprehension’ (277). Though Reynolds famously ends his Discourses on the cadence of Michelangelo’s name, he has had to do much qualifying to arrive at that paean. Blake mocks Reynolds’ conclusion by comparing it to a hypocritical deathbed confession (E 512). To Reynolds’ opinion on the expression of passion, expressed earlier in the Discourses, that ‘to preserve the most perfect beauty in its most perfect state, you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces’ (78, original italics), Blake retorts, ‘What Nonsense. Passion & Expression is Beauty Itself – The Face that is Incapable of Passion & Expression is Deformity Itself’ (E 653). It would seem that Blake admires Michelangelo for those characteristics in which Reynolds finds the master narrowly avoiding catastrophe: skill and perhaps some restraint (or circumscription) allow him to walk in that exclusive circle. Blake not only imitates but exaggerates those qualities in Michelangelo considered extreme and inimitable: the contortion and passion of his powerful figures (see Heppner 22–3). Blake’s different view of Michelangelo may be due to seeing not originals but engravings, which cannot exactly replicate the softness of drawings and paintings. In engraving, shading must be expressed through pattern: hatching or dotting. Difference in medium makes musculature more definite in an engraving than in the original work.1 Antony Blunt suggests that Blake, drawing upon Ghisi’s engraving of Michelangelo’s Abias for his Newton, ‘altered the pose but preserved, and indeed almost caricatured, that sharp definition of muscles which in Ghisi’s engraving is already much more emphatic than in Michelangelo’s original’ (35). Blake was an engraver looking at engravings. Since Blake had experience of working from others’ designs, he would be familiar with the necessary variations which ‘harden’ engravings in comparison to originals; from this he could formulate at least a general idea of how the originals might differ. Yet, since engraving is Blake’s medium, and he highly values the definite line, perhaps this hardness is not something he would desire to transcend in pursuit of a softly pencilled original. Engraved reproductions show how Michelangelo’s figures look in a different medium; rather, for Blake, not having seen the originals to compare, they show Michelangelo works as engravings. Rather than apologizing for the unfortunately exaggerated muscles, Blake took advantage of this necessity. Blake’s method of relief etching used in the illuminated books exaggerates the definiteness and thickness of lines; intaglio’s

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mation of his genius, even though it is sometimes, I acknowledge, carried to the extreme. (276)

incised lines can afford to be thinner because there is no danger of their collapsing. If Blake wished to make his representations of muscles more subtle, he could have done so, avoiding the hardness of printed lines by drawing or painting in musculature at a later stage. Blake did not make this choice: the musculature is part of the copper-plate design. Watercolour and pen and ink are often used to emphasize the musculature. A good example is America, plate 12. The figure in flames, in the monochrome copy H chosen for the Blake Trust reproduction series, has strong musculature which is created on the plate through line, hatching and thick dark spaces. In a colour version, copy O (Supplementary Illustration 8), the print colour is orange, which makes it easy to differentiate the black pen and ink embellishments which accentuate muscle lines, particularly on the limbs. Watercolour shading in red and yellow heightens the muscle shapes even further. The drawing of muscle-lines on the copper plate – erasure or alteration of which would require gouging – suggests that Blake considered these heavy muscles as intrinsic to his figures, part of their initial being. The title page of Milton is a striking instance of this as well, and shows that even when Blake used a different engraving technique – white line here rather than relief etching – musculature remained a priority. John Harvey observes that Blake’s figures seem to be ‘all muscle, as if they had no fatty tissue anywhere, and one layer of skin too few’. Yet, he asks, ‘is Blake, or is he not, interested in muscles? He is not interested enough to get them right’ (134–5). If Blake imitates Michelangelo’s expression of passion and wildness through muscular contortion, why does he not also strive to imitate that artist’s impressive skill at depicting difficult postures correctly? Harvey suggests an answer: Blake ‘seems more interested in [muscles] as pattern; and to some extent as pattern that suggests movement, tension, and so on, even if the precise mechanics are wrong’ (134–5). Engraving relies on pattern more than drawing or painting, so to give priority to pattern reflects the priorities of his own medium, as well as the fact that he experienced Michelangelo and other masters only through engraving. For Heppner, the suggestion of movement and tension is not just fascination with pattern: he claims Blake is ready ‘to short-circuit anatomical precision in favour of a kind of emotional hyperbole’; Heppner sees this as ‘an early form of expressionism’ (54). It seems to be a question of what Blake valued: for Harvey, art more than nature, and for Heppner, expression more than exactitude. Do these assumptions stand up to Blake’s own formulations of his art theory? Furthermore, does Blake’s practice chime with his own theory? It does not seem that, theoretically, Blake throws out close observation in favour of expression. In fact, he repeatedly asserts in his annotations to Reynolds the importance of ‘Singular & Particular Detail’ as ‘the Foundation of the Sublime’; not only that, but ‘All Knowledge is Particular’ (E 648). In Jerusalem, Blake claims, ‘he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect Whole /

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Must see it in its Minute Particulars’ (91:20–1). However, both Harvey and Heppner find it difficult to reconcile Blake’s insistence on attention to minute particulars with his apparent carelessness in anatomy (Harvey 139, Heppner 53–4, 220). Additionally, it does not seem that Blake would recommend looking only to art and not to nature for examples to emulate. Blake writes, in opposition to Reynolds, who in Discourse II discourages too much copying, ‘no one can ever Design till he has learnd the Language of Art by making many Finishd Copies both of Nature & Art & of whatever comes in his way from Earliest Childhood’ (E 645). He also says that ‘Servile Copying is the Great Merit of Copying’ (E 645). However, the servility of Blake’s own copies is questionable: Jenijoy La Belle finds crucial changes in Blake’s copies of Michelangelo (19). Perhaps Blake is simply not practicing what he preaches. A possible reason for these inconsistencies lies in other comments on Reynolds’ second discourse. Blake claims, ‘Every Eye Sees differently As the Eye – Such the Object’ (E 645). If that is true, then even servile copying is bound to involve changes due to the ‘biological’ fact that the copier has eyes different from the artist’s. The viewer’s eyes are different again. The artwork or natural form that Blake copies will look different to every different person. Defending this attitude to perception, Blake famously comments, ‘What it will be Questiond When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty’ (E 565–6). Apparently, no one in the dialogue sees the real thing. The sun is not a disk but a sphere, and it is compared either to money or to angels rather than simply being itself. Such rampant metaphorization is worrying because it implies solipsism and an isolation of each perceiver from all others. This exchange on the sun is an example of a double standard Stephen D. Cox finds in Blake when it comes to solipsism: he opposes it ‘when it is the product of rationalistic “reflection” but not when it is the product of imaginative “vision” ’ (139). The difference between these two kinds is that ‘reflection’ turns inward and thus does result in isolation, whereas in art-creating ‘vision,’ communication is the object. Of course, the work of art viewed by others will be a different work of art for each eye, but in such a case is solipsism necessarily bad? There is the possibility of misunderstanding, or ignoring the artwork, but there is also the possibility of each viewer making the work his or her own in a meaningful way, as Blake makes Michelangelo and Milton his own in an exponential growth of creativity. Blake was unable to see Michelangelo’s originals, in a kind of artistic solipsism in which all is only a reflection of his own medium, but this resulted not in isolation from the master but inspiration by him. Because Blake values ‘Vision’ so much, it cannot be said that close observation – attention to minute particulars – is not precious to him. Cox encapsulates Blake’s attitude to sense data by arguing that Blake is ‘revising a form of empiricism into a form of mysticism’ (131). This is well exemplified by

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There Is No Natural Religion, in the first part of which Blake puts forth empirical assumptions such as ‘Man cannot naturally Perceive, but through his natural or bodily organs’ (a3), the key word being ‘natural’. The second part does not so much contradict such premises as extrapolate them beyond nature. ‘Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception, he perceives more than sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover’ (b3). The guinea and the heavenly host are alike not actually seen by the eye, even through magnification, but through some mental operation which (for the heavenly host if not the guinea) is not just a combination of previously perceived sense data. Observation is crucially important to Blake, but what is he observing? Near the end of Reynolds’ second discourse, Blake writes, ‘the Man who asserts that there is no Such Thing as Softness in Art & that every thing in Art is Definite & Determinate has not been told this by Practise but by Inspiration & Vision because Vision is Determinate & Perfect & he Copies That without Fatigue’ (E 646). Blake’s minute particulars are only accessible to vision. He applies empirical principles, such as the importance of sense perception and the tangible and definite, to (as Cox calls it) a mystical kind of perception. If everyone sees differently through different organs, then individuality must be one of the characteristics of this kind of vision. One sees not just what is there, but one’s very own idea of what is there, or what might be there, since Blake’s brand of empiricism is not bound exclusively to the natural world. This makes sense in light of Oothoon’s sexualization of perception: there is a kind of uniting and sharing, a kind of copulation, between perceiver and perceived. If Blake copies determinate and perfect vision without fatigue, perhaps when copying servilely from nature or art, he is being servile to the vision. Like Blake, Michelangelo often portrays figures in situations beyond normal human experience and perception. As Heppner points out, Blake found in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment figures ‘a useful visual schema for the representation of a body in an aerial rather than terrestrial condition, free from the bonds of gravity’.2 ‘Both artists’, writes Heppner, ‘are venturing into the far spaces of a concrete imagining of apocalyptic realms’ (35). Responding to the frontispiece Blake designed for Bürger’s Leonora, an Analytical Review writer finds that Blake has fallen into such a trap as foreseen by Reynolds for imitators of Michelangelo: ‘the painter has endeavoured to exhibit to the eye the wild conceptions of the poet, but with so little success, as to produce an effect perfectly ludicrous, instead of terrific’. An anonymous review of the same frontispiece links exposure of bodily interiors, contortion and otherworldliness in Blake’s figures. The reviewer complains of the distorted, absurd, and impossible monsters, exhibited in the frontispiece. . . . Nor can we pass by this opportunity of execrating that detestable taste, founded on the depraved fancy of one man of genius,

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The frontispiece is a good example of Blake’s contorted figures, as it contains motifs which are also seen elsewhere. There is the torturous selfembrace of one of the figures in the clouds, one of his arms wrapped around his head, like Theotormon in the Visions frontispiece, or the two-handed version of Urizen 6; there are the figures, little more than heads, who strain upwards from the rocks, recalling Jerusalem 54; there are the dancers with their raised knees in the fashion of many of Blake’s gravity-defying figures, such as the swimmer in Urizen 11. It is also a good example of contortion serving to display pain, at one end of the spectrum, and unfettered joy at the other. Dealing with death and resurrection, it depicts bodies in extremis and bodies surpassing their mortal capabilities. If the reviewer takes issue with ‘imaginary beings’ then he is naturally going to have difficulties with Blake’s methods for perceiving and depicting the human body. Both this contemporary reviewer and Harvey remark on the lack of skin on Blake’s figures, and its disconcerting effect. It would seem that it is not an artistic accident occasioned by lack of skill or excessive interest in muscles, but a matter of principle for Blake who, as we have seen, often leaves the skin out of his catalogues of sense organs. It was suggested that this omission, coupled with the occasional suggestion that the genitals are sense organs, indicates that the skin, and surfaces like that of the text, are really orifices by which to enter. Not only Blake’s works, then, but also the bodies they depict, are meant to be entered; their insides are meant to be visible, not made impenetrable by layers of skin. If skinlessness helps Blake portray human beings who go beyond present, mortal capabilities in that they can be fully perceived by others, it also lets him show bodies excessively vulnerable, painfully raw and exposed. Blake’s de-emphasis of skin and accentuation of muscle, blood and fibre recall anatomical art. Barbara Stafford, in her book Body Criticism, emphasizes that engraving was an appropriate medium for anatomy illustrations. ‘There was an intimate connection . . . between the etching process and the exploration of hidden physical or material topographies. Important, too, was the entire panoply of probing instruments, chemicals, heat and smoke, revealing and concealing grounds’ (70). Much anatomical art in Blake’s time was engraved. K.B. Roberts and J.D.W. Tomlinson, in their study of anatomical art entitled The Fabric of the Body, attest that ‘by 1600, and then for two hundred years, copper plate engraving was the predominant medium for printing anatomical figures’ (620).3 Stafford envisions the etched lines in intaglio printing as empty veins to be filled with bloodlike ink (55). She argues that for Blake the vein-like ‘traces’ of the engraved plate were ‘liter-

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which substitutes deformity and extravagance for force of expression, and draws men and women without skins, with their joints all dislocated; or imaginary beings, which neither can nor ought to exist. (in Bentley, Critical Heritage 86–7)

ally synonymous with art as energetic execution [and] symbolized the artist’s ability to realize, or imbue with life, whatever he conceived’ (55), and she calls up Blake’s boast, ‘I defy any Man to Cut Cleaner Strokes than I do or rougher when I please’ (PA E 582). Blake was aware of the violence of his process, and the closeness of creation (especially of a solid, heavy and final copper plate) to death; or murder, since it is an intentional act of the artist. Stafford’s language of ‘execution’ and Blake’s own ‘cleaner strokes’ evoke the clean execution of the guillotine. Blake’s illuminated books are done in relief etching, his own invention inspired by a vision of his deceased brother. The lines in intaglio, the veins to be filled with blood/ink, are nestled in the skinlike plate. In relief engraving the lines/veins are cross-sections, exposed and open, right on the surface. Relief engraving requires more corrosion, more surface to be excised because not the thin lines but the surrounding negative space is eaten away. Intaglio covers the plate with ground to protect its surface, while relief protects only the lines. Relief printing is thus, even more than intaglio, like skinning an anatomical subject to reveal the systems that lie beneath. Deanna Petherbridge, in ‘Art and Anatomy: the Meeting of Text and Image’, emphasizes that anatomical art reveals what is hidden: ‘hidden, in the sense that the interior of the body is concealed from sight, and could only be explored until recently by invasive or even violent acts against the living or dead body . . . these acts have at all times and in all cultures constituted a taboo’ (7). Such drawings are also hidden in the artistic process. ‘For artists, drawing human and animal anatomy has either been part of academic study or a preparation for more finished works’ (7). Looking at anatomical drawings can be an invasive act against the artist’s secret body of work. Blake, however, encourages such acts of violence. His illuminated books strive to reveal rather than conceal the process, the human effort (both physical and mental) which created them. Returning to Blake’s description of his engraving process in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (14:11–16) from this new perspective, one can see that it is given in violent terms explicitly connected with the body. He uses ‘corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal’: this is a kill-or-cure method which promises to treat the ailing body of the text by skinning it with a ‘medicinal’ acid treatment. In promising to expunge the notion that there is a body distinct from the soul, it is as though Blake hopes to reveal the subtle knot which binds the two; or, to go so deep beneath the surface as to find the eternal body beneath the material one. This is an anatomization performed with engraving tools. Since the design accompanying this passage can personify the process, the upper figure representing the forces of corrosion acting on the body of the plate, the plate being (en)graved is placed in the position of a corpse undergoing the violence of anatomization. Revealing the true form of man is a devilish goal because it involves penetrating the sacred temple of God, the human body.

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Blake did not produce anatomical drawings as a commercial engraver, though he was associated with James Basire, and Joseph Johnson, both of whom dealt with medical publications.4 The closest Blake came was his work for James Earle’s Practical Observations on the Operation for the Stone. The plates in this book portray urinary tract stones, and the tools used to extricate them. These tools could be compared to engraving tools: they are long and thin, with an elongated pen-like slice taken from the end, and they are used for scraping unwanted material away.5 Blake engraved plates for two other medical books, John Brown’s Elements of Medicine and Thomas Henry’s Memoirs of Albert de Haller, but they were portraits of the physicians, and the books contained no other plates (Essick, Commercial 33–4). Blake’s encounter with the role of anatomy in art is most easily traced in his association with the Royal Academy. David Bindman writes, ‘It is difficult to penetrate the obscurity of Blake’s apprentice days, but with his entry into the Royal Academy in 1779 he emerges more clearly; he now became acquainted with more readily identifiable artistic figures and we begin to discern something like a Blake circle’ (Artist 19). In this circle of people whom Blake either knew personally (Barry, Flaxman, Fuseli) or was influenced by, positively or negatively (Reynolds, Hogarth), there were many whose work shows an interest in anatomy. William Hogarth’s Stages of Cruelty culminates in the depiction of an executed criminal’s dissection for the advancement of scientific and artistic knowledge (Paulson plate 190a). Flaxman made muscular and skeletal studies which were posthumously published in a book for the use of artists.6 George Stubbs was an engraver who produced comparative anatomical drawings of animals as well as humans.7 He was patronized by John and William Hunter who were dominant forces in the scientific study of anatomy, and whose interests crossed over into the arts. Robert Knox, writing in the 1850s about Great Artists and Great Anatomists, named the British academic painters of Blake’s time the ‘Anatomical School’ (in Kemp 25). Even James Barry, whose stylized portrayals of the human form recall Blake’s, especially in the similarity of his King Lear to Blake’s Urizen (Hagstrum, Poet 64–5), also created works which represent the body with accurate anatomical knowledge and even imitation of the form of anatomical drawings (Kemp 25). Henry Fuseli’s work shares so many elements with Blake’s, especially in depiction of the body, that critics find it difficult to decide who influenced whom; Eudo Mason coins the engaging phrase ‘emancipated anatomy’ to describe the incorrect but expressive depiction of the body found in the works of both Fuseli and Blake (Mason 49–50, 52). Despite such an apparently tenuous relationship to anatomy, Fuseli, unlike Blake, practised dissection (Kreiter 115). A strong anatomical influence on Blake, which occurred early enough to influence his manner of portraying the human body, was his acquaintance with the Hunters. John Hunter appears, with his name scored out and changed to ‘Jack Tearguts’, in An Island in the Moon (E 454). Carmen Kreiter’s

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essay, ‘William Blake and Evolution’, argues that the imagery of The First Book of Urizen was influenced by John Hunter’s proto-evolutionary theories of comparative anatomy. Erdman points out that John Hunter’s house, where his famous comparative anatomy museum was located, was not far from Blake’s residence at the time (nor was it far from Hogarth’s and Reynolds’ houses) (Prophet 101–2). Both John and William Hunter occasionally enlisted the assistance of Basire, Blake’s engraving master until 1779 (Kreiter 113). William Hunter was Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy from 1768 to 1783 (Hutchison 235); Blake joined in 1779.8 Hunter’s influence there is shown to be extensive in Martin Kemp’s study, Dr. William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts. Two paintings by Johann Zoffany made at the time show William Hunter ‘performing his statutory duties’ as Professor of Anatomy, ‘demonstrating the muscles of the human body to a mixed audience of students and Academicians’ (Kemp 13). As a student of the Royal Academy, Blake probably would have attended some of the lectures and demonstrations offered. A note found by Kemp in the Academy’s council minutes gives the date and time for Hunter’s lecture on the skeleton, but as for ‘the other lectures on the muscles’, they are ‘to be at such times as a body can be procured from the sheriffs to whom he recommended that application should be made’ (18). Zoffany’s paintings show that Hunter did not always use recently dead, real cadavers for his demonstrations. He also used écorchés: models of skinned human bodies showing the muscles, for the use of artists. Ecorchés are often realistically coloured with a reddish tinge;9 Blake’s colouring of skin, as well as his muscle emphasis, strongly recall the appearance of écorchés. Hunter was interested in perfecting techniques of making casts from real skinned bodies (Kemp 16). Kemp finds evidence that more than one écorché in use at the Royal Academy in Blake’s time was made from a real body. In one case, William Hunter’s brother John is known to have assisted with the preparation of the corpse (Kemp 16). The corpses were often those of criminals. An interesting example is ‘Smugglerius’, an écorché still at the Royal Academy (Figure 2.2). Kemp finds a letter which describes its making in 1775, written by a man who has been to see two men hanged and afterwards witness the partial dissection of one of them at Surgeon’s Hall. The muscular development of the second man was so remarkable that [William] Hunter declined to dissect the body saying that it was worth preserving. It was therefore carried to the Academy Schools, where Carlini the sculptor undertook to make a cast from it. The body, which was that of a smuggler, was placed in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator, and Carlini’s cast, known always to the students as ‘Smugglerius’ remained in the schools for many years afterwards. (in Kemp 17)

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Figure 2.2 W. Pink after Agostino Carlini, Smugglerius.

Petherbridge describes the event as a ‘gruesome exercise’: ‘a flayed cadaver of a hanged criminal admired by William Hunter was forced into the posture of the Dying Gladiator and cast in plaster’ (72). The perversity of taking and skinning a victim of ‘Tyburn’s fatal tree’ ( J 12:26) is increased by pushing him, despite some rigor mortis, into the ‘mathematic form’ (On Virgil 35) of an ancient sculpture (a gladiator no less, another victim of socially imposed violence), then moulding his mutilated mortal body for the edification of nature-copying artists. Though William Hunter was not an artist, he took an active interest in all aspects of the Royal Academy; this included propounding his own ideas on art as well as anatomy in his lectures (Kemp 14). Considering Nature to be the best of all artists, Hunter believed that to imitate nature as faithfully and minutely as possible was the only way to achieve the same compelling, empathic response as nature elicits. The artist must work from knowledge rather than intuition because the slightest deviation from nature, though seemingly undetectable, will alter the combination of elements which affect the viewer. The viewer’s response is intuitive, but the artist cannot afford to be intuitive in creating an effective illusion (Kemp 18–19). One might think of anatomical art as constrained to strict imitation of nature, but this is not

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always the case. In the Preface to his Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, Hunter insists that ‘anatomical figures are made in two very different ways; one is the simple portrait, in which the object is represented exactly as it is seen; the other is a representation of the object under such circumstances as were not actually seen, but conceived in the imagination’.10 L.J. Jordanova, in an essay on Hunter’s Gravid Uterus, questions the possibility of representing anything ‘exactly as it was seen’. She identifies in Hunter’s book ‘an attempt to create the illusion that there need be no mediations between nature and the human mind’ (393–4). There was opposition to Hunter’s extreme naturalism. Reynolds believes that an excess of expression or action produces a distortion; how people naturally appear at these extremes is not beautiful and must be altered in artistic depictions. Hunter disagrees: Distortions of the face and limbs it will be said express an inferior character; and when the muscles and the tendons are made to start out from their places by strong action, they produce an ugly form and what artists call bad drawing. There is certainly much elegance and beauty and grace and dignity in Nature, which should be introduced upon all fit occasions; but there is besides animation, spirit, fire, force and violence, which make a considerable part of the most interesting scenes. (in Kemp 43) One of Blake’s comments on Reynolds makes a similar assertion: ‘Violent Passions Emit the Real Good & Perfect Tones’ (E 660). It seems Blake and Hunter have concerns in common. Hunter insists on attention to minute particulars while he names ‘spirit, fire, force and violence’ among the best of artistic qualities. However, as Kemp explains, Hunter cautions that in portraying these ‘vital components of art’ one should never go beyond a certain point where things become ‘disagreeable to a man of sensibility’ (Kemp 21). On the contrary, Blake explodes against Reynolds’ advice that ‘A picture should please at first sight’: ‘Please! Whom?’ asks Blake. ‘Some Men Cannot See a Picture except in a Dark Corner’ (E 660). Blake detects a problem in the viewer’s sensibility, his or her aptitude to be affected by a work of art, rather than admitting that restrictions should be placed on art: art does not have to please. It seems strange that the commissioner of such works as Smugglerius and Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, which are both extremely disturbing and fascinating, should place any limitations on art for the sake of sensibility. Martin Kemp supposes that Reynolds’ third discourse may have been intended ‘to shoot down Hunter’s creed’ (22). To counter the ideas of strict imitation of nature Hunter advocated to Academy students and members, Reynolds cautioned that ideal beauty could not be found in any individual in nature, but had to be abstracted.

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The power of discovering what is deformed in nature, or in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience; and the whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind . . . [the artist’s] eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. (44) Anatomical illustration arising from imagination rather than observation Hunter associates with the generalizing impulse, what he calls ‘A figure of fancy, made up perhaps from a variety of studies after NATURE, may exhibit in one view, what could only be seen in several objects; and it admits of a better arrangement, of abridgement, and of greater precision’. One reason for an anatomical artist to conceive figures in the imagination was practical: Hunter explains that ‘much time must be lost, and the parts must be considerably injured by long exposure to the air before the painter’. The problem worsens ‘if the work be conducted by an anatomist who will not allow the artist to paint from memory or imagination, but only from immediate observation’. Imagination could supplement parts rotted by time, but Hunter argues that this ‘only describes, or gives an idea’ while accurate representation ‘shews the object, or gives perception . . . it represents what was actually seen, it carries the mark of truth, and becomes almost as infallible as the object itself’. The ‘infallible’ object is a decaying body; the project Hunter gave his artist ( Jan van Riemsdyck) was doomed by putrefaction. Jordanova insists that the illustrations in the Gravid Uterus do not strictly follow the prescriptions set out by Hunter himself, because of decay. They ‘did not reflect nature but fabricated it. For example, the bodies from which the pictures were drawn were dead, and had often been so for a long time. The plates strive to give an impression of vitality, as in the way the umbilical cord seems to gleam as if it were still wet’ ( Jordanova 394). The plates are studies of the origin of life, which could only be studied and depicted in death. Naturalism, here, means drawing a subject which is quickly transforming into putridity, yet attempting to capture its fleeting undecayed state. Hunter admits to some difficulties in accurate portrayal: ‘The figure which is a close representation of nature, and which is furnished from a view of one subject, will often be, unavoidably, somewhat indistinct or defective in some parts.’ Anatomical practices, such as injection with wax, alter the appearance of the innards to make invisible vessels visible, as Hunter explains in his preface ( Jordanova 394). The word ‘defective’ echoes the

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argument with Reynolds about ideal forms, and connects an artistic problem with a scientific problem. Anatomical knowledge comes from generalizations made from a variety of examples, because not every human interior is the same. In The Body Emblazoned, a study of Renaissance anatomical art, Jonathan Sawday refers to a twentieth-century medical examiner’s experience: ‘individuality stamps its mark on every part of the anatomy: no two hearts are entirely alike; the shapes of livers are never quite the same; branching vessels always ramify in a unique way’.11 Where is the line between individual variation and deformity? Commenting on the introduction to Reynolds’ Discourses, Blake declares: ‘To Generalize is to be an Idiot’ (E 641). His annotations to Discourse III provide more specific rebuttals of Reynolds. While Reynolds uses pejorative language to describe unique characteristics, such as calling ‘deformed’ what is ‘particular and uncommon’, and refers to ‘the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures’, Blake points out that ‘One Central Form Composed of all other Forms being Granted it does not therefore follow that all other Forms are Deformity’ (E 648). Blake tentatively grants the Platonic idea of a central form, but the objection he makes to it suggests that he may be thinking of a central form with more Christian characteristics. The body of Christ, which is supposed to contain all believers (similarly to the body of the state with the ruler as the head, and the body of Albion which encompasses all of England’s inhabitants and Blake’s mythological figures), is a metaphor which allows unity and diversity to coexist. In fact, Blake explicitly connects the body of Christ metaphor to art in his Laocoön, contending ‘the Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself The Divine Body Jesus we are his Members It manifests itself in his Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vision)’ (41–4). As ‘Members’, the constituent parts are not thought of as dissolving into the abstract form which, as Reynolds suggests, is free of all singularities or deformities. Rather, the parts, like the parts of a body, participate in the whole; their individual characteristics are not subsumed but valued, even necessary, to the function of the whole. Reynolds’ generalizing tendencies run counter to the beauties of individuality. Reynolds acknowledges that There is, likewise, a kind of symmetry, or proportion, which may properly be said to belong to deformity. A figure lean or corpulent, tall or short, though deviating from beauty, may still have a certain union of the various parts, which may contribute to make them on the whole not unpleasing. (47) Blake retorts, ‘The Symmetry of Deformity is a Pretty Foolery Can any Man who Thinks Talk so? Leanness or Fatness is not Deformity. but Reynolds thought Character Itself Extravagance & Deformity’ (E 648). Blake perceives

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that on Reynolds’ terms, everything that is not abstract is deformed. In reaction, Blake does not champion individual nature. Reynolds’ criticism of Hunter’s excessive naturalism is not a great improvement, from a Blakean point of view. Reynolds does not replace nature as the central preoccupation of the artist, but adds generalization to nature. Blake opposes both Reynolds and Hunter in two other comments on Discourse III. Against each of these sentences Blake has written ‘A Lie’ (E 647): ‘This great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the heavens, but upon the earth. They are about us, and upon every side of us. But the power of discovering what is deformed in nature, or in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience’ (44). Reynolds tries to transcend nature’s imperfections through abstraction (the artist is encouraged to ‘get above all singular forms’), yet discourages the artist from seeking beauty in the heavens. In effect, beauty and perfection may be sought on earth, but not found there, nor in the heavens, but rather in the realm of the abstract. The earth only provides approximations from which to assemble an ideal. Blake sidesteps both nature and abstraction when he explains his view: ‘All Forms are Perfect in the Poets Mind. but these are not Abstracted nor Compounded from Nature but are from Imagination’ (E 648). The abstraction and compounding the empirical mind applies to sense data are not necessary here; the forms are from Imagination, perceived perhaps through the operation of a Vision in which each eye sees differently, copulating with the object. Blake manages to celebrate unique traits without having to find them in nature, through his ‘mystical empiricism’ which applies the value of the specific, observable thing to the objects of imaginative perception. Blake asserts in A Descriptive Catalogue that A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not imagine at all. (E 541) Blake applies the amorphousness the ‘modern philosophy’ associates with intangible mental conceptions to the material world. In his Public Address, Blake claims that exact copying of nature is a doomed task. Men think they can Copy Nature as Correctly as I copy Imagination this they will find Impossible. & all the Copies or Pretended Copiers of Nature from Rembrat to Reynolds Prove that Nature becomes [tame] to its Victim nothing but Blots & Blurs. Why are Copiers of Nature Incorrect while Copiers of Imagination are Correct this is manifest to all. (E 574–5)

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Nature relegates its copiers to constant production of blots and blurs, which is only natural, considering the indistinctness of non-visionary reality. Even Hunter admits that indistinctness is often unavoidable in close representations of nature. For Blake, the superior reality of imagination makes it the only ‘correct’ thing to copy. Blake’s difficulties in being graphically true to his visions of the human body are hinted in another passage from A Descriptive Catalogue. Blake describes a painting (now lost) entitled The Ancient Britons: The flush of health in flesh, exposed to the open air, nourished by the spirits of forests and floods, in that ancient happy period, which history has recorded, cannot be like the sickly daubs of Titian or Rubens. Where will the copier of nature, as it now is, find a civilized man, who has been accustomed to go naked. Imagination only, can furnish us with colouring appropriate, such as is found in the Frescos of Rafael and Michael Angelo: the disposition of forms always directs colouring in works of true art. As to a modern Man stripped from his load of cloathing, he is like a dead corpse. Hence Rubens, Titian, Correggio, and all of that class, are like leather and chalk; their men are like leather, and their women like chalk, for the disposition of their forms will not admit of grand colouring; in Mr. B’s Britons, the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs; he defies competition in colouring. (E 545) Robert Hunt, reviewing Blake’s exhibition, precedes a full quotation of this paragraph with the contention that ‘the colouring of the flesh is exactly like hung beef’ (in Bentley, Blake Records 217). Hunt’s scornful comment emphasizes Blake’s interior preoccupations, and corroborates the comparison of Blake’s bodies to écorchés and anatomical drawings. Jordanova finds that the illustrations in Hunter’s Gravid Uterus resemble meat, in the way thighs are sliced (plates IV and VI), and in the glistening freshness of the dead flesh (387–8). If each eye sees differently, then some might take their metaphors from material existence, seeing the dead meat inside the skinned body, while others might use imaginative existence as a frame of reference, and perceive a lost ideal in the body’s living interior. Blake may be echoing a paragraph from Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s On the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (translated by Fuseli) on a different ancient ideal of fleshly beauty. Winckelmann laments that ‘the most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules’ (62). Winckelmann, like Blake, attributes this beauty to ‘accustomed’ nakedness and exposure to natural surroundings. ‘The forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by the influence of the mildest and purest sky, became perfectly elegant by their early exercises.’ Winckelmann imagines ‘a Spartan youth,

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sprung from heroes, undistorted by swaddling-cloths; whose bed, from his seventh year, was the earth’ (62). Emphasis is placed on the Spartans’ strict avoidance of fat, to preserve a ‘great and manly contour’ (Winckelmann 62), recalling the bold musculature of Blake’s figures. Winckelmann explains that the arena for observing these ideal Greek bodies was the gymnasia which ‘were the schools of art’ where ‘beautiful nakedness appeared with such a liveliness of expression, such truth and variety of situations, such a noble air of the body, as it would be ridiculous to look for in any hired model of our academies’ (64). As in Blake there is an emphasis on ‘liveliness’ which Winckelmann also turns into an issue of physiognomy: Truth springs from the feelings of the heart. What shadow of it therefore can the modern artist hope for, by relying upon a vile model, whose soul is either too base to feel, or too stupid to express the passions, the sentiment his object claims? unhappy he! if experience and fancy fail him. (64) For Blake, the exterior should reflect the interior more literally than this: not just passion and sentiment, but the very lifeblood should be seen in the limbs. For Blake and Winckelmann, this insight into emotions or the physical evidence of life, belongs to a disappeared ancient ideal. Now, the imagination or fancy must provide the ‘x-ray vision’ which was ordinary in the golden age.12 The modern man is rather like the ‘caverned man’ Blake complains of in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: ‘For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern’ (14:20–1). He has also closed himself off from ‘the open air’ by donning clothing, and from ‘the spirits of forests and floods’. The empirical man cannot be penetrated by things, like spirits, which have no empirical existence. John Locke, when he imagines expanded perception, concentrates on the pain that would be caused by intense sensory input, and the isolation that would result from perceiving differently from all others (II.xxiii.12). For Blake, it is quite the opposite. The narrow perceptions of the modern caverned man cause a drab and deathlike isolation from the outside world and from others, while the transparency and sensual penetrability of the ancient Briton are associated with vibrant life and open accessibility to nature and the perception of fellow humans. The vulnerability in Locke’s scheme does not apply to the ancient Briton who embodies the irretrievable ideal of being at once civilized and naked. His civilization apparently does not come at the cost of protecting himself by closing, or clothing, himself from the dangers of cruel nature or barbaric humans. The ancient Briton, then, is an emblem of transgression: he defies bodily borders by being transparent, and straddles one of those social lines symbolized by bodily borders, being both civilized and naked. Such transgression, as Mary Douglas recognizes, is both

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powerful and dangerous. Locke concentrates on the danger, while Blake, as in the penetrable bodies of his illuminated books, again avails himself of the power. The painting, like the ideal it depicts, is lost, but present to the imagination through Blake’s description. Blake’s account of The Ancient Britons places much importance on clothing, or lack of it. The ideal is civilized nakedness, and clothing is a ‘load’. What Blake disapproves of in the modern man’s garments is their ability to change the body: to turn it opaque. Morton D. Paley, in ‘The Figure of the Garment in The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem’, argues that ‘the garment is in itself an ambiguous symbol. It can be put on or taken off; or it can become confused with one’s real self’ (127). To add to the confusion, the body itself can be a garment, and also an ambiguous one: ‘Potentially redemptive, the garment of flesh can yet be imprisoning and destructive’ (Paley 127). An example Paley gives, from The Four Zoas, of the redemptive function of the woven body is ‘ “Luvahs robes of blood”, emblematic of the Incarnation . . . no doubt derived from the scarlet robe which Jesus was forced to wear while he was mocked and beaten’ (122). They are also related to the transparent-skinned bodies of the Ancient Britons, robes of blood in that their blood is seen to circulate in their limbs. Blake insists in his Reynolds annotations that drapery should be ‘formed alone by the Shape of the Naked’ (E 650).13 It is possible for a garment, and for the body itself as garment, to show forth the true human form, instead of hiding or distorting it. Such distortion, for Blake, is where deformity comes in, while for Reynolds character itself is deformity. Mocking the Venetian painters he detests, Blake attributes their non-Michelangelesque human forms to disfiguring contrivances: A Pair of Stays to mend the Shape Of crooked Humpy Woman: Put on O Venus! now thou art, Quite a Venetian Roman. (E 651) Blake could mean here that women’s bodies are crooked and humpy in Venetian paintings, or naturally. When Blake draws women, curves are minimized; their hips and breasts are not ‘humpy’. For Hogarth, according to his Analysis of Beauty, skin and fat smooth the ‘swellings’ and ‘hollows’ of the muscles which he considers ‘too bold’ and ‘too deep, for their outlines to be beautiful’ without such covering (75). The ‘elegant degree of plumpness peculiar to the skin of the softer sex . . . perfectly distinguishes them . . . even [from] a graceful man’ (81). Hogarth recognizes that there is a spectrum in both women and men between graceful and muscular. The majority of Blake’s female figures come from the body-building school, while those

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of the detested Venetian Rubens are the other, well-padded extreme. Blake’s female figures usually share the muscularity seen in many of his graphic bodies. In Jerusalem 47 and 81, the flat breasts of the female figures seem more muscular than fleshy, and the curve of the hips could be as much due to posture as to femininity. It is as though the feminine skin is a (nonVenetian) garment which shows forth the human (masculine) form beneath.14 Difficulty in determining the gender of Blake’s figures frequently results. An example is Urizen 3. The figure running in the flames has short hair. The figure’s hips are turned aside and its chest is not facing the viewer. David Worrall, editor of the Blake Trust edition, finds that the figure usually seems to be masculine. In copy C where androgyny is suggested, ‘muscular calves’ make masculinity more likely; in another version, printed as a separate plate and recently rediscovered, the runner has a small but ‘fairly pronounced female breast’ (29).15 Martin Butlin, reporting the discovery of this new version, refers to the femininity of the figure as a ‘puzzle’, because ‘up to now the figure has always been identified as a youth’, but now femininity can be ‘read into at least some of the copies of the original book of Urizen’ (‘Colour Print’ 68). In Copy D, chosen for the Blake Trust reproduction, the figure’s chest is curved as much as a masculine chest might be in such a strange position; a slight enlargement of the lines changes the figure from male to female. It is as though Blake creates figures whose genders are easily adjusted, who can (as ‘in the Resurrection’) change their ‘Sexual Garments at will’ (J 61:51). Hair is often a more reliable indication of gender in Blake than body parts. In the absence of a long beard, long hair usually indicates femininity, but hair is easily drawn in, changing a male to a female; it is also easy to suggest long hair put up, as in the running figure in Urizen. As well as showing inspiration by Winckelmann, Blake’s description of The Ancient Britons may owe something to Hogarth. Blake may have adopted, and exaggerated, some of the older engraver’s recommendations as they are set out in The Analysis of Beauty. Hogarth’s ideas on the relationship of the skin to the muscles is best described in this passage: Nature most judiciously softens these hardnesses, and plumps up these vacancies [of the musculature] with a proper supply of fat, and covers the whole with the soft, smooth, springy, and, in delicate life, almost transparent skin, which, conforming itself to the external shape of all the parts beneath, expresses to the eye the idea of its contents with the utmost delicacy of beauty and grace. The skin, therefore, thus tenderly embracing, and gently conforming itself to the varied shapes of every one of the outward muscles of the body, soften’d underneath by the fat, where, otherwise, the same hard lines and furrows would appear, as we find come on with age in the face, and with labour, in the limbs, is evidently a shell-like surface. (75)

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The skin is ‘in delicate life almost transparent’, just as the ancient Britons show ‘the flush of health in flesh’. Blake exaggerates Hogarth in that ‘the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs’. For Hogarth the skin tenderly embraces the muscles. Winckelmann uses a similar metaphor, writing about Greek statues: ‘These masterpieces never show the skin forcibly stretched, but softly embracing the firm flesh, which fills it up without any tumid expansion, and harmoniously follows its direction’ (66). The skin is in relation to ‘flesh’ here, rather than musculature, but is still ‘embracing’ the deeper form. For Blake such suggestions transform into the idea of ‘sexual garments’, and perhaps spills over into the larger idea of the female as emanation being a physical as well as psychological part of the male. As drapery should, the skin conforms to the external shape of the parts beneath (which, strangely enough, are no longer external, unless the skin is still considered detachable). Blake improves on Hogarth’s metaphor of ‘a shell-like surface’ by considering the body, and here particularly the skin, to be a garment, since Hogarth describes the shell in terms suited to fabric: ‘soft, smooth, springy, and . . . almost transparent’. While Hogarth emphasizes skin and fat softening muscle shapes, Blake in his visual art emphasizes skin clinging to the muscles and revealing their shape. Similarly, Blake emphasizes clothes clinging to the body and revealing its shape, so much so that they seem to be a part of the body, growing out of it, and failing to serve the purpose of covering it. One example is the see-through shorts added to the William and Robert figures in Milton copy C (29, 33).16 Coleridge, in his comments on Songs of Innocence and of Experience, notes as a fault ‘the ambiguity of the Drapery’ in the frontispiece to Innocence. He asks, ‘Is it a garment – or the body incised and scored out?’ (Blake Records 205). Many plates in the Songs show this tendency; in the late King’s College copy, the rich watercolour and inking only heighten this effect in the feasting figures of ‘Laughing Song’, the dancing group in ‘Nurse’s Song’ (the more remarkable for the smallness of the figures), and the couple in ‘The Little Girl Lost’, to name a few (15, 24, 34). Blake follows, to the extreme, his own dictum about drapery being formed by the ‘shape of the Naked’. Plates such as Urizen 25 show flowing garments clinging to the muscular forms, and then loosely flowing around the legs. In Jerusalem 95 this effect is exaggerated (Figure 7.1). The drapery clings to the body, yet hangs independently between the legs; it shares the colouring of the body and so seems to be a newly-grown web of skin. Nothing is allowed to be a surface, not clothing, not skin, in Blake’s art of the human interior. Exaggeration of musculature is part of his stance against the prevalent view (held by Winckelmann, Reynolds, Hunter and Hogarth) that extremes in art are displeasing. Rather than softening muscles with fat and skin, Blake draws bodies which, as Harvey writes, seem to have no fatty tissue anywhere. Anatomical art is an art of extremes. It shows what is never seen, or, when seen, is unsettling: skin folded back to reveal internal organs; systems of

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nerves and veins standing impossibly separate from other body components; babies in the womb; flayed bodies standing in landscapes. Such conventions were present in anatomical art from the Renaissance.17 While contact with the Hunters helped acquaint Blake with some intersections of art and anatomy, and with various aspects of physiology, the Hunters did not produce any general guides to anatomy, nor medical books for the use of artists. Their books focused on specific issues. Because John Hunter’s interests lay largely in comparative anatomy, many works he commissioned are of animal anatomy.18 About the human body, John Hunter wrote treatises on the blood and gunshot wounds, and on venereal disease, and William Hunter is best known for his Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. The strange births which pervade Blake’s prophecies may have been partially influenced by theories developed by the Hunters, such as their explanation of blood circulation between mother and child through the placenta. However, the majority of images in the Gravid Uterus are of babies in the womb. Blake rarely depicts such an ordinary form of gestation and birth, as S.H. Clark agrees (181). To imbibe many features of anatomical art not found in the Hunters’ books, such as flayed figures in landscapes, Blake would have had to look at additional sources. The anatomy books whose illustrations have the most in common with Blake’s visual art and poetic imagery, are those of William Cowper.19 Born in Hampshire and admitted a ‘Barber-Surgeon’ in London in 1691, Cowper was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his work reflects the emphasis on experimental science associated with that group (Roberts and Tomlinson 412, 415). As Roberts and Tomlinson find, Cowper is ‘best remembered as a plagiarist, and as the anatomist whose name has been applied to the male urethral glands’ (412). Though Cowper had artistic skills, and included some of his own drawings in an appendix to the book, he borrowed the plates for his Anatomy of Humane Bodies from an earlier publication by the Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo. The illustrations were by Gerard de Lairesse. Cowper simply wrote new text to accompany the old plates. Bidloo was enraged and vilified Cowper in writing; Cowper added an admission of his borrowings to the second edition (Roberts and Tomlinson 412–13). Lairesse’s drawings are of two varieties. In some, ‘the anatomical figures are given life – a skeleton, for example, emerges from a grave set in the midst of classical tomb architecture’; in others, the subjects are decidedly cadavers, and ‘the pins and blocks that prop up the dissected parts’ are included (Roberts and Tomlinson 311). Cowper’s Myotomia Reformata (which, unlike Anatomy of Humane Bodies, is wholly original) also combines visceral realism with classicism. Cowper claims, ‘The outlines of some of the figures are drawn after Rafael, Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Guido Reni, Mons. Le Fage; but the muscling is done after several human subjects, and not copied from any anatomical book whatever’ (in Roberts and Tomlinson 416).

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Hogarth, in The Analysis of Beauty, refers to Cowper as ‘the famous anatomist’ (72). Cowper is recommended in reference to the torsion of muscles, a feature which pervades Blake’s depictions of the human form.20 One of Cowper’s illustrations is copied by Hogarth to demonstrate muscles wrapping in a serpentine fashion around the human leg. Both of Cowper’s books, where they depict full figures, follow the convention of placing them in landscapes, or in the surroundings in which they were dissected. The presence of complete human forms (not seen in the Hunters’ publications) follows from the purpose of Cowper’s books, as indicated in their titles: one is a general guide to anatomy, the other is a guide to musculature. Roberts and Tomlinson explain, Cowper ‘thought the figures of the more superficial muscles would be of use not only to surgeons but also to “those who bend their studies to the admirable arts of sculpture and painting” – arts which Cowper had studied, and in which he was proficient’ (417). Even more than the Hunters, Cowper embodies the intersection of anatomy and art, because he produced his own drawings. However, as with the Hunters, this is no ideal marriage between science and art, from a Blakean point of view. Roberts and Tomlinson see Cowper’s valuing of ‘sense and experiment’ rather than abstraction as foreshadowing the methods of the Hunters (414). As an example of anatomical illustration which portrays the object exactly as seen, William Hunter mentions Bidloo’s work, which Cowper borrowed. Cowper complains that belief in the senses as ‘gross and ignoble’ results in shadowy knowledge rather than substantial truth (Roberts and Tomlinson 414). This starkly opposes Blake’s descriptions of feeble mortal sense organs, such as ‘The Eye of Man’ as ‘a little narrow orb, closd up & dark. / Scarcely beholding the Great Light; conversing with the ground’ ( J 49:34–5) and his assertion that imagination has a better claim than ordinary perception to perceiving the real and definite. That Cowper’s anatomical studies rely on narrow, empirical sense perception, and are caught in what Blake would call ‘Single vision & Newtons sleep’ (E 722), is implied by the presence of an essay on the physics of muscular motion (complete with mathematical diagrams) written by Henry Pemberton, editor of Newton’s Principia, in the 1724 edition of Myotomia Reformata (Roberts and Tomlinson 416). In Cowper’s Myotomia Reformata and Anatomy of Humane Bodies, some recurring images recall Blake’s themes. Throughout Myotomia Reformata, in section headpieces, are images of flayed bodies in positions of suffering, muscles strained, surrounded by craggy rocks. The contortion and muscle emphasis are shared with Blake. The surroundings suggest the caverned man, and the rock where the dying giant Albion sits ( J 15:30, 33). They also recall the muscular bodies prostrate in rugged landscapes seen in other Blake designs, such as the bound figure of America’s ‘Preludium’, and the female whose innards an eagle threatens to devour in America 15, and the languid couple of Milton 38 over whom an eagle hovers. The constraint and pun-

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ishment suggested by such designs reflect, like the caverned man, on the cramped and painful life of the mortal body. Cowper’s book, like Blake’s, takes advantage of the relationship between text and picture: fascinating initial letters in each section illustrate the subject to follow. In the initial letter A of the section ‘of the Muscles of the Penis’, a flayed body reclines; his hand grasps the crossbar of the A, and either leg curls around either leg of the letter, in a position neither graceful nor delicate (8; Figure 2.3). In the Anatomy of Humane Bodies, illustrations recalling Blake’s vegetative fibres are present throughout. Bodies growing outward into branch, vine or root-like fibres is a recurring motif in Blake’s illuminated book designs; for instance, Milton 16 portrays a horrifying half-man half-tree. The vegetable associations of bodily fibres are made explicit by Cowper who refers to veins as ‘Arboreous’ (10th Table). Not only the nerves and veins are fibrous; other organs, including parts of the reproductive system, are represented in this treelike form (45th Table; Figure 2.4). The culmination is in an illustration of the ‘Arteries injected with Wax, and free’d from the Body of an Infant Six Months Old’ (23rd Table). Cowper, from his own dissection experience, disagrees with Lairesse’s portrayal and provides his own drawing in Appendix 3 (Figure 2.5). Cowper’s confidence in his own senses is questionable. Roberts and Tomlinson do not consider Cowper’s diagram an improvement on Lairesse’s: ‘One fears that considerable artistic licence was involved in producing such a diagram from a cast’. From a medical point of view, ‘errors and misinterpretations abound’, spurring Roberts and Tomlinson to make such comments as ‘how could this not be noticed?’ (418). Cowper claims to have ‘freed’ arteries from infants and adults many times. The complex process of extricating anatomical features from the body they are entangled in, and necessary to, does not seem suitably described by the verb ‘free’. When Blake presents one figure drawing out veins from another in Jerusalem 25, the emphasis is on enclosure as the veins form a sinister canopy (Figure 2.6). In fact, the arrangement of the bodily fibres is similar to the embowering branches under which the ‘foe’ lies ‘outstretchd’ in ‘A Poison Tree’. Bloody fibres seem to grow, like shoots, from the figure in Urizen 15 (see cover illustration); the hands may press the head in unwilling pain, or it may be that this figure is forcing his or her own fibres into the open. Jerusalem 85 also portrays vegetative fibres being extracted and spread out, impossibly independent of the body they came from. A psychological and moral dimension is added to this imagery in Jerusalem’s cry to Albion, ‘Why wilt thou number every little fibre of my Soul / Spreading them out before the Sun like stalks of flax to dry?’ ( J 22:20–1). There is a cruel exactitude, whether the incisive analysis pulls out for display the fibres of the body or the fibres of the soul (which, in eighteenth century physiology, were the same). Being a scientific diagram, Cowper’s plate numbers the infant’s veins. Another anatomical feature Blake employs is the intestine. Clouds, worms, and chains of human bodies are portrayed in intestinal shapes in a number

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Figure 2.3 William Cowper, Myotomia Reformata, page 8.

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Figure 2.4 William Cowper, Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Table 45.

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Figure 2.5 William Cowper, Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Appendix 3.

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Figure 2.6 William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 25.

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of Blake designs, such as Jerusalem 24 which has intertwined bodies turn into an intestinal cloud on the right side of the plate, which then turns into the cloud or digestive organ which encloses the text (Figure 2.7). By depicting clouds which ambiguously resemble body parts, Blake visually insists on the point made in his Descriptive Catalogue: ‘A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing’ (E 541). Clouds may be not vaporous but visceral. The shape also appears in Cowper’s plates in unexpected organs. The small intestine itself can be seen in Table 40; in Table 45 Figure 3 the vas deferens has the cloudlike, tubular shape (Figure 2.4 above). Visions of the Daughters of Albion plate 6, in a variation on the designs where figures lie prostrate beneath eagles, depicts Oothoon being preyed upon, as she lies not in a jagged landscape but on an intestine-shaped cloud (Figure 2.8). The fact that a sexual organ shares this shape is particularly appropriate here, as Oothoon has called for ‘Theotormons Eagles to prey upon her flesh’ because of sexual guilt: ‘Rend away this defiled bosom that I may reflect, / The image of Theotormon on my pure transparent breast’ (5:13, 15–16). Oothoon lies on a dissected and exposed sexual organ, visually reflecting the exposure and dissection of her sexual experience. She wishes to have sexual experience without guilt, perhaps seeking that kind of perceptual penetration of the human body without pain, injustice or death, exemplified by the ancient Britons. In her distress she wishes to have her flesh rent away to become transparent, to reflect Theotormon only in a fleshless purity. Despite her continuous questioning of the empirical view of the senses, revealing its inadequacy, she seems here to pursue transparency on Theotormon’s rigorous terms rather than her own imaginative ones: by excising the flesh rather than passing through it sensually. The intestinal cloud shape has further reproductive associations: Cowper’s table 60 presents the umbilical cord in a similar form (Figure 2.9). Organs involved in both the conception and growth of the child reflect the cloud shapes found in Blake’s books; along with fibres, images of the stuff which humans are formed by and consist of, decorate the pages of the prophecies. Cowper’s Table 62 provides an affecting example of the intestinal cloud shape (Figure 2.10). ‘To show the Progress of the Umbilical Vessels towards its Navel’, Cowper found a ‘seven month female’ and cut open her belly. The ‘umbilical rope’ is suspended, tied and nailed to the wall behind the table where the child lies. Otherwise it looks like a normal baby, sleeping perhaps, lying with its head to one side and legs slightly curled up: it is not in the stiff position of a corpse. The depiction of an infant’s extracted veins, in the 23rd Table and Appendix 3, is too alien to be shocking. The parts are removed from the body; one could imagine they were not human. A recognizable infant’s form, looking almost alive and healthy, with its innards mechanically displayed, is so moving that it may elicit a physical as well as emotional reaction. ‘The Infant Joy is beautiful, but its anatomy / Horrible ghast & deadly! nought shalt thou find in it / But dark despair &

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Figure 2.7 William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 24.

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Figure 2.8 William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Plate 6.

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Figure 2.9 William Cowper, Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Table 60.

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Figure 2.10

William Cowper, Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Table 62.

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William Blake and the Body

everlasting brooding melancholy!’ ( J 22:22–4).21 Again, Blake’s anatomical imagery comments on the relationship between the body and the spirit: is it an infant, or a joy? As with the intestinal cloud and the fibres of the soul, Blake purposely uses anatomical imagery to show how the physical and spiritual intertwine. Both have forms which can be anatomized, but must the process of coming to know a body always be ‘Horrible ghast & deadly’? Though he may have attended demonstrations by the Hunters, Blake did not dissect bodies. Though he is likely to have known that Michelangelo not only drew from life but used corpses to perfect his knowledge of the human form (his friend Fuseli was aware of these facts), Blake did not imitate this aspect of Michelangelo’s art (Heppner 6). David Bindman finds that Blake had a distaste even for life drawing, and credits it to his devaluation of the mortal body (Bindman, Artist 19). Heppner elaborates, claiming that to Blake ‘life class’ was more of ‘a death class, bodies arranged in unnatural and static attitudes, moved like robots at the will of another’ (54). If this is true of drawing from life, it is certainly true of dissection, where the model must be dead. Without inventions such as x-rays and ultrasound, it is physically impossible to see the inside of a live body without breaking it open and inflicting pain. A way to circumvent these problems is found exactly where Blake locates the source of art: imagination. Blake’s method of acquainting himself with, and portraying, the live bodily interior may be akin to a recommendation made by Hogarth. In the introduction to The Analysis of Beauty, Hogarth (like Blake, obsessed with form and line) explains how best to gain intimate knowledge of a shape. Let every object under our consideration, be imagined to have its inward contents scoop’d out so nicely, as to have nothing of it left but a thin shell, exactly corresponding both in its inner and outer surface, to the shape of the object itself: and let us likewise suppose this thin shell to be made up of very fine threads, closely connected together, and equally perceptible, whether the eye is supposed to observe them from without, or within . . . the imagination will naturally enter into the vacant space within this shell, and there at once, as from a center, view the whole form within, and mark the opposite corresponding parts so strongly, as to retain the idea of the whole, and make us masters of the meaning of every view of the object, as we walk round it, and view it from without. (26–8) Hogarth advocates knowing objects from the inside, but in a way different from the invasive techniques of anatomization which, by cutting and revealing, merely render the inside a new outside. He offers a view from within, providing knowledge of the whole from every possible perspective. The multiple outlines of an object, because Hogarth describes them as ‘threads’, recall Blake’s ‘fibres’. Human beings are composed of fibres, and fibres are

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also the conduit for physical and mental connection between people. As multiple outlines, fibres become an element which defines identity: a manifold and permeable identity. Barbara Stafford spins out the anatomical implications of Hogarth’s ‘ingenious scheme for getting inside forms’ (55). It is, she writes, ‘a kind of mental dissection’ akin to the type of anatomical drawing which considers the skin, muscles, et cetera, as layers which can be peeled away in turn to reveal the lower layer, down to the skeleton (55).22 The mind, in Hogarth’s system, replaces the doctor’s tools, scoops out the body’s interior and ‘probe[s] its vacancies or densities’ (55). She likens the doctor’s to the engraver’s tools, which also gouge and seek to reveal the shapes beneath the surface (70). The Analysis of Beauty lauds the serpentine line, a wavy line which moves in three dimensions like a spiral or vortex, as a tool for creating and defining gracefulness. Stafford perhaps considers the serpentine line akin to the graver and scalpel, since she calls it a ‘design tool’ which brings ‘hollow shapes, muscular twistings, winding concavities and convexities to light’ (55, 70). The serpentine line is not only like the revealing tool, but also like what is revealed. The engraved lines which will constitute the work of art are compared by Stafford to veins. In Blake there is a pervasive echoing of vines, veins, serpents and the curlicues of writing. Hogarth argues that the human body, as a whole, and in its individual parts, is based on the serpentine line (77). ‘Almost all the muscles, and bones, of which the human form is composed, have more, or less of these kind of twists in them’ (70). He observes that most of the muscles, (those of the limbs in particular) are twisted round the bones. . . . As to the running of their fibres, some anatomists have compared them to skains of thread, loose in the middle, and tight at each end, which, when they are thus consider’d as twisted contrary ways round the bone, gives the strongest idea possible of a composition of serpentine-lines. (72) ‘Fibres’ and ‘threads’ evoke Blake’s concept of the woven body which, through the serpentine line, is connected to the vortex. That the muscles are twisted ‘contrary ways round the bone’ recalls Mitchell’s observation that ‘Vortexes occur in nature as the focus of the encounter between conflicting forces’ (‘Epistemology’ 70). The human body weaves and binds the individual in its threads; the vortex exemplifies the downward spiral which is the fall into the flesh, the gravitational pull of the material body, as in the design in America 7 showing a contorted body about to fall headlong through the coils of a serpent which get smaller and smaller, perhaps causing the man to shrink as he falls.23 Also, the serpent in the garden was the origin of bodily shame.

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Blake exaggerates Hogarth’s serpentine line. The eighteenth-century distaste for extremes is evident in Hogarth’s caution that ‘strictly speaking, there is but one precise line, properly to be called the line of beauty’ (65, original italics).24 He gives examples of lines which ‘by their bulging too much in their curvature becom[e] gross and clumsy; and on the contrary . . . as they straighten becom[e] mean and poor’ (65). The line of beauty dwells between these two, and the serpentine line, being a three dimensional line of beauty, is subject to the same constraints (68). Hogarth concedes that lines going to either extreme ‘do not become so wholly void [of beauty and grace] as not to be of excellent service in compositions, where beauty and grace are not particularly designed to be express’d in their greatest perfection’ (69). The serpentine line can provide the basis for postures where an effect of grace is desired. A ‘much exaggerated’ serpentine line is to be used ‘in distortions of pain’, writes Hogarth, pointing to the example of the Laocoön (which includes a real serpent): the work of art Blake placed at the centre of his late aesthetic manifesto. The editors of the Blake Trust reproduction note that Blake’s rendition of the Laocoön increases the appearance of suffering by further contracting the stomach muscles (a feature also found in Marco Dente’s engraving of the statue before its restoration) (230). Blake’s broken-back figures demonstrate that his art is often a place ‘where beauty and grace are not particularly designed to be express’d in their greatest perfection’; or, that there is a beauty to be found in exaggeration and pain. Blake contends, in his Public Address, ‘Every Line is the Line of Beauty’ (575). He turns the painful twist of Laocoön so far that the two halves of the body are at odds with each other. This can be seen, in small figures, on plate 45[40] of Jerusalem, where both female and male show a drastic torso twist, especially the male who lies face down, yet with knee and toes pointing upwards. Plate 47 is an unmistakable example of the broken-back phenomenon in large figures. The upside-down middle figure shows a good amount of torsion, but the body at the right side of the design is remarkable. This figure has her or his back to the viewer, displaying a spine that somehow lines up exactly with the middle of the hip. The serpentine curve of the body which Blake exaggerates often occurs when ‘the weight of the body is shifted to one leg with a consequent adjustment of the other parts of the body’. This is a definition of the contrapposto posture from David Summers’ book, Michelangelo’s Theory of Art (76). Hogarth articulates the association of contrapposto with Michelangelo, who ‘is said to have discover’d a certain principle in the trunk only of an antique statue, (well known from this circumstance by the name of Michael Angelo’s Torso, or Back), which principle gave his works a grandeur of gusto equal to the best antiques’ (5). The principle Michelangelo discovered was serpentine or flame-like composition (Hogarth 5). Blake’s exaggeration of contrapposto emphasizes, to the point of physical impossibility, the limitations and pain of existence in a mortal body. Further significance is suggested by an obser-

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vation accompanying Summers’ definition. Contrapposto ‘is taken from the Latin contrapositum, in turn translated from the Greek antithesis, a rhetorical figure in which opposites were set directly against one another’ (76). Blake’s human figures are ‘rhetorical figures’: illustrations of prophetic poetry which shed new light on texts through their ‘syncopated’ placement (as Frye calls Blake’s technique of positioning designs elsewhere than next to the passages they reflect [in Mitchell, Composite 10]) and personifications of psychic forces which reveal themselves in language. While Reynolds, Winckelmann, Hunter and Hogarth (to different extents) argue that art should be graceful and attractive, excluding extremes of energetic expression, Blake’s human figures twist in the spiral motion which comes of the meeting of opposites, such as beauty and pain, poise and contortion. The spiral form pervades Blake’s visual art, in serpents, vines, the curls of letters, and human posture: of course, because the human form, which Hogarth says is based on the serpentine line (77), is the true form of all things, including words and rhetorical figures. It seems that, for Winckelmann, physical suffering may have a place in art so long as it is depicted with balance. ‘The more tranquillity reigns in a body, the fitter it is to draw the true character of the soul; which, in every excessive gesture, seems to rush from her proper centre, and being hurried away by extremes becomes unnatural’ (72). Blake acts contrary to this dictum, perhaps on purpose to render his figures unnatural. Though portrayed ‘in every excessive gesture . . . hurried away by extremes’, Blake’s bodies enjoy an impossible balance. Postures which, in a real, mortal body, are impossible to hold, Blake endows with grace. For example, figures balance on lightly bent toes despite all their weight being on that foot. Theotormon, in the frontispiece of Visions of the Daughters of Albion, is so tightly bound up that it is difficult to tell whether one or both arms encircle his head, only the top of which can be seen (Frontispiece).25 His legs further enclose him, pressing the arm(s) tightly. Only one of his feet can be seen, perching on the rock where he crouches. His posture, though defying gravity and physical possibility, seems to obey some geometrical, compositional ideal. The William and Robert designs in Milton (29, 33) are another example. The brothers bend over backwards (a proverbial expression for exertion bordering on the impossible), arms balletically outspread. The forward foot is flat on the ground, but not in a position to give much stability. The brothers rush from their proper centres, in Winckelmann’s words, because their centre of gravity demands that the rear foot support them. This foot is bent, like Theotormon’s, so that they balance delicately on their toes. Yet delicate balance here is impossible, because almost the full weight is on that foot. With the somehow elegant though extreme curve of their backs, followed painfully by the neck, there is grace of form to which few living bodies could aspire. It is not the grace of the mortal body, but of an ideal body perceived by the imagination.

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The painful but aesthetically stirring postures in which he places his ‘Giant Forms’, and the devices of horror used in his exaggerated art, suggest that Blake is seeking a sublime effect. Vincent De Luca asserts that ‘William Blake never doubted his status as a “Sublime Artist” (E 544) nor did he conceal his aspirations to create “the Most Sublime Poetry” (E 730)’ (3). Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which takes in the question of how humans respond to the perception of pain, might be expected to illuminate how the viewer is meant to react to Blake’s graphic bodies. However, Blake is, as always, unable to concur completely with any of his fellow thinkers. At the beginning of Reynolds’ Discourse VIII, Blake writes, I read Burkes Treatise when very Young at the same time I read Locke on Human Understanding & Bacons Advancement of Learning on Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions & on looking them over find that my Notes on Reynolds in this Book are exactly Similar. I felt the Same Contempt & Abhorrence then; that I do now. They mock Inspiration & Vision. (E 660) Considering from this what Blake’s reactions to Burke might have been, De Luca chooses to concentrate on Blake’s championing of determinacy and particularity as productive of the sublime, contrary to Burke’s claims for obscurity, and indicating that Blake was not alone in this disagreement with Burke. Certainly this would be a major way in which Burke might be considered to mock Inspiration and Vision, by not according to them the substantiality and definiteness Blake does in his mystical empiricism; certainly Reynolds’ generalizing impulse is a major complaint Blake has with that book, and he indicates his misgivings about Burke are similar. De Luca also comments briefly on ‘the obvious revulsion that Blake would feel’ toward certain aspects of ‘Burke’s theory of the sublime’, one of them being its ‘physiological reductivism’ (36). Blake might have felt ‘obvious revulsion’ at a suggestion that human beings function only on a physiological level. However, Blake’s use of medical knowledge in his writing and his highlighting of internal bodily systems in his graphic bodies suggest, on the contrary, an attraction to physiology, and an interest in its role in producing feelings like those Burke explores. Burke does, especially in Part Four of the Enquiry where he delves into the causes of the sublime and the beautiful, give much importance to physiology. For instance, he argues that the sublime effect of large objects is caused by the strain on the ‘fine nerves and muscles’ in the eye on viewing them (125). Similarly, ‘pain and fear consist in an unnatural tension of the nerves’ (119), and both mental and physical distress have a physiological dimension:

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The only difference between pain and terror, is, that things which cause pain operate on the mind, by the intervention of the body; whereas things that cause terror generally affect the bodily organs by the operation of the mind suggesting the danger; but both agreeing, either primarily, or secondarily, in producing a tension, contraction, or violent emotion of the nerves, they agree likewise in every thing else. (120) When he considers how the sublime and the beautiful function in ‘poetry, painting and other affecting arts’, Burke argues that they ‘transfuse their passions from one breast to another’ by the ‘principle’ of sympathy (41). In trying to explain why ‘objects which in the reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure’, Burke rejects the popular explanations of ‘comfort’ in the fact ‘that so melancholy a story is no more than a fiction’, and in the ‘contemplation of our own freedom from the evils which we see represented’. Rather, he argues that reason has little role ‘in producing our passions’; these feelings ‘merely arise from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the natural frame and constitution of our minds’ (41). Stephen Bruhm, in Gothic Bodies, emphasizes that eighteenth-century thinkers considered sympathy to be as much a physiological phenomenon as a mental one. Bruhm argues that the tendency to separate physical from psychological pain was a fallacy which lost currency in the eighteenth century: ‘since the 1750s . . . pain has been re-mapped as a dialogue between body and soul’ (8). Robert Whytt, a physician who was a major figure in the medical examination of pain and sympathy, countered Descartes’ opinions on pain reactions as mechanical. Whytt proposed a re-evaluation of Descartes’ centralized, alienated soul. For Whytt, the soul was not sequestered in the fortress of the pineal gland, there to issue orders but never to take part in battle [as it was for Descartes]; rather, Whytt hypothesized that the soul extends from the brain down the spinal column, through the nerve endings, and to all parts of the body. (Bruhm 11) In this way Whytt explained why different parts of the body act in sympathy: for example, why a stomachache often accompanies a headache. The body is interconnected by the nerves; the sensitivity of the nerves allows a ‘general sympathy’ throughout the body (Whytt 24). Through Whytt’s formulation, the nervous system becomes the network linking body and soul, possessing attributes of both (Bruhm 12). From the internal sympathy of the body, Whytt extrapolates a sympathy between members of the social body: ‘there is a still more wonderful sympathy between the nervous systems of

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John Hunter’s teachings on the ‘sympathy’ between organs and parts commonly observed by clinicians in the hospitals of England led him in 1794 to address a parallel ‘sympathy of the mind’ vital to the study of life by the creative artist or physician: ‘One of its chief uses is to excite an active interest in favour of the distressed, the mind of the spectator taking on nearly the same action with that of the sufferers, and disposing them to give relief or consolation: it is therefore one of the first social feelings.’ (35) Whytt believed that strong sympathy could even be induced by literature: ‘By doleful stories or shocking sights, delicate people have been often affected with fainting and general convulsions’ (Whytt 35). He qualifies this statement somewhat in a footnote, which keeps the sympathy on the physiological level: ‘Although in these cases, the changes produced in the body are owing to the passions of the mind; yet as the mind is only affected thro’ the intervention of the optic and auditory nerves, they seem proper enough instances of the general sympathy that extends thro’ the whole nervous system’ (35). Through his illustration of fibres, which can be identified with nerves, Blake calls attention to the usually hidden organ of sensitivity, the nervous system which links body and mind, and in turn links people with each other, keeping the individual from being a prisoner in his own body. Hilton likens fibres as means of communication to lines of text; similarly, Barbara Stafford likens the engraved line to a vein. Fibres can be associated with veins as well as nerves (in Blake’s depictions they are often red). This does not move them out of the sphere of sympathy; on the contrary, it illustrates another way in which sympathy is physiological. Unlike the sympathetic function of the nerves which is not easily perceived in one’s own body, the workings of the bloodstream, as John Beer argues, are palpable: ‘The exaltation of the heartbeat in moments of fear or of unusual excitement was sharply felt and undeniable’ (11). Beer writes that ‘the work of the heart . . . includes . . . relationships with other animated beings . . . the actual movements of the physical heart and physical bloodstream can be intimately involved in such engagement, giving urgency to love (or for that matter to jealousy)’ (16). Blake asserts that sympathy is possible by inviting his audience to view the interiors of his fleshy mental personifications. The organs of sympathy are composed of the same fibrous stuff of which the

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different persons, whence various motions and morbid symptoms are often transferred from one to another, without any corporeal contact’ (in Bruhm 14). John Hunter pursued a similar train of thought, and, like Burke, explicitly connected it to the work of the artist. Hermione de Almeida, in Romantic Medicine and John Keats, finds that

letters, lines and vines of the prophetic books are made. Blake places these inner courses of emotion on display, perhaps to encourage a psychosomatic reaction in sympathetic members of his audience. In Chapter 1, I argued that Blake invites the reader to have a kind of sexual relationship to his books by entering their bodies; here, a similar kind of intimate relationship, both physical and emotional, is suggested. Such intimacy is controlled by elements in the books meant to repulse some readers; bared bodily interiors, opening themselves to vision, could simultaneously function to repel those unprepared for such a sympathy. The exposed physical systems of Blake’s graphic bodies, their muscles and fibres, have a contradictory significance: they can enable intimate connection through visual penetration and sympathetic uniting, yet they can also indicate the imprisonment of the human in the restriction and isolation of the body. Such isolation is depicted by Blake in ‘muscle-bound’ figures, and humans caught in the woven body as in a net. Europe 14(15) has a figure entrapped in spiders’ spun fibres, clothed in them like a garment, perhaps like the garment of the woven body. The posture of the praying figure verges on back-breaking contortion since the knees are raised vertically, yet the figure faces to one side with both elbows touching the ground. In Jerusalem 31 and 45, there is a weaver of the net, and a victim being woven. Both weaver and woven are in impossible, broken-back postures, especially the plate 45 woven figure. His upper and lower half face in opposite directions: a rightside-up leg stretches out toward the weaver, while the figure lies face down among branches and veins. The presence of the branches emphasizes the vegetative aspect of becoming part of the natural world. On these plates, the blood-coloured, veinlike text is also immersed in the physical world: plate 45 is written beneath the sea, with the ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ image of a big fish eating little fish interspersed as a hieroglyphic line of text.26 Plate 31’s text is written in an intestinal cloud, both fleshly and worldly (or falsely heavenly, passing, illusory, obscuring). Though the association in these images between the woven body and spine-twisting contortion connotes the pain of being caught in the net of the physical, there are also broken-back figures which suggest freedom from physical constraints. The figure in Urizen 3, not limited to either gender, is able to run through flames, with his or her body, from the waist up, facing completely away from us. Muscles, which Hogarth described as a skein of threads, can have an effect similar to the woven body. Blake’s muscle-bound men and women are just that, bound by muscles. Their own flesh and sinew wrap them up inside themselves, and hide them from knowing anything outside their material form. The strain in the muscles of Blake’s figures, which sometimes expresses agility and skill overcoming human limitations even to the point of flying, at times underlines the frustration of imprisonment in the human form. One can only move the way muscle and bone allow. The writhing figures of Jerusalem 47 exemplify the muscle-bound effect; they seem to be twisting

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to escape their own muscles, which are incised on their flesh even more emphatically than usual. Blake sometimes uses white line engraving to emphasize a figure wrapped in his or her own muscles, for example Hand in Jerusalem 26, also wrapped in flames. In The First Book of Urizen, many human forms double up on themselves. The raging figure on plate 6 is not only muscle-bound, but increases his own binding by wrapping his arms around his head; similarly, the tearful giant of additional plate 2 has muscles which bulge in their own self-restraint. The skeleton, too, acts as a frame to limit the human form. Urizen’s plate 7 depicts a skeleton in a compact foetal position. The illustration is shocking partly for this telescoping of birth and death, which iconically drives home the fact that, for Blake, to come into the material body is to come into the body of death. The skeleton is even more folded in upon itself than Blake’s other tightly crouched despair figures. Removing the flesh leaves the body with but one rather than many binding layers, strangely increasing its flexibility. Thigh and calf are closer than flesh-covered limbs would allow. This increased freedom is not used for expansion, but for contraction: given the opportunity of greater movement, this figure binds itself more. Yet, the greater flexibility of the skeleton is absurd. Despite their independent posing in anatomical depictions, skeletons cannot actually move by themselves. The further layers of wrapping are necessary. Stripping layers of physical limitation is no road to freedom: there are only more layers to remove, and beneath the skeleton there is nothing. That such a fleshless ideal is not ideal to Blake is suggested by the rarity of skeletons in his designs. In his illustrations for Blair’s Grave, a subject which would seem to invite skeletons, there is only one, on the title page, and it is reviving to the blast of a trumpet. According to the description of resurrection in Ezekiel, echoed by Blake in The Four Zoas, these dry bones will take on clay in order to live again (Ezek. 37:1–14; FZ IX:231–2, E 392). This skeleton is on the verge of resurrection; the completely resurrected bodies in Blake’s Grave designs provoked criticism for not being immaterial enough. The Antijacobin Review complained, The beings of another world when depicted on the same canvas as earthly bodies, should be sufficiently immaterial to be veiled by the gossamer, and not, as they are here designed, with all the fullness and rotundity of mortal flesh. What is yet more absurd, is to see the spirit of the good man borne aloft between two angels, and clothed in the same habiliments as the body that lies on the pallet below! (in Bentley, Critical Heritage 127–8) Blake’s ideal, spiritual, risen bodies have so many layers that they even have clothing. That clothing, as Paley agrees, ‘reveals rather than conceals the

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contours of the human body’; conversely, the corpse depicted in The Soul hovering over the Body reluctantly parting with Life ‘wears a shroud that obscures the lines of his body’ (‘Garment’ 139). In contrast to the Antijacobin, Blake’s ideal bodies are sufficiently substantial to be revealed by the gossamer; the spiritual body seen by the imagination has stronger and better lineaments than the mortal body seen by the mortal eye. Compressed in the image of the foetal skeleton is a solution to the problem perceived by Anne Mellor, that Blake at once seems to deride and celebrate the human body. This iconic image expresses Blake’s refusal to take the reactionary stance against the limitations of the physical body, denying the body altogether. He does not concentrate solely on the body’s failings, one of which is isolation. The physical body, though it binds us in muscles and fibres, also plays an important part in making sympathy possible. Blake’s emphasis on muscle need not exclusively imply being muscle-bound; it can also suggest that the viewer passes through the skin of the figure. Interweaving red fibres, similarly, can indicate the interpersonal union which comes of drinking the blood/wine of Christ, or the blood/ink Blake’s works, made from the imagination which is Jesus (L 41–3), at the same time as they depict the network of veins in which each human being is caught as an ultimate separateness. Adam Smith recognizes that ‘we have no immediate experience of what other men feel’, but when we try to understand the sufferings of a ‘brother’, ‘by the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, although weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them’ (9). Though Smith envisions an imaginative exchange between sufferer and sympathizer, he realizes that experience of another’s pain is actually self-enclosed: ‘we can form no idea of the manner in which [others] are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation’ (9). There is always that remove; there is no way for anyone to get out of his or her skin, and enter completely into another’s body and bodily experience. For Burke, sympathy is ‘a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected’ and if that other person is in pain, then sympathy will ‘partake’ of ‘self-preservation’ (41). Burke writes, ‘When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful’ (36–7). Burke uses the word ‘delight’ to name that agreeable feeling which comes upon release from danger; being based upon Privation it does not qualify as a positive pleasure, and so needs a different name (33). Delight is an important aspect of sympathy, and of sympathy’s advent without the involvement of reason:

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as our Creator has designed we should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has strengthened that bond by a proportionable delight; and there most where our sympathy is most wanted, in the distresses of others. . . . The delight we have in such things, hinders us from shunning scenes of misery; and the pain we feel, prompts us to relieve ourselves in relieving those who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning, by an instinct that works us to its own purposes, without our concurrence. (42–3) The God-implanted delight ensures that sympathy will not fail (except in those whose functions have been perverted: ‘some who are so far gone in indolence as not to endure any strong impression actually do’ shun scenes of pain [43]). However, if dangers which press too nearly (for instance, upon the self rather than another) are simply terrible, then this delight which attracts us, sympathetically, to the pains of others also distances us from our feeling of them. The admixture of delight marks the difference between one’s own suffering and one’s sympathy for another’s. Blake uses the word ‘sympathy’ only three times. Its first occurrence is in the fragment ‘Woe cried the muse’. Blake writes, ‘The Muse then Struck her Deepest string & Sympathy Came forth. She Spred her awful Wings. & gave me up. my Nerves with trembling Curdle all my blood. & every piece of flesh doth Cry out Woe’ (E 448). There is an indication of faith in the power of the arts to produce sympathy, since the Muse evokes it with a musical expression. There is an overwhelming sense of the physical in this sympathetic reaction as well, the nerves trembling and all the flesh crying Woe in unison; even the struck and resonating ‘Deepest string’ is fibre-like. Later, Blake writes to William Hayley expressing his feelings on the death of Hayley’s son. He closes, ‘feeling heartily your Grief with a brothers Sympathy’ (E 705). In the body of the letter Blake does not differentiate between his experience of loss and Hayley’s: I am very sorry for your immense loss, which is a repetition of what all feel in this valley of misery & happiness mixed. . . . I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago. I lost a brother & with his spirit I converse daily & hourly in the Spirit. & See him in my remembrance in the regions of my Imagination. (E 705) He parallels the loss of a son to the loss of a brother, considers Hayley’s son to be as present to Hayley as Robert is to him, and places himself in the close position of a brother to Hayley. When Blake apologizes in the letter it is not for assuming that their feelings and relationships are the same. It is an apology which further emphasizes sympathy: ‘Forgive me for expressing to

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you my Enthusiasm which I wish all to partake of Since it is to me a Source of Immortal Joy’ (E 705). All, apparently, can partake of Blake’s enthusiasm, and all can take joy from it as Blake does; it is not a matter of variable situations, personalities or relationships. Blake’s final use of the word is in Jerusalem where Blake again sees ‘sympathy’ as positive and universal. He writes of ‘the Divine- / Humanity, who is the Only General and Universal Form / To which all Lineaments tend & seek with love & sympathy’ (J 43[38]:19–21). The word ‘lineaments’, involving the word ‘line’ as it does and denoting the forms (like the forms Hogarth imagines composed of threads) which tend toward the Universal Form, is part of Blake’s complex of fibre imagery. Lines on the plate, and fibres in the body, create the lineaments. The lineaments ‘tend & seek’ toward the Divine Humanity like tendrils, feelers. This general form is different from those conceived of by Reynolds and denounced by Blake because ‘All broad & general principles belong to benevolence / Who protects minute particulars, every one in their own identity’ (J 43[38]:22–3); Reynolds in trying to ‘get above all singular forms’ is going against this principle which should govern general principles if they are to remain benevolent. Blake’s sympathy for Hayley relies greatly on Blake’s own individual experience; for Blake individuality is necessary for sympathy, not subsumed in it. The Divine Humanity is the only true general form, and that is because it protects the minute particulars; it is a unit which preserves multiplicity, like the body of Christ. It may be that only the Divine Humanity is able to put himself in the place of another in complete sympathy. In ‘On Another’s Sorrow’ God ‘becomes an infant small / He becomes a man of woe / He doth feel the sorrow too’ (SIE 27:26–8); in ‘The Lamb’, He is called by thy name For he calls himself a Lamb: He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child: I a child & thou a lamb, We are called by his name. (SIE 8:13–18) The Divine Humanity actually does contain all forms, and so is able to become other forms; whereas, as Los cries in Jerusalem, ‘No Individual ought to appropriate to Himself / Or to his Emanation, any of the Universal Characteristics / Of David or of Eve, of the Woman. or of the Lord’ (90:28–30). Ironically, this attempt to become more universal merely makes one more cut off, because it leads to vegetation and generation: ‘Those who dare appropriate to themselves Universal Attributes / Are the Blasphemous Selfhoods & must be broken asunder / A Vegetated Christ & a Virgin Eve’ (90:32–4). True sympathy relies on being truly oneself, while ‘pity’, or trying to put oneself in another’s place, which is impossible, ‘divides the soul’ (BU 12:53).

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Such an interpretation of Blake’s view of pity holds with his theory of art, as Morris Eaves explains it. Eaves sees that for Blake ‘Art expresses personal identity’ (Theory 34), and more specifically, ‘Artistic line is the expression of personal identity’; individuals are able to recognize each other by their lines. Line is also ‘the direct expression of imagination’ (175); in this way artistic expression, the true self, and the imagination (the faculty Smith credits with enabling sympathy) are equivalent. Fibres are the organs of sympathy, and the fibrelike line defines and communicates the self. Conversely, Blake holds that art is ‘not the imitation of nature’ (174), the attempt to produce, or be, a copy of something outside the self. Such attempts result in blurred lines, ruined identities. Eaves explains, ‘The blurring or the absence of the line is a sign of “plagiarism”, or a composite identity’, and Blake compares this ‘plagiarized identity’ to possession by demons (175). ‘Demons (in their New Testament form) are external forces that take up internal residence – a kind of mental parasite that causes the host to be unlike itself . . . They are difficult to get rid of because their composite identities live off the identities of their victims, making it hard to distinguish the host from the intruder’ (Eaves, Theory 29). Such a formulation applies not just to artistic influence but also to sympathy, since Blake often writes of the selfish enjoyment that can come of pity. In America he laments an angel become an unangelic parasite: ‘What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs’ (13:13). Whether the demon is another artist imposing influence, nature requiring imitation, another person requiring pity, or pity itself, the result is an alienation from self, confusion of identity, diversion from true purpose. This kind of sympathy does not result in oneness, so it is better to be known to others by one’s own shaping and communicating lines or fibres, than deformed by an attempt to extract fibres, draw them out to reach and match another’s. The reader should note that Cowper could not agree with Lairesse on the lineaments of the infant’s ‘freed’ veins. While for Burke ‘delight’ is the pleasant feeling gained through sympathy for others’ pain, for Blake its meanings include an indulgence of one’s individual tendencies. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, against the error ‘That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies’, claims that ‘Energy is Eternal Delight’ (4:20). In Songs of Innocence, ‘The Lamb’ is given ‘clothing of delight. / Softest clothing wooly bright’ (8:5–6): its wool is an important part of what makes it a lamb, and its clothing might also be its body itself, its lineaments, its form as a lamb. In The Four Zoas, the general resurrection in Night the Ninth includes animals and insects, the newt, fly, spider and bat, emerging from rocky hiding places and ‘crying / To one another what are we & whence is our joy & delight’. The questions are interrelated: it is as though what a creature delights in defines what it is (IX:607–10, E 401). Delight is also linked to Blake’s ideal of flexible perception. In Jerusalem, the nostrils once ‘expanded with delight in morning skies’

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before they were bent downward (67:49); in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell the wanderer through the infernal regions asks, ‘How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, / Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?’ (7:3–4). Expanded senses can enjoy delight, delight can help define individuality, and that individuality can play a part in enabling sympathy, but constrained organs can confine delight, thus restricting both individuality and sympathy. When Jerusalem asks Albion, ‘Why wilt thou number every little fibre of my Soul / Spreading them out before the Sun like stalks of flax to dry?’ (J 22:20–1), Albion is practicing the kind of anatomization on her that Cowper did on the infant whose veins he ‘freed’, rather than the imaginative identification of Hogarth’s ‘dissection’, which allows all of the threads which compose the form to remain in place. Since for Blake sympathy relies on individuality, taking apart the organs of sympathy which shape the body, rather than allowing them to be visible within, results in a perversion of sympathy. Blake was able to sympathize with Hayley’s grief, not by analyzing it, not by extracting Hayley’s sensibilities and examining them, but by knowing his own grief fully and intimately, and displaying it in its own shape for Hayley to see clearly. By being himself, Blake is able to approach, non-invasively, the experience of another. In The First Book of Urizen, Los’s pity for Urizen causes his fibres to emerge from his body, and sympathetic feeling for another distorts his identity so much that it divides him. Stephen Cox, analyzing Blake’s ambiguous conception of pity, finds that Los ‘apparently seeks the object of his pity with vibrating nerves that literally, not just metaphorically, extend his feeling beyond the boundaries of his self. His pity finally assumes the form of a separate person’ (145). Cox argues that ‘the basic notion’ important to eighteenth-century conceptions of sensibility and sympathy ‘of the self as ideally yielding and “ductile” is repellent to [Blake] . . . In his view, sympathy may be freely given to deserving objects – as it is in the Songs of Innocence – but it should not become a direct determinant of personal identity’ (146). On the contrary, personal identity should be a determinant of sympathy. Given Blake’s connection of ‘delight’ to expanded senses, and the fallen situation of Los and Urizen, it seems that problems with the organs of sensibility are the cause of problems with sensibility. Blake’s ambiguous view of embodiment reflects this dual capability: nerves, fibres and organs of sense enable feeling and sympathy, but impede them when they become hardened and opaque. It is not as though sympathy is only possible in an ideal, eternal body, though, and closed off to poor mortals. The Ancient Britons though ideal were mortal; they lived on earth in a period recorded, Blake claims, by history. Indeed, in his description of that painting, Blake himself claims to be ‘an inhabitant of that happy country’, Eden (E 543). The fallen body, though not as flexible as the eternal, still has the potential to be, to some degree, transparent, and escape, to some

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extent, its limitations. If ‘Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses’ (MHH 4:14–15), then one’s spiritual disposition must affect the function of one’s fibres, as much as one’s fibres, as vehicles for feeling, affect the soul. Los’s pity causes his fibres to englobe and separate; Urizen’s spiritual disposition is reflected in his hardening body.

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3

In The First Book of Urizen, Urizen separates from eternity and undergoes ‘direful changes’; Los ‘watch’d in shuddring fear / The dark changes & bound every change / With rivets of iron & brass’ (6:6, 7:9–11). This episode is a central one when considering Blake’s depiction of how the material body comes into being. Its importance is apparent in Blake’s repetition of it with variations in The Four Zoas and Milton; it seems Blake felt the need to retell this primal event. It re-echoes further, as it is an instance of the sense catalogues which recur from Thel through to Jerusalem in which Blake continually returns to the theme of eternal, vast, expanded sense organs becoming tragically, painfully narrowed. Thel confronts the mortal body and asks, ‘Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?’ (8:17), evoking the uncontrollability of inflexible senses. Because the ear is a fierce whirlpool which cannot be widened or narrowed at will, the human can be overwhelmed by the deluge of sensations; conversely, creation can also be overwhelmed, sucked in. The sense organs, then, affect both inside and outside, perceiver and surroundings. Europe: a Prophecy elaborates on the association of sense organs with flooding: when the five senses whelm’d In deluge o’er the earth-born man; then turn’d the fluxile eyes Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things. The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens Were bended downward; and the nostrils golden gates shut Turn’d outward, barr’d and petrify’d against the infinite. (11[13]:10–15) This passage adds to Thel’s intriguing metaphor the element of metamorphosis. For Thel the ear is a whirlpool; here, we find out how it became one, how a rising spiral turned downward like a drain. Linked with the flood, this transformation is placed as primeval. The inexorability of the flood here applies to the change in the senses, which apparently could not be stemmed. 73 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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Embodiment: Urizen

William Blake and the Body

The changes themselves are characterized by solidification, paralysis and enclosure, after what seems a swift, unreasonably flexible, even painful movement from the point of view of that stiff mortal body. These organs are pictured in relationship to ‘the heavens of heavens’ and ‘the infinite’ as though they are floating in space unrestricted, and perhaps colossal enough not to seem dwarfed there (until they shrink). The organs are described separately, but they all change together; it does not seem as though the eyes, for instance, could metamorphose while leaving the nostrils intact. Though this metamorphosis is like a sympathetic reaction between organs, it also involves separation. The senses are cut off from the infinite, and also from the self and the other senses. Each inflexibly confined to its separate province, the eyes stationary, the ears downward, the nostrils outward, they can no longer perceive the self, nor work together to perceive synaesthetically. It is rare in literature to encounter descriptions which consider the physical body to be so fluid; one of few possible comparisons is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Joseph Solodow calls attention to Ovid’s fascination with ‘describing in-between states’, from the moments between night and day, childhood and adulthood, to the graphic process of bizarre metamorphic change (186–8). ‘This bent of the imagination’, he argues, ‘is characteristic of Ovid. Not only are there many instances in his poem, but there are hardly any outside of it’ (188). The rarity of graphic depiction of the process of change renders such episodes even stranger than they are in themselves. In a paragraph which suits Blake as well as Ovid, Solodow writes, . . . these intermediate phases are intense, vivid examples of the flux from which metamorphosis removes the characters. They are the extreme of indeterminacy and shapelessness, the foil to fixity. By dwelling on moments when a figure is neither one thing nor another, when it temporarily lacks identity, Ovid sharpens our sense of the permanence which metamorphosis will bring. (188) When Ovid’s characters are metamorphosed, they become limited, their existence narrowed to one aspect of their personality or a pun on their names. ‘Moreover,’ Solodow adds, ‘their motion or activity or location is much circumscribed’ (189). Like Blake’s vegetating characters, Ovid’s often come closer to the earth as grazing, unreasoning animals, or become rooted in the earth as trees or flowers. Ovid’s description of an individual who turns into a vegetative form, Daphne, is a good example of his concentration on the process of change, and its culmination in stasis. Here is how George Sandys’ 1632 translation renders her metamorphosis: Forth-with, a numnesse all her lims possest; And slender filmes her softer sides invest.

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Embodiment: Urizen 75

Haire into leaves, her Armes to branches grow: And late swift feet, now rootes, are lesse then slow. (12–13)

handles the new Plant; And feeles her Heart within the barke to pant. Imbrac’t the bole, as he would her have done; And kist the boughs: the boughs his kisses shun. (13) There is still that slight degree of movement, the heart beating and the shrinking from kisses, within the solid restriction of the vegetable body. Myrrha, also turned to a tree, in her transformed body combines the stiff and the flexible. Like Daphne, she feels her drawn-out metamorphosis. As soon as she calls on the gods to banish her from the realms of both life and death, and consign her to an in-between state, Even then the ground Cover’d her legs: a downe-ward-spreading root Burst from her toes; whose ever-fixed foot Sustain’d the lengthfull bole. Bones turne to wood, To pith her marrow, into sap her blood: Her armes great branches grow, her fingers spine To little twigs; her skin converts to rine . . . Though sense, with shape, she lost; still weeping, she Sheds bitter teares, which trickle from her tree. (348) The description echoes elements in Blake. In The Book of Ahania, there is a parallel linked to the shrinking embodiment of Urizen. For when Urizen shrunk away From Eternals, he sat on a rock Barren; a rock which himself From redounding fancies had petrified Many tears fell on the rock, Many sparks of vegetation: Soon shot the pained root Of Mystery, under his heel: It grew a thick tree; he wrote In silence his book of iron: Till the horrid plant bending its boughs

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Though enrooted, Daphne is still to an extent herself: Apollo

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Grew to roots when it felt the earth And again sprung to many a tree.

Urizen’s fancies are what cause petrification of the rock, or even of himself, as the desires of Myrrha cause her to beg for a state in between death and life (348). Solid wood, a thick tree, grows from liquid tears. Urizen enroots from his heel like a vegetative being, and feels the pain of that growth. The tree spreads through a strange, plantlike and asexual yet almost sentient, method of reproduction (it ‘felt the earth’). Daphne prayed for her metamorphosis to save her from the embrace of Apollo; Myrrha asks to change because of the contamination of her sin of incest. Often in the Metamorphoses escape from sex is the catalyst: a desire to remain separate. Urizen’s separation from the mutual interaction of eternals is what sparks his metamorphosis: he is ‘unprolific! / Self-closd, all-repelling’ (3:2–3). Ironically, though, the change gives none of them the isolation they seem to wish for: Daphne is nonetheless embraced by Apollo who declares, ‘Although thou canst not bee / The wife I wisht, yet shalt thou be my Tree’ (13). Myrrha must still suffer the consequences of her forbidden desire: This ill-got infant, now at perfect groth Within the tree; indeavors to get forth. The strict imbracing barke, her belly wrung, With torment stretcht: nor had that griefe a tongue: Nor could she call Lucina to her throwes: And yet the tree like one in labour showes; Bowes down with paine, and grones, and weeps a flood, Lucina by her trembling branches stood; Her hand impos’d, and utterd powerfull words. The yawning tree the crying Babe affords A passage; whom the Nymphs receive with joy: And in his mothers teares annoint the Boy. (348) Reproduction, another kind of transformation and separation, follows her metamorphosis. The fact that the child must emerge from unstretching (yet not unfeeling) wood and tough bark emphasizes the bodily distortion, pain and tearing involved in birth. For Urizen also, reproduction follows separation; for him it is rife. Immediately he must strive ‘with shapes / Bred from his forsaken wilderness’ (3:13–14, my emphasis). Los and Urizen are wrenched apart in a birthlike division. Los takes on a body like Urizen’s in a contagious reaction to his changes, and then Los himself divides: a female form splits off from him, again in a birthlike process. Dividing themselves from others, these figures also become divided in themselves.

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(4:55–67)

A great part of the horror of metamorphosis in Ovid is the thought of turning into something else, a foreign and inferior form of life, lacking the higher faculties humans enjoy; for instance, ‘the loss which Ovid dwells on most often’, according to Solodow, ‘the loss of speech’ (189). Io, who turns into a cow, is a touching example of this loss. For Penelope Murray, she epitomizes the poem’s exploration of ‘feelings of entrapment, feelings of a person being imprisoned within a body that is not what he or she essentially is’ (84). Murray finds Ovid’s presentation of the story from Io’s point of view, his indication of her feelings and reactions, gives an ‘overwhelming sense . . . of the human consciousness helplessly trapped inside an alien body, powerless to act, and unable to communicate’ (85). She is divided from herself, in her own perception and in that of others. ‘Shee thought to beg for pitty: how deceiv’d! / Who low’d, when shee began to make her mone; / And trembled at the voyce which was her owne’ (14). Similarly, Urizen does not speak in his book, except on one plate (4a) included in only three copies. Most of his expression is beastly, incoherent howling, for instance the ‘trembling & howling & dismay’ when the binding of his changes is complete (12:17). However, he can write; his speech on the excised plate is all about his book of brass, which remains when that speech is gone (the laws written in it are mentioned in 21:25–6). Io also can write. She identifies herself to her father through the only kind of human communication she can still manage, the tracing of the simple letters ‘IO’ with her hoof. He cries, ‘Art thou my daughter throughout all the Round / Of Earth so sought; that now, not found, art found!’ (Sandys explains, ‘unfound as his daughter but found a dumb beast’). The father implies that her total loss would be better than finding her thus, not herself. His lament then concentrates on reproduction: ‘I, ignorant, prepar’d thy marriage bed: / My hopes, a Sonne-in-law, and Nephewes fed. / Now, from the Heard, thy issue must descend’ (15). As with Myrrha, the bodily change of metamorphosis is considered together with the bodily change of birthgiving; for Blake, both are apparently a descent into a lower, restricting life form. Murray, like Solodow, also considers the Ovidian fascination with process, in terms reminiscent of Blake’s bodies: This is a world in which all conventional boundaries are dissolved: at any point you might find your hair sprouting horns, your feet rooted to the spot or curving into claws, your arms bristling with coarse black hair, bark surrounding your thighs; you might find you were growing leaves instead of hair, or had hideous gaping jaws instead of a once beautiful face. What happens to a human being when his or her body undergoes such drastic modification? How important is the body to our understanding of what it is to be human? (80) Through the course of her article, Murray answers her questions by asserting that for Ovid, ‘to lose one’s human characteristics is to lose something

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of irreplaceable value; and one’s human characteristics include the human form’. The human form is ‘by no means always represented as an unqualified good, but it is impossible to be human without it’ (93). Ovid sees, and portrays, the problems with the human body, as well as its necessity for identity. Similarly, Blake shows Los binding Urizen, recognizing the pain, limitation and hardening involved, but also indicating that it may be a merciful action which gives Urizen identity and protects him from being ‘obscure’, ‘rifted with direful changes’, a ‘formless unmeasurable death’ (4:40, 6:6, 9). Before Los binds him, Urizen is ‘unorganiz’d’, both chaotic and without organs (5:8). Murray contends that ‘Nowhere in the Metamorphoses is there a sense in which the human body is seen as a prison-house, it is only when changed into something non-human that the body becomes a trap’ (88). Ovid portrays alienation through showing humans transformed into lower forms of life. For Ovid, those lower forms are plants and animals. For Blake, in a masterstroke of alienation, the strange and horrifying change produces the body with which his readers are most familiar, the human body. Blake’s descriptions of the metamorphosis of the sense organs make it clear that the body we know is the result of the transformation. When the inhabitants of Urizen’s world endure changes like Urizen’s, Blake writes, ‘their eyes / Grew small like the eyes of a man’ (23:35–6). It is difficult to discern what the eyes were like before, except by extrapolating backwards from the description of the changes: if they are now small, they must have been large. The effect is that Blake has humans imprisoned in the mortal human body, as Io is imprisoned in the body of a cow. Ovid’s readers do not know what it is like to be in a cow’s body; they are used to a body with better faculties and more abilities. Blake’s readers only know what it is like to be in the more restrictive body. Though his descriptions are bizarre and alienating, Blake’s obscuring of the eternal body, the previous form in the metamorphosis, is an accurate reflection of the experience of embodiment in that human beings do not tend to remember what their existence was like before coming into this body. For Urizen, too, after his eyes have become small, ‘his eternal life / Like a dream was obliterated’ (12:33–4). The oration of Pythagoras, with which Ovid ends his Metamorphoses, shows a concern with birth and reproduction which sets them in the context of eternal change. Pythagoras puts forth the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, arguing that ‘Our Soules for ever live: / Yet evermore their ancient houses leave / To live in new; which them, as Guests, receive’ (494). The souls change bodies, but, in tune with the theme of metamorphosis, the bodies change also. His description of human birth emphasizes this: So change our bodies without rest or stay: What wee were yester-day, nor what to day, Shall bee to morrow. Once alone of men The seeds and hope; the womb our mansion: when

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Kind Nature shewd her cunning; not content That our vext bodies should be longer pent In mothers stretched entrailes, forth-with bare Them from that prison, to the open aire.

Time causes bodies to change; Nature with her cunning also shapes them in the womb, and that process causes a distortion of the mother’s body. Gestation is imprisonment, until birth sets the baby free in ‘open aire’, while for Blake (who, though he borrows its imagery, rarely depicts normal gestation in a womb) the imprisonment is ongoing: the body itself constrains, and the natural world one is born into, as we shall see, is one big enclosing womb. Ovid also considers examples of reproduction different from ordinary human or mammalian birth, such as spontaneous generation: ‘Hornets from buried horses take their birth’. Apparently, one kind of creature can produce an entirely different one; also, creatures themselves can change shape, whether spontaneously generated or born from a parent of the same species. Greene Frogs, ingendred by the seede of slime, First without feete, then leggs assume; now strong And apt to swimme, their hinder parts more long Then are their former, fram’d to skip and jump. The Beares deformed birth is but a lump Of living flesh: when licked by the Old, It takes a forme agreeing with the mold. (499) All of these different forms of reproduction and growth are amazing to Pythagoras, bizarre causes of wonder: ‘birds of every kinde; did we not know / Them hatcht of eggs, who would conjecture so?’ (499). The forms of beasts and of humans meet on this topic, as they do in many of the metamorphoses: ‘Some thinke the pith of dead-men, Snakes becomes; / When their back-bones corrupt in hollow tombs’ (499). Despite the earlier examples of humans changing to animals (Cadmus particulalry into a snake), Pythagoras dispels this misunderstanding and insists that snakes are born from others of their kind. Urizen struggles ‘with shapes / Bred from his forsaken wilderness, / Of beast, bird, fish, serpent & element’ (BU 3:13–15). Carmen Kreiter, in ‘William Blake and Evolution’, points out that Blake’s ‘shapes . . . of beast, bird, fish, serpent & element’ (BU 3:15) ‘reflect the pre-Darwinian observation that the embryo of a human being passes through various forms resembling the adult forms of lower life’ (111). John Hunter was, Krieter finds,

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(496)

William Blake and the Body

one of the first ‘to enunciate . . . the resemblance of the phases of embryonic life to the series of inferior forms of animal species’ (114). Kay Parkhurst Easson and Roger Easson, in their edition of The Book of Urizen, notice that Blake takes the analogous lower forms of life and places them in an order which is the opposite of foetal development: he begins with ‘beast’ and regresses to the formless ‘element’ (72–3). Andrea K. Henderson, in Romantic Identities, finds a similar reverse gestation in William Hunter’s anatomical atlas of the uterus. ‘The Gravid Uterus opens with engravings of a full-term fetus and works its way back to conception, a compilation decision that establishes a developmental pattern but one that moves backwards, away from the moment of birth itself’ (30). Images of foetal development are appropriate to Urizen’s story of beginnings, but why in reverse? Blake could be hinting that creation is more of a regression than an advance. Creation is at odds with itself: supposed to be coming into being, for Blake it is a step closer to nonexistence. ‘Six days they shrunk up from existence / And on the seventh day they rested’ Blake satirically says of Urizen’s children (BU 23:39–40). This view applies not only to the embryo, but also to those who study it, such as the Hunters. In their concentration on the empirically perceptible material body, they do not really discuss life. Their thought must shrink from existence in a way perhaps subconsciously shown in the regressive order chosen in William Hunter’s study. In John Hunter’s museum of preserved specimens, and William Hunter’s pictorial and verbal descriptions of the foetus, not live but dead examples are examined. Carmen Kreiter describes John Hunter’s museum as containing ‘hundreds of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish dissected and arranged to portray the series of changes in the development of the embryo’ (113). William Hunter, in his preface to Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, often dwells on the circumstances which brought him his subjects. About the first one he writes, ‘A woman died suddenly, when very near the end of her pregnancy; the body was procured before any sensible putrefaction had begun; the season of the year was favourable to dissection’. Only dead wombs could be dissected and only dead foetuses revealed; live embryos were (before ultrasound) hidden in the depths of the living mother’s body, in a realm beyond empirical observation. Jordanova emphasizes that Hunter’s presentation of the pregnant female body ‘revealed to open view what was normally concealed, and revealed it furthermore in a context of dissection, mutilation and death – a situation commonly construed at the time as one of violation’ (400–1). If this is true for anatomy in general, it is particularly true for the anatomy of the gravid uterus, revealing the inacessible source of life, penetrating the hidden origin of every human being. To see this, violence is necessary; it is necessary that it become something other than it is. The beginnings of life must become something dead. William Hunter writes that ‘opportunities of dissecting the human pregnant uterus at leisure, very rarely occur’, usually only one or two in an anatomist’s lifetime. He credits much of the innovation of his study to the ‘fortunate circumstances’ which gave

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him an unexpected and unprecedented amount of subjects. That those fortunate circumstances rely in large part on suffering is evident in the resulting work. Hunter points out in his comments on plate XII, showing the placenta detached from the womb, that ‘the occasion of the fatal hemmorhage’ of the anatomical subject is visible. It could be said, then, that if we can see Urizen’s original development, it is because he is dead: born into the mortal body, which is like being born into death. During his transformation, there is no pronouncement as in Genesis that the newformed life is good, but rather ‘a first Age’ and so on ‘passed over / And a state of dismal woe’ (9:42–3). Once transformed, he is ‘bound in a deadly sleep’ (12:27). Easson and Easson suggest that the entire narrative of Urizen corresponds to the stages of foetal development (71, 75): the ultimate unseen which is universal yet shrouded in forgetting, which occurs in the deeply hidden womb, invisible to the mother herself, yet felt. In Blake’s time, debate still raged over exactly how the foetus developed in the womb. Theories of development took two major forms: preformationist and epigenesist. Henderson explains that ‘Preformationists understood growth as an increase in size of an already complex creature – one whose limbs, organs, and so forth were understood to be initially invisible only because of the limitations of the human eye’ (31). Epigenesists, whose view began to prevail at the turn of the century, believed ‘that the embryo develops and becomes more complex in its organization, that it changes morphologically rather than just in size’ (Henderson 31–2). Blake’s knowledge of these theories is probable not only because of his evident interest in physiology, but also because of his connections. Albrecht von Haller, the subject of Thomas Henry’s memoirs for which Blake engraved a frontispiece, was a proponent of the preformationist school, while William Hunter ‘although he never specified his opinions on embryology . . . tended toward an epigenetic model’ (Henderson 33). John Hunter’s studies in proto-evolutionary comparative anatomy would also suggest a transformational development. In relationship to Blake’s Urizen, these theories enable a link between metamorphosis and foetal development. The changes of Urizen play with both concepts, preformation and epigenesis (which were sometimes mixed [Henderson 171]). His parts seem to have already existed in some form but change in size (it is sometimes difficult to decide whether these parts are vast or minuscule). Yet the bending, shaping and ‘shooting’ of Urizen’s organs suggest the metamorphic characteristics of epigenesis. Jordanova emphasizes that epigenesis implies ‘the full-term foetus had emerged gradually from a beginning that was radically distinct from its final form. It is worth remembering how preposterous this . . . seemed to many’ (406). Haller was among those who considered epigenesis uncanny and linked it to spontaneous generation in its mysteriousness (Henderson 32). Pythagoras’ oration in Ovid considers spontaneous generation in a context of metamorphosis: it is an ultimate wonder, and an ultimate alienation, for a creature to change so completely.

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Embodiment: Urizen 81

William Blake and the Body

The preformationist theory does not require belief in such a metamorphosis, but still is in its own way preposterous and problematic. Animalculist preformationists believed that ‘the preformed being resides in the sperm’ (Henderson 31). Some put forth the theory of emboîtement: that the animalcule contains not only a fully-formed child, but all generations to follow (Henderson 31), as though in a Chinese box (as the name implies), or (in human form) a Russian doll. In such a scenario, reproduction seems much more like copying. If the growing foetus does not transform radically from its original form but simply grows, chances are that as little difference between parent and child will be expected as between large and small Russian dolls. The inhabitants of the cities of Urizen’s world undergo changes just like those of Urizen: they Felt their Nerves change into Marrow And hardening Bones began In swift diseases and torments In throbbings & shootings & grindings Thro all the coasts; till weaken’d The Senses inward rush’d shrinking Beneath the dark net of infection. (23:24–30) These changes, like Urizen’s, occur over the course of seven days. Nelson Hilton draws attention to the fact that ‘Urizen’s book . . . not only concerns, but is made of himself: “The Book of Urizen” (Literal 251). The world of Urizen, then, and the children of Urizen, are similarly duplicates generated from himself. Paul Mann, in his essay, ‘The Book of Urizen and the Horizon of the Book’, argues that ‘the Urizenic genesis is the production or rather the continual reproduction of selfhood’ (56). Urizen in his one speech declares, Here alone I in books formed of me-tals Have written the secrets of wisdom The secrets of dark contemplation. (4a:24–6) Hilton emphasizes that hyphenation is not accidental in these lines; it allows Urizen to say ‘in books formed of me-’ (Literal 250–1). The ‘secret’ character of the contents of Urizen’s books may be related to the appearance of the developing child as seen by the preformationists, its fully-formed parts initially invisible to the limited human eye. What Urizen creates with his sulphureous fluid is an abîme of self-reflection, abstract but metallically solidified ‘secrets of wisdom’ and ‘dark contemplation’ in not one but many ‘books’.

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Urizen himself also becomes a solid abstraction, ‘shrunk up from existence’ (23:39), in his changes which Los binds, like a book, in a final form, a limited representation of the prolific subject. Los uses metals in binding Urizen, ‘beating . . . on his rivets of iron’ and ‘Pouring sodor of iron’ (9:8–9). In Blake’s time the word ‘sodor’ could also refer to rejoining body parts. The molten metal Los pours may reflect the original making of the engraving plate, a part of the process Blake was not involved in but which presents itself in the manufacturer’s stamp on one side of the plate. Blake was in the habit of using both sides of his plates and this trademark often appears in the first state of his prints. Most of the Urizen plates were executed on the versos of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell plates (Viscomi 81), the wrong side which holds the stamp. In copy D plate 10, for example, the backwards letters of the stamp are visible on the colour-printed flames which rise before the figure being devoured by flame.1 The trace of the manufacturer’s stamp attests to the fluid origins of Blake’s plates, similar to the mysterious origin of a human foetus in semen, before it solidifies and metamorphoses into bodily form. The liquid origins of the plate are present in the process of etching as well. And Urizen (so his eternal name) His prolific delight obscured more & more In dark secresy hiding in surgeing Sulphureous fluid his phantasies. (9:11–14) The ‘phantasies’ may be the images of Blake’s illuminated pages, being bitten into the plate by sulphureous fluid. Viscomi explains that ‘sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol, was used . . . along with niter in the making of nitric acid’ which was used to bite plates masked with a combination of pitch and turpentine (79). Pitch and nitre are mentioned earlier in Urizen, directly before the changes of Urizen are described. . . . the sulphureous Perturbed Immortal mad raging In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre Round the furious limbs of Los. (7:3–6) According to Viscomi, the sulphuric corrosive ‘turned blue, and bubbled along the varnished lines’ (81) – along the form of the ‘phantasies’ and ‘Round the furious limbs of Los’ represented on the plate – and this bubbling prevented the plate from being seen (81), just as the transformations of the living foetus are hidden. David Simpson finds masturbation imagery

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in the ‘phantasies’ hid in ‘surgeing / Sulphureous fluid’ (15). Mann emphasizes that in Urizen ‘book and body continually intersect’. He agrees that the sulphureous fluid contains twin meanings: it ‘seems a typically Blakean allusion to the acid bath of platemaking’ while it also refers (as Simpson argues) to masturbation (Mann, ‘Horizon’ 52). When the sulphureous acid is through with its struggle of self-representation, it settles into ‘a lake, bright & shining clear’ (9:22), like a mirror. For Christopher Hobson, ‘Urizen’s “white lake” . . . is the source both of his body and of the winged shapes . . . called “army of horrors” . . . – evils formed from distorted sexuality’, which are also called his ‘self-begotten armies’ (40). Hobson considers this passage to be an example of an early, negative view of masturbation in Blake, in line with popular eighteenth-century conceptions of the act as ‘unprolific’ sexuality. ‘His prolific delight obscured’, Urizen is indulging in sexuality which does not result in generation (24, 39). Urizen does generate, but something not very prolific: a copy of himself rather than a new production. According to Hobson, ‘As “improlific” sexuality, it generates an unprolific world’ (39). Beginning in The Book of Ahania, Hobson sees Blake finding ‘masturbatory sources for the “prolific” ’: in the mutual fertilization of Ahania and Urizen who ‘gathers seed in his hand’ (43–4). In the Book of Urizen episode, the sulphureous fluid apparently has the potential to hide and to reveal phantasies; Blake’s phantasy of Urizen’s embodiment is revealed by it. Los’s netting, trapping and binding of the changes of Urizen evokes the limitation inherent in all creation. If the binding of Urizen is an allegory of illuminated printing, then Urizen, as well as the prophetic blacksmith Los, is involved in that process. Some of the derivations possible for Urizen’s name suggest that he is a limiting power: ‘your reason’, your ration-al power, and ‘the Greek on´rizein (“to limit”), which is the root of the English “horizon” ’ (Damon, Dictionary 419). His ‘eternal name’ (BU 9:11) is inscribed on the plate made of earthly materials; ‘prolific delight’ is ‘obscurd’ (9:11–12). It may be that for Blake, his artistic ideas, the ‘swift winged words’ dictated by ‘eternals’, which are also ‘dark visions of torment’ (BU 2:5–7), become obscured in their creation. The First Book of Urizen is a protean text, no two editions occurring with the same pagination (not to mention other variations, such as colouring). Jerome McGann finds that ‘none of Blake’s other illuminated books exhibits the variances in ordering that we find in Urizen . . . disorder is a permanent presence’ (‘Indeterminate’ 306). It is ironically appropriate that a poem which portrays a struggle with embodiment as limitation should itself struggle against a final, fixed form. The passage on the binding of Urizen recurs in The Four Zoas, and in Milton. It is not repeated verbatim, but contains changes, somewhat like the variations which would occur in an oral poem from one performance to another.2 In each version, the binding of Urizen is like a set piece, with an announced beginning: in Urizen, ‘And these were the changes of Urizen’ (7:12), in The Four Zoas, ‘And thus began the binding of Urizen’ (IV:200,

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E 336), and in Milton that poem’s very own ‘Mark well my words. they are of your eternal salvation’ (2[b]:5), different formulaic phrases with the same purpose. The repetition which marks the structure of the story, the seven ages of his embodiment echoing the seven days of the orally originating Genesis creation, contains slight changes. In Urizen it is quite consistent, Blake sticking to the formula, ‘And a [ordinal number] Age passed over: / And a state of dismal woe’, only in the fourth Age forgetting the word ‘over’ (10:24). In Milton it is completely consistent (2[b]). In the Four Zoas, though, there is more variation in the repetition: ‘A first age passed. a state of dismal woe . . . a Second Age passed over . . . And a third age passed. a State of dismal woe’, and so on (IV:223, 227, 231, E 336). The parallel descriptions of the events of each Age also show differences, consisting of both omissions and changes. Compare the descriptions of the eyes: In harrowing fear rolling round; His nervous brain shot branches Round the branches of his heart On high into two little orbs And fixed in two little caves Hiding carefully from the wind, His Eyes beheld the deep (BU 10:10–18) In harrowing fear rolling his nervous brain shot branches On high into two little orbs hiding in two little caves Hiding carefully from the wind his eyes beheld the deep. (FZ IV:228–30, E 336) Rolling round into two little Orbs & closed in two little Caves The Eyes beheld the Abyss: lest bones of solidness freeze over all. (M 2[b]:14–15) In oral poetry, structuring elements such as formulaic phrases and numerically organized episodes, free the poet from excess effort of memory and enable him or her to play with the passage being spoken and make variations. With every performance, changes are made, yet the oral poet would assert that the poem is the same and he or she is being impeccably faithful to tradition (Lord 99–101). Such recitations have for many centuries been the means of preserving stories, so that history may still be known after the passing of those who experienced the events, and thoughts after the passing of the thinker. Yet each faithful reteller adds variations. Oral poetry, then, is a kind of flexible embodiment. Blake avails himself of the adaptability of oral poetry even though his poems are literally ‘stereotyped’, a word Blake himself uses to refer to his illuminated copper plates (Ghost of Abel 2). Stereotypes were first developed

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to save printers from resetting text for every new edition of oft-reprinted books, such as the Bible. The Urizen books imitate the ‘typical format’ of the Bible, as Jerome McGann explains, by presenting the text ‘in double columns with divisions into chapters and verses’ (‘Indeterminate’ 304). However, the Bible, despite having such a ‘stereotypical’ appearance, is, like Urizen, not as metallically solid as its printing process would suggest. McGann argues that Urizen shows signs of inspiration by Alexander Geddes, whose work is part of the groundbreaking textual criticism of the Bible being developed at the time, which questioned its textual integrity.3 ‘Geddes’ investigations licensed Blake to deal with his own works quite freely, and they gave him a model for making a parody Bible which would expose and explain the deceptive transparencies and stabilities of the received Bible’ (‘Indeterminate’ 323). One reason for the Bible’s fragmentary nature, as it was seen by Geddes, was that ‘the Hebrews had no written documents before the days of Moses. . . . Oral testimony was transmitted, from generation to generation, in simple narratives, or rustic songs’ (Geddes, in McGann, ‘Indeterminate’ 321). If the Bible arises from oral tradition, the creation story in Genesis does not kill and still the origin in order to reveal it, but reflects its continual transformation in the telling. Due to its oral origins, the ‘fixed’ written form of the creation story still consists of two different versions.4 According to this theory, which questions the finality of the most monumental text in Western tradition, Blake can continue the (oral) tradition by retelling creation with his own variations. When Urizen speaks in his own poem, he expresses values contrary to this quasi-oral approach to stereotyped writing on metal. He tells the eternals he has sought for ‘a solid without fluctuation’, and he presents his ‘Book of brass’ which contains laws (4a:11, 34, 44). These laws are inflexible; Urizen later finds ‘That no flesh nor spirit could keep / His iron laws one moment’ (21:24–6). In Urizen’s speech, Blake may be presenting the kind of immutability he does not wish to afflict his metal plates. The books are brass, a harder metal than the copper and pewter Blake worked. Still, the idea of laws written in brass can be associated with changeability: they appear in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The four ages are described, the decline of human society. In the Golden Age ‘there was nor punishment, nor feare; / Nor threatening Lawes in brasse prescribed were’ (3). Ironically, laws written to be permanent are an example of impermanence and decay. Urizen’s desires are thoroughly undermined as the plate on which he speaks is sacrificed to make Urizen a variable text (since it appears in only three copies of the poem). Urizen himself is not able to retain his shape but will be beset by metamorphosis: soon after his declarations, on plate 6 he is ‘Rifted with direful changes’ (6:6). Urizen’s changes and their binding are narrated beginning on plate 9. Los is ‘dividing / The horrible night into watches’ (9:9–10) and Urizen’s formation is divided into seven ages. In the chain of time, Urizen moves

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restlessly in anguish ‘Till a roof shaggy wild inclos’d / In an orb, his fountain of thought’ (9:33–4). ‘Till’ suggests a cause and effect connection between Urizen’s struggle and the apparently independent growth of his body. As in a net, the more he strains to escape the more caught he will be. His flesh will embody confinement and frustration. The ‘roof shaggy wild’ echoes the illustration on this page, a visual rendering of Blake’s idea of the ‘caverned man’. The skull itself can be seen as a cavern; in the design on plate 9 of Urizen the head is replaced by a larger, exterior cavern. The ‘roof’ of the cavern is ‘shaggy wild’ in mottled colour-printing which in some spots suggests mossy vegetation. The figure seems to be struggling to gain leverage with his limbs against this roof and heave it off but, surrounded by rock – his hands and feet reach the four corners of his space – his success seems highly unlikely. Since the body fits the cavern perfectly, and since the head is excluded, this cave could be (strangely, for rock) growing around the body. Because of this, it could also be seen as a womb. Most often, the baby’s head is the first to emerge. Although the figure is presented as standing upright, the analogy still holds. We are born into this world upside-down. Blake reflects this ‘flip’ in his mythology: when Milton travels from eternity to earth, ‘what was underneath soon semd above’ (14:42). Jordanova finds that ‘an almost oppressive intimacy between mother and child’ is characteristic of William Hunter’s depictions of the foetus in the womb (406). It is ‘very tightly wedged into its mother’s body. . . . This differs strikingly from earlier representations of the foetus in utero, which often showed it as a miniature adult floating in space’ (387). Hunter’s representation Jordanova associates with the theory of epigenesis, while the earlier ones come from a preformationist tradition. Thus again Blake combines the two theories: Urizen’s forming organs float in a vast cosmos, yet he is also shown to be the caverned man, tightly enclosed. Like Myrrha, the flexibility of flesh in childbirth is contrasted by the inflexibility of non-human matter, here the mossy rock of a cave rather than the wood of a tree. Considering the womb as a cave is appropriate to this birth, as it is a birth into solidity and stasis. As the description of Urizen’s embodiment continues, there is a recurring theme of the solid being able to move, grow and enclose the fluid and flexible.5 The roles are reversed and the solid triumphs: the solid becomes flexible only to enclose, and the fluid becomes static in its enclosure. This is apparent in the flowing ‘fountain of thought’ being surrounded by ‘a roof shaggy wild’ illustrated as rock. The shape the roof takes is ‘an orb’ (9:34). Since this word can denote the spheres in the Ptolemaic system of cosmology, again there is the suggestion that the world is created along with Urizen. The associations of the round cave can be applied to the universe. It can be seen as enclosed in an individual skull, Urizen’s self-reflecting world. It can be seen as a solid, claustrophobic womb. The orb of the material universe is depicted as egg-shaped in Blake’s Milton, in the diagram of ‘Milton’s Track’ (32). From this Damon

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argues that in ‘this three-dimensional world of time and space . . . fallen Man incubates until he hatches and re-enters Eternity’ (Dictionary 288). When born into this world, then, we are not finally born but apparently inhabit another somewhat larger womb; adult humans are all really embryos in the egg of the world, who must undergo transformations before hatching. For Damon, this also explains our lack of memory of a previous state, our inability to perceive eternity: the shell of the mundane egg is ‘the visible sky . . . the crust of Matter which encloses us’ (288). It seems humans are shut in a series of solid, opaque caverns: skull, womb, and ‘Mundane Shell’ which is ‘a cavernous Earth’, ‘an immense / Hardend shadow of all things upon our Vegetated Earth’ (M 16:25, 21–2). Though a series of concentric orbs would recall the Ptolemaic cosmos, Blake is not so much advocating that structure for the universe as displaying an appropriate embodiment of a fixed cosmos. Blake writes in There Is No Natural Religion, ‘The same dull round even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated wheels’ (b6). Blake’s cosmology, as Damon cleverly puts it, is not so much geocentric or heliocentric as egocentric (Dictionary 417). In Milton, Blake contends that every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place. Standing on his own roof, or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height. such space is his Universe; And on its verge the Sun rises & sets. the Clouds bow To meet the flat Earth & the Sea in such an orderd Space: The Starry heavens reach no further but here bend and set On all sides & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold: And if he move his dwelling place. his heavens also move. (28:5–12) The layout of the universe has everything to do with human perception. If this perception becomes caverned, if the skull inorbs the fountains of thought and the eyes too become ‘two little orbs . . . in two little caves’ (BU 10), then the universe around also hardens into stasis. Easson and Easson, discussing the Mundane Egg in their Milton commentary, explain that ‘we stand in a perceptual concavity which is much like a great sensory balloon. . . . This concave egg may be seen from reasoning perception – the perception that only the body and its senses exist – as a limiting and imprisoning reality’ (142). Blake writes in Jerusalem 30[34], ‘If Perceptive Organs vary: Objects of Perception seem to vary: / If the Perceptive Organs close: their Objects seem to close also’. The shape of the cosmos corresponds to the shape of the sense that perceives it. As Easson and Easson argue, Blake’s ‘visionary’ universe (in Milton particularly) is modelled on the shape of the human eye (146–7). Through the parallels of orb, egg and cave, both cosmos and eye are likened to the shape of the human skull, where sensory infor-

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mation is processed, and the shape of the womb, where that skull and that eye are formed. Though the orb is the organizing shape of the universe, the organs in Urizen’s bizarre creation narrative are often placed in relationship to a vast, empty landscape.6 ‘A vast Spine writh’d in torment / Upon the winds’ (9:37–8); ‘Down sunk with fright a red. / Round globe hot burning deep / Deep down into the Abyss’ (10:2–4); ‘Hiding carefully from the wind, / His Eyes beheld the deep’ (10:15–16); ‘Hanging upon the wind; / Two Nostrils bent down to the deep’ (10:27–12:1); ‘his Feet stampd the nether Abyss’ (12:16). A huge, cosmic body is created in empty space. Yet the body parts are familiar, and they are all quite small; in fact, Blake emphasizes their smallness. The eyes are ‘two little orbs . . . in two little caves’ (10:13–14), physically representing the narrowing perception undergone by Urizen. The ratios of space and time are played with. The organs seem to metamorphose swiftly, but each change occurs as an age passes over. A small organ inhabits the abyss, yet, the spine, for instance, is vast. Though all these parts belong to the same body, some are insignificant in relationship to the landscape, and some proportionately large. Urizen fills his universe as he fills his womblike cavern in the plate 9 illustration, with no room to move; Urizen is also a minuscule being alone in a featureless void. Ages and days, vastness and littleness: these incompatible features show how Urizen is alienated from himself. His seeming greatness, and the momentousness of his creation, are undermined. Vincent De Luca notices that in The First Book of Urizen, and in a passage from The Four Zoas describing Urizen’s journey through his world (VI:177–89, E 349), ‘Urizen becomes another exemplar of the intrepid, individualistic Romantic quester, one who wrests awe away from the sublime objects he encounters [such as vast spaces] and attaches it to the magnitude of his own passion and struggle’. However, ‘the joke in all this, one that constitutes an implicit critique of all such Romantic questers, is that Urizen wrests his grandeur merely from his former self, as all his earlier selves did also in their turn, in the indefinite regress of sublime origins’ (161). In the list of Urizen’s newly shaped parts, as in most of Blake’s sense catalogues, skin is not mentioned. There is a sense of exposure in the description of Urizen’s embodiment: veins, nerves, fibres and inner organs emerge in the vast abyss, lying open to the wind. Urizen is one with his environment as a cosmic man: there is no skin to make a border between himself and his world. Yet the predominant sense in this terrible embodiment is that Urizen’s ugly, uncanny insides are vulnerable in an unfriendly, unknowing space. Here is another level to the ‘joke’ identified by De Luca. Urizen is alienated from himself, since the space in which he is at once a tiny, pathetic being lost in the abyss, and a giant whose body reaches the extent of space and entraps him in vastness, is the world of the book of Urizen. It belongs to him, is about him, and is made out of him. He may

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be stealing grandeur from himself, but he may also be insignificant and vulnerable in relation to himself. In a further layer of self-surrounding, parts of Urizen’s body grow out of each other. The round globe sinks down ‘From the caverns of his jointed Spine’ (10:1–3). The eyes shoot out from the brain, and take a detour around the branches shot out by the heart (the red globe) (10:11–14). The ears spiral out ‘From beneath his orbs of vision’ (10:21–4). The ‘Hungry Cavern’ appears within the ribs (12:5–6), and the throat and tongue arise from the stomach (12:6–9). Urizen is self-contained in his empty surroundings, in the state of being which has resulted from separating himself from eternity. There is a momentum or domino-effect in this series of growths out of growths. It continues when Urizen’s embodiment causes Los’s embodiment, which in turn causes Enitharmon to come into separate being, giving birth to Orc. Following this, the children of Urizen are embodied. Like a cancer or a weed, the material body propagates uncontrollably. Like a black hole, its weight and gravity pulls all around it into its darkness. Urizen is a human body, a body in space, and a vegetating being. The repeated word ‘shooting’, describing the motions of his growing parts, encompasses these meanings. It is used of heavenly bodies, as in ‘shooting star’. Urizen may be coming into material existence as Milton does, as a star falling across the empty wastes of space into the physical world (M 14:45–8). A shoot is also the first growth of a seed or new branch. Uniting the vegetation and weaving images Blake often uses for the body, ‘shoot’ also means one throw of the shuttle between the threads of the warp. Like the vegetable meaning, it indicates increase: the fabric grows as threads are added to it. The word suggests fast and sudden movement, including the uncanny movement of growth (of plants and of growing humans) which is quick yet invisible, like the ages on ages of swift movement portrayed by Blake.7 The changes of Urizen resemble films of plants which capture the imperceptible process of growth by speeding it up. The connotation of speed in the word ‘shoot’ is most clear in its meaning a discharge of arrows, bullets or other projectiles. The connotation of violence and pain spills over into the idea of growing pains. The word is also used for bodily fluids such as tears and blood when they stream out suddenly. ‘Shoot’ describes the movement of an inanimate object, or of a living thing that moves involuntarily: there is an element of uncontrollability inherent in the word. While this uncontrollability is an illusion in the case of arrows or bullets – they do not move of their own accord but are shot by someone – it is not in the case of growth. Yet, Urizen is implicated in his body’s growth because it is caused by his separation from eternity. Like shooting an arrow, though, once Urizen has begun the process by self-separation from eternity, he has no further control over the trajectory of his being. Urizen is ‘In a horrible dreamful slumber’ (9:35) while his embodiment takes place like a true nightmare, or like an operation under anaesthetic.

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Stephen Bruhm explains that ‘in the late eighteenth century came a concerted movement on the part of physicians to control the medical experience of pain’ and along with this ‘came the development of anaesthetics’ (124). Opium was used, then morphine beginning in 1803; but in 1776 Joseph Priestley discovered that ‘gaseous nitrous oxide could be absorbed immediately into the lungs’, and this eventually led to its use as an anaesthetic (first suggested in 1800; first attempted in 1844) (124). Bruhm finds that ‘this tenuous experimentation with anaesthetics reflected a change in the entire definition of “anaesthetics” ’, which was ‘in the early 1700s . . . a defect or lack of feeling’, and ‘by the early years of the nineteenth century . . . [took] on the sense of a positive medical relieving of feeling, a blessing rather than a defect’ (124–5). Urizen, with its title page date of 1794, is on the cusp of the change in meaning, and reflects it in the ambivalence of Urizen’s seemingly uncontrollable embodiment. Bruhm also observes, in relation to Gothic fiction, that an excess of pain can finally cause an absence of sensation: fainting, for example (6). As each body part grows, there is an indication of spiritual and physical pain: the ‘Spine writh’d in torment’ (9:37), the red globe ‘down sunk with fright’ (10:2). As the description goes on, the phrase ‘In ghastly torment sick’ recurs, the phrase which had previously attributed distress and illness to time and to a wasteland. The body which shoots like a bullet or like a growing plant, acts of its own accord, and causes Urizen pain though it seems to render him inanimate, like an automaton, not in control of his own movements. Urizen’s ‘nervous brain’ is ‘In harrowing fear rolling round’ (10:10–11). Though his brain (the creation of which is undescribed) is presumably attached to his spine and might have been surrounded by bones and veins in the onslaught of the previous two verses, nonetheless it is able to roll around, like a spinning planet. It is indeed spinning because it lets out threadlike ‘branches’ which culminate in eyes (10:11–16). Eyes and brain resemble planets; they are called ‘orbs’ (10:13). The other characteristics of the brain touched on by Blake in the first two lines of this section also become characteristics of the eyes. The brain is ‘nervous’ (10:11). Nervousness is repeated in the fibrous nature of the branches which grow into eyes. Vegetative connotations recur: leaves with veins are called ‘nervous’. The present-day suggestions of nervous8 – agitated, hypersensitive – become apparent in the cowardly eyes which hide ‘carefully from the wind’ (10:15) in fear for their fragility, or for fear of what they might see. The eyes’ gaze is limited to the external. They are unable, without a mirror, to behold themselves. They render even one’s own body parts external, placing them in the outside world of the seen, detaching them from the unseen, hierarchical head. ‘Nervous’, suggesting fibres, is one of many words which builds an impression of elastic movement which characterizes the vegetable-like growth of Urizen’s body. The play on solidness and flexibility appears in the ribs which

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are shot out by the spine ‘like a bending cavern / And bones of solidness, froze / Over all his nerves of joy’ (9:39–41). The thought of bending ribs is painful because we know that our own ribs are so solid that if they bend they are liable to break. The ribs described here are strangely bendable like the nerves they come to cover. They do not retain this flexible consistency; they take it on merely to take over the flexible and render it inflexible. The sense that Urizen is becoming imprisoned in his own body is increased by hints of immobility. His body begins by moving frighteningly swiftly, like an out-of-control missile or a weed that spreads with alarming, alien speed. Yet, as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this rush culminates in an imprisoning stasis, described in the spine and ribs episode as freezing. The positive valuation of the flexible ‘nerves of joy’ over the ‘bones of solidness’ is not absolute. Soon imprisonment is caused by flexible body parts as well, as the ‘red. / Round globe’ which is viscously ‘conglobing’, flexibly ‘panting’ and ‘trembling’, shoots out ‘ten thousand branches / Around his solid bones’ (10:2–7). ‘Two Ears’ appear ‘in close volutions’ (10:21), recalling the ear Thel describes as ‘a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in’ (8:17). The shape expresses the black-hole gravity which sucks in Los along with Urizen into heavy materiality, and spews out a spiralling, re-echoing creation which includes the creation of the world. The projectile suggestions of the word ‘shoot’ recur in the Urizen description of the ear and are augmented by an interesting choice of adverb: the ears ‘Shot spiring out and petrified / As they grew’ (10:23–4). Like ‘shoot’, one of the meanings of ‘spire’ relates to vegetation: the first shoot produced by a seed. The word has its origin in the Greek spei´ra which means a coil, twist, or part of a spiral. The ear spires out like the shoot of a twisting, climbing plant which culminates in an ear-like flower. In the illuminated text, the description of the growth of the ear is prefaced by a line/vine of coils. The ear is related to the vegetative nature of the human body, and the vegetation that covers Blake’s pages: the vines which encroach on the lines of text, taking on the appearance of cursive writing. The ear is attached to the complex of spirals in Blake’s work, brought together by W.J.T. Mitchell in his article, ‘Style as Epistemology: Blake and the Movement toward Abstraction in Romantic Art’, which associates four different kinds of line with four of the sense organs. The spiral/ear group includes the vortex, (‘a whirlpool fierce’), as well as ‘curling vines and tendrils, coiled serpents, scrolls, whirlwinds and maelstroms’ (157). A spire is also the tapering part of a church steeple, which, along with the serpent, scroll and whirlwind, attaches the group of images to biblical concerns. Since faith was thought to come through the ear (Romans 10:17), the ‘close’ ear of Urizen, ‘spiring out’, is decidedly unin-spiring. An impression of physical discomfort in the very beginnings of the physical body comes from the growth of the ‘Hungry Cavern’ or stomach

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‘in ghastly torment sick’, described by the word ‘bloated’, used as a verb (12:4–6). The arrival of the stomach signals the arrival of hunger. The word ‘cavern’ echoes the enclosure of embodiment, adding another claustrophobic layer to the series of skull, eyes, womb and Mundane Shell. Hunger, now that there is a stomach, is inescapable as the flesh itself. The arising of the throat and tongue from the stomach (12:7–9) suggests that the body works against itself, is built to frustrate itself from its beginnings. Brenda Webster agrees: she argues that the cruelty of the creation of Urizen’s body lies in awakening and thwarting desires at the same time (Prophetic 166). The throat arises from the stomach as if it were vomited up; part of the flesh of the stomach is expelled and forms the channel down which food travels. The origin of the digestive system expressed in these terms has it moving, in its inception, in a direction opposite to that of its own healthy functioning. For Blake, the creation of the material body is an emergency measure rather than an ideal situation. The growth of the throat reflects this: it is born in an imitation of its own emergency function which prevents poisoning, rather than its healthy operation which brings nourishment. At the end of the throat, ‘like a red flame a Tongue / Of thirst & of hunger appeard’ (12:8–9). Likening the tongue to a flame recalls the Pentecost visitation on the apostles: ‘And there appeared unto them cloven tongues [or, tongues distributed among them] like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance’ (Acts 2:3–4). Urizen’s tongue, rather than filling him, emphasizes his emptiness: not only hunger but now thirst also, a need to ingest rather than an ability to overflow with spiritual abundance. Like Urizen’s ear, his tongue is the opposite of inspiring. As the passage from Acts shows, ‘tongue’ is a bodily metaphor for language, but no mention of speech is made by Blake in relation to the tongue here. In Acts, the tongues of flame cause a pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh, because of which ‘your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’ as Peter recites from the prophet Joel to the crowd which has gathered, each hearing all in his or her own tongue (Acts 2:17, 6). Urizen’s flaming tongue leaves him inarticulate. Enraged & stifled with torment He threw his right Arm to the north His left Arm to the south Shooting out in anguish deep And his Feet stamped the nether Abyss In trembling & howling & dismay. And a seventh Age passed over And a state of dismal woe. (12:12–19)

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Urizen’s self-expression is all unvoiced – body-language, shooting instead of shouting – except for ‘howling’. Trying to express himself and to reach his surroundings, he is unable. Urizen relates himself directionally to his environment. His arms reach for the limits of north and south, but, as Thomas Frosch notices, he touches nothing (46). After being shaped, he is still floating in space, like a preformationist baby in the womb, the larger womb of the world. Despite the cosmic scale, Urizen, in being embodied, shrinks up from existence. His coming into the body is not unlike that of ‘Infant Sorrow’: ‘Into the dangerous world I leapt: / Helpless, naked, piping loud; / Like a fiend hid in a cloud’ (SIE 48:2–4). Urizen’s embodiment is not the same as the birth of a child: it is the binding of an eternal, Giant Form’s changes. Yet, Blake’s description of it echoes the transformations of the foetus, and, through the alienation of metamorphosis, the ambivalence of human birth.

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4

In Jerusalem, Los works another variation on the theme of embodiment when he moulds Reuben’s sense organs and sends him over the Jordan. Reuben, however, continually returns in need of further shaping. While Urizen shows the dangers of inflexibility, solidity and narrowness, Reuben is a representative of the opposite danger of formlessness or malformation rather than hyper-formation. Though neither is portrayed as a ‘normal’ birth, both partake of the imagery of human embodiment. Urizen’s binding makes use of embryological imagery, while Reuben’s incomplete formation and inability to cross permanently into the realm of material being suggests miscarriage. Blake portrays these embodiments as done by the male Los, and as shapings rather than births. They are bizarre embodiments, but they comment on human birth through this alienation effect of being partly similar, and partly dissimilar. Reuben’s shaping is an ambivalent commentary on male creation of bodies, as Urizen’s binding is, but Reuben, through the Bible, also has many female associations. Blake makes use of these associations, and adds to them. The result is a suggestion that maternal birth is a failure which male shaping tries, not very successfully, to circumvent. Yet, there are also suggestions of pity and sympathy for conceivers of beings which cannot retain form, and for those shapeless beings themselves. Blake’s characters, like any mythological figures, are difficult to define, and Reuben is among the most mysterious and seldom seen. Rarely does a Blake scholar write about Reuben without having to. Most of the critical information on him comes from work which undertakes not to be selective in passages for discussion: close readings, such as Paley’s in The Continuing City, Bloom’s in Blake’s Apocalypse, and Frye’s in Fearful Symmetry, a guidebook like Damon’s Dictionary, or notes to editions like Stevenson’s. Reuben has an existence outside of Blake’s oeuvre, being the first son of Jacob (later called Israel) by Leah in Genesis. As a Blake character, he appears sporadically in The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem, often at the beginning of lists of the twelve sons of Israel, who are counted among the sons of Los and 95 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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Embodiment: Reuben

William Blake and the Body

who have the counties of the British Isles divided amongst them. From these appearances can be gathered the very basic information that Reuben is thought of as an offspring, and is associated with division. In the Bible his tribe is linked with division in that, in the allotting of land to the twelve tribes, the tribe of Reuben (along with the tribe of Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh) was given ‘the land of [their] possession . . . on the other side Jordan’ (Josh. 22:4). The land is divided, these tribes are given land divided by a river from the land of the others, and finally, these tribes build an alternative altar, dividing the place of worship and causing division among the tribes (they wish to go to war over this) (Josh. 22:10–12). In Milton and in The Four Zoas, Reuben is already seen as lost, because he and other sons flee from Los due to the struggles between Palamabron, Rintrah and Satan; in Milton that fleeing brings Reuben and other sons into generation, perhaps equivalent to the other side of the Jordan (FZ VIII:369–78; M 22:61–23:4). Reuben is most frequently encountered in Jerusalem, and there his most concentrated appearance is his repeated, unsuccessful shaping by Los. Critics are divided over Reuben’s significance here. That Reuben ‘keeps returning to the wrong side of the river’ is one interpretation, offered by Paley who, in The Continuing City, sees Reuben’s ‘deliverance’ as lying across the Jordan in the ‘Holy Land’ (270). Frye, in contrast, considers the cross over from Bashan to be a spiritual decline (366). At one stage in his shaping, Reuben stands on Mount Gilead and looks toward Gilgal, which is between Gilead and Jerusalem (36[32]:12). This also has undecided implications for his spiritual state: is he looking at a place that is on the way to, or in the way of, Jerusalem? His creation is mapped out on ambiguous territory. To complicate matters further, Jerusalem was composed, according to Joseph Viscomi’s estimation, over at least 14 years, ‘written and rewritten no doubt as inspiration struck’ (339). Among the changes made over time is the reordering of Chapter Two, which includes Reuben’s embodiment narrative. The plates where it appears are either 30 and 32 (in Erdman’s order), or 34 and 36 (in Keynes and the Blake Trust edition of copy E). In either order, the plates follow each other, interrupted by a plate (31 or 35) in which the Divine Voice from the Furnaces declares, ‘I go forth to Create / States: to deliver Individuals evermore! Amen’ (35[31]:15–16). Though this plate seems unrelated to the scene it intrudes upon, the idea of states reflects Reuben entering the state of bodily existence, and affects the act of interpretation. How do we judge Reuben, or any of Blake’s characters, when Blake argues that their actual identity is different from the temporary states in which we see them? Interpretation becomes even more difficult when it cannot be concluded whether that temporary state is to be admired or condemned, and the information by which to judge is scattered through both Blake and the Bible. Peter Otto observes that ‘Reuben’s identity is never described at great length; instead, the reader is presented with a plethora of associations, names and brief definitions. We are forced to piece together

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our image of him in a way which . . . is entirely appropriate for this character’ (143). The reader pieces him together as Los shapes him piece by piece. One of Reuben’s associations is another biblical figure reinterpreted by Blake: Tirzah. During his embodiment narrative, it is said that ‘Reuben return’d to his place, in vain he sought beautiful Tirzah’ (36[32]:1). That he seeks Tirzah in vain connotes that he seeks embodiment in vain. In vain he sought ‘Thou Mother of my Mortal part’ who, in the Song of Experience dedicated to her, moulds the body and binds the sense organs (SIE 52:9–13). Tirzah provides a major connecting point between Blake’s negative feelings about the body and the feminine. She is one exemplar of the female as responsible for the material world, because the female is, through birth, responsible for the material body. This concept is distilled in ‘To Tirzah’, which Alicia Ostriker calls ‘a furious repudiation of female sexuality in its maternal aspect as that which encloses and divides man from Eternity’ (161). Alluding to the shaping of the sense organs, the speaker accuses Tirzah: Thou Mother of my Mortal part. With cruelty didst mould my Heart. And with false self-decieving tears, Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes & Ears. Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay And me to Mortal Life betray: The Death of Jesus set me free, Then what have I to do with thee? (SIE 52:9–16) The speaker’s question recalls Jesus’ question to his mother (setting Jesus against the female) when she prompts him to perform his first miracle, at the wedding at Cana ( John 2:1–11).1 Jesus’ question could be interpreted as a reluctance to use his powers for the first time for such an earthly purpose as producing extra wine for a celebration centred around sexual union and reproduction. Nelson Hilton helpfully explains that Jesus’ question would be more accurately translated as ‘what’s that to me and to you?’ (‘Hymns’ 107). Though it reduces the rudeness of Jesus’ response to his mother, it still shows he does not see the same importance in the problem as Mary does. He does go through with the miracle, making his reluctance stand out confusingly, just as ‘To Tirzah’ contrasts disturbingly with other Songs which celebrate the physical body.2 Concern for material things can be associated with Tirzah because she is one of Zelophehad’s daughters, who ask to receive an inheritance. Their father having had no sons, his legacy would go to his brothers. The daughters ask ‘a possession among the brethren of our father’: they are women requesting a male right (Num. 27:4).3 These two episodes together suggest a female concern for material practicalities, which could be

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looked down upon as overly valuing the earthly, following on the dualistic association of women with the natural, men with the spiritual. Women are cut off from spiritual concerns, placed in the position of managing domestic life, and then blamed for having a point of view that is domestic and materialistic, or as Hilton might have it, mater-ialistic (see ‘Hymns’ 107). In these two cases Blake does not see these practical concerns, and the women who draw attention to them, as ennobled by the fact that the Lord expresses to Moses his agreement with Zelophehad’s daughters, and that Jesus carries out the miracle Mary requests. This stands in contrast to the weaving done by the daughters of Los, which shows the positive side of Blake’s ambiguous attitude to the material body. There, the work of the female sphere is treated with poignant sympathy: ‘none pities their tears / Yet they regard not pity & they expect no one to pity / For they labour for life & love’ (J 59:35–7). Los’s daughters labour so that not only spectres but also ‘Rahab & Tirzah may exist & live & breathe & love’ (59:43), instead of being bound by the limiting aspects of embodiment which Tirzah herself represents. In his comparison of ‘To Tirzah’ with the eighteenth-century hymns which are a context for Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Hilton perceptively argues for an unreliable speaker. It would undermine the severity of the poem, and excuse Blake from a good deal of misogyny and hatred of the body, if he writes in the parodic voice of a ‘self-deceived’ sinner who believes he is righteous (Hilton, ‘Hymns’ 108). However, even if Blake is not taking the part of Tirzah’s accuser, he is, by exploring the speaker’s attitude, still recognizing that embodiment can be seen as problematic. Hilton asserts that ‘even in later works Blake celebrates “holy Generation [Image] of regeneration!” ’, yet, though he acknowledges Blake’s deletion of that word with italics and brackets, he does not comment on its indication of some hesitancy mixed with exuberant celebration, some second thoughts on whether generation images regeneration. If the speaker in ‘To Tirzah’ is flawed, that may undermine the poem’s argument, but if Tirzah is herself cruel and delights in cruelty, as Hilton recognizes (‘Hymns’ 110), the cruelty of her accuser does not change that. Hilton argues against many readings of ‘ “To Tirzah”, like almost any hymn, as a rejection of the physical body and “lustful joy” of generation’ (‘Hymns’ 109). However, the speaker is not necessarily against the ‘lustful joy’ Hilton finds in Visions of the Daughters of Albion 7:6, but rather against generation. The speaker wishes ‘To rise from Generation free’ (SIE 52:3); this could be construed as wanting to rise, in the sense of becoming sexually excited, without the results of conception and birth. If the preceding lines, ‘Whate’er is Born of Mortal Birth, / Must be consumed with the Earth’ (SIE 52:1–2), are taken along with the double meaning of ‘rise’, the speaker may be imagining an immortal sexuality free from physical restrictions, as Milton imagines for angels (Paradise Lost VIII:614–29) and Blake for eternals ( J 88:3–11). ‘To rise from Generation free’ would also be a sexuality of pleasure which does not inflict any corresponding pain on another: the pain of childbirth on a female partner, or

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the pain of mortality on a resulting child. The speaker’s desire to have sexual satisfaction without procreation may be a perversion, but Tirzah also indulges in perversions: sadism and incest. She takes pleasure in inflicting the pain of binding embodiment on her children, an embodiment which may be doomed to failure. The sympathetic labour of embodiment practiced by the daughters of Los is weaving, a creation in materials which are flexible, compared to Los’s metallic binding of Urizen. Tirzah’s metalworking, however, is described in terms more definitely negative than Los’s. O thou poor Human Form! said she. O thou poor child of woe! Why wilt thou wander away from Tirzah: why me compel to bind thee If thou dost go away from me I shall consume upon these Rocks These fibres of thine eyes that used to beam in distant heavens Away from me: I have bound down with a hot iron. These nostrils that expanded with delight in morning skies I have bent downward with lead melted in my roaring furnaces Of affliction; of love; of sweet despair; of torment unendurable My soul is seven furnaces, incessant roars the bellows Upon my terribly flaming heart, the molten metal runs In channels thro my fiery limbs: O love! O pity! O fear! O pain! O the pangs, the bitter pangs of love forsaken Ephraim was a wilderness of joy where all my wild beasts ran The River Kanah wanderd by my sweet Manassehs side To see the boy spring into heavens sounding from my sight! Go Noah fetch the girdle of strong brass, heat it red-hot: Press it around the loins of this ever expanding cruelty Shriek not so my only love! I refuse thy joys: I drink Thy shrieks because Hand & Hyle are cruel & obdurate to me. ( J 67:44–62) Tirzah binds for her own benefit. She feels she will ‘consume’ without being able to ‘lovingly’, vicariously take part in the being of a male. Tirzah’s binding efforts arise from overprotective jealousy, spilling over into torture. Since she cannot spring to the heavens, the males should not be able to either. This is another, wilful variety of the grave gravitational force of matter, Tirzah pulling and binding others down in embodiment with her. The metalworking imagery in the passage recalls the use of the word ‘sodor’, applicable to both flesh and metal, in Urizen’s binding, one example of fluid, fleshy flexibility being introduced only to harden into solidity. Giving Tirzah a forge for her embodiment activities increases the likelihood that she is a foil for Los. Paley, in his notes to the above passage, points out that ‘Tirzah’s furnaces parody Los’s, and her torture of the victim’s eyes and nostrils parodies Los’s bending of the senses of Reuben’ (242). Tirzah is a misguided

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shaper and binder of forms. Los, though he seems to have good intentions to stop Urizen’s direful changes by binding him, could also be misguided, imprisoning Urizen in, rather than saving him through, the body; Los’s similar embodiment of Reuben may send him toward or away from salvation. A Blake coinage from The Four Zoas could be applied to Tirzah’s emotions here: ‘storgous appetite’ (V:113, E 341). ‘Storge’ in Milton is the name of a river associated with a deathly embodiment, spun from the bowels of ‘Five Females & the nameless Shadowy Mother . . . with songs of amorous delight’ (M 34:27–30). Tirzah’s maternal care smothers the child in rivers of molten metal. The ‘storgous appetite’ gives perverse joy to the parent but serves to bind and enclose rather than free the object of love, as in the binding of Orc in Los’s chain of jealousy, which begins as ‘a bloody cord’ and becomes ‘an iron chain’ (FZ V:84, 91, 101–2; E 340–1). Tirzah has molten metal for blood; her emotions set it coursing, but when she uses her emotions and the blood that carries them to create a human form, that metallic blood will inevitably solidify when it cools, unlike (woven) flesh which, though constraining, is more flexible than iron. The above description characterizes Tirzah’s wish to bind human forms in order to have control over them. Reuben, who seeks in vain for beautiful Tirzah, does not become solidly bound. He may be the emblem of Tirzah’s failure or vanity, as one who in becoming more material actually becomes more insubstantial. This failure is ironic because Reuben loves as well as seeks for Tirzah; this is the kind of devotional attachment she craves, but that very attatchment can be seen as a major force in preventing Reuben’s formation. Reuben’s biblical associations link him to a male-weakening female dominance. The action which makes him a suitable representative for ‘the Vegetative Man’ (36[32]:24; Damon, Dictionary 347) is his gift of a piece of vegetation, mandrakes, to his mother (Gen. 30:14–16). Since the mandrake is said to look like a man (Frye 369), it exemplifies the meeting of man and vegetable. Since it is a (phallic) root, and an aphrodisiac, it brings genital, reproductive sexuality into the equation of man and vegetable. Reuben giving the mandrakes to his mother adds mother-love to these associations. Blake refers explicitly to Reuben’s mandrakes when he has Enitharmon laud this action on plate 93 of Jerusalem: ‘Could you Love me Rintrah, if you Pride not in my Love / As Reuben found mandrakes in the field & gave them to his Mother’ (93:8). Enitharmon acts very much like Tirzah here, because on the previous plate she fears, ‘The Poets Song draws to its period & Enitharmon is no more. / For if he be that Albion I can never weave him in my Looms’ (92:8–9). The (here, ensnaring) weaving or generating power of her loom or womb is for Enitharmon a guarantee of her existence. If neither the poet nor Los needs her once Albion awakes, she will no longer exist because as a female she depends on males for her being. Reuben is an ideal son to Enitharmon, willingly entrapped in the loom, but not ideal to Los who cannot force him to take independent form. The biblical Reuben

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Embodiment: Reuben 101

What may Man be? who can tell! but what may Woman be? To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave. There is a Throne in every Man, it is the throne of God This Woman has claimd as her own & Man is no more! Albion is the Tabernacle of Vala & her Temple And not the Tabernacle & Temple of the Most High O Albion why wilt thou Create a Female Will? To hide the most evident God in a hidden covert, even In the shadows of a Woman & a secluded Holy Place. (34[30]:25–33) This alleged domination by woman is connected to genital sexuality through the metaphorical link between the female genitals and ‘a secluded Holy Place’, evident also in a number of other passages such as the Notebook poem ‘I saw a temple all of gold’ (E 467), where a phallic snake enters a cathedral and vomits, or ejaculates, on its altar. Directly after this discussion, Los asks, ‘Hand! art thou not Reuben enrooting thyself into Bashan / Till thou remainest a vaporous Shadow in a Void!’ (34[30]:33, 36). Apparently, enrooting themselves does not make Hand or Reuben more substantially material, but on the contrary deprives them of definite being. On plate 64, Vala (as a conglomerate of all the Daughters of Albion) repeats the vapour image in connection with so-called female religious dominance, claiming that ‘The Human Divine is Womans Shadow, a Vapor in the summers heat’ (64:14). This follows lines which also recall Reuben’s embodiment and its location, describing how ‘all the Land of Canaan suspended over the Valley of Cheviot’ and ‘Reuben fled with his head downwards among the Caverns’ (63:42, 44). Reuben appears when the Human Divine is vegetated and vaporized by female sexual and religious dominance. On plate 69, the image of the holy place returns, correlated with the female and embodiment, and is explicitly connected with the question of genital sexuality versus polymorphous perversity. Reuben is again associated with these images. Hence the Infernal Veil grows in the disobedient Female: Which Jesus rends & the whole Druid Law removes away From the Inner Sanctuary: a False Holiness hid within the Center, For the Sanctuary of Eden. is in the Camp: in the Outline,

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not only gives an aphrodisiac to his biological mother, but also sleeps with his father’s concubine, committing a kind of incest for which he loses his birthright (Gen. 35:22, 49:3–4). Quite literally, he loses his dominant position as firstborn son through love for motherly figures, and willingness to be caught in their ‘looms’. Just before Reuben’s embodiment takes place, Los gives a diatribe asking,

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In the Circumference: & every Minute Particular is Holy: Embraces are Cominglings: from the Head even to the Feet; And not a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place.

(J 69:38–46) The ‘Infernal Veil’ could be the body of a child. It could also refer to the hymen, which adds to the secrecy and privacy of this holy place (as did the veil of the tabernacle, woven by women [Exod. 35:25–26]). Thus Jesus, shockingly, breaks the hymen, as well as defeating the mortal body and the exclusivity of Jewish-Druid law.4 Polymorphous perversity is transferred to larger questions through reference to the location of worship, an issue connected with the tribe of Reuben in Joshua 22. The other tribes of Israel berate the tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Mannaseh for erecting an altar in their land over the Jordan, saying ‘What trespass is this that ye have committed against the God of Israel, to turn away this day from following the Lord, in that ye have builded an altar, that ye might rebel this day against the Lord?’ ( Josh. 22:16). However, the three tribes answer that they have ‘rather done it for fear of this thing, saying, In time to come your children might speak unto our children, saying, What have ye to do with the Lord God of Israel? For the Lord hath made Jordan a border between us and you’ ( Josh. 22:24–25). They claim that they have not built the altar as an alternative place to practice sacrifices, but rather ‘that it may be a witness between us, and you, and our generations after us’ ( Josh. 22:27). It is not an altar where the same kind of devotions will be practiced, but an assertion of the right of people in a different place to still belong to the Lord, and their right to make sacrifices at the central altar. Translated into sexual terms, the altar on the other side of the Jordan is a kind of foreplay: not the same kind of sexual activity practiced in genital areas, but meant to affirm the right of access to the exclusive place. For Blake, Jesus ironically instates polymorphous perversity through an act of penetration (rending the veil); a penetration ‘once for all’ to do away with secret separation, just as his sacrifice was to do away with sacrifice (Heb. 10:10–13). W.H. Stevenson, in his notes to Jerusalem in Blake: the Complete Poems, picks up on the suggestion that a separate sanctuary and genital sexuality have an equivalent exclusivity, and explains that the Sanctuary of Eden is ‘an outside place, open to everyone; not one little room, but everywhere is holy’ (784). He also notes that ‘the tabernacle in the wilderness was surrounded by the camps of the tribes, but remained a Holy Place distinct from the camp’ (784; Num. 1:50–54). The meaningfulness of location is evident in the Bible’s instructions on what should take place outside the camp. Deuteronomy 23, for example, warns,

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Jerusalem pined in her inmost soul over Wandering Reuben As she slept in Beulahs Night hid by the Daughters of Beulah.

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Excrement also is given a place outside the camp (23:12–13). The reason is, ‘For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp . . . therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee’ (23:14). Anything to do with emissions from the genitals (which, as Blake points out, are at once ‘places of joy & love’ and ‘excrementitious’ [ J 88:39]) is excluded from the camp, yet the holiness of the inside of the camp has a centrality which reflects genital obsession. Blake touches on the complexity of abomination. As Mary Douglas argues in Purity and Danger, uncleanness does not mean filthiness, but rather centres on transgression; transgression of bodily borders symbolizes transgression of social borders (53, 121). Blake, rather than upholding inside-outside divisions, locates both holiness and sexual pleasure ‘in the Outline’, the point of division. Reuben’s tribe is associated with an alternative place of worship, rather than the exclusive, genital, central altar. This might not seem to correspond with Reuben’s apparent desire to return to the womb, but it does reflect his desire to transgress borders (such as incest laws). Jerusalem pines over wandering Reuben after the passage on the female genitals as a secret and holy place, because Reuben exemplifies the failure of genital, reproductive sexuality. He wanders, unable to take shape. Since Reuben is a reminder of the pain tied to sexuality by limiting it to reproductive purposes, and the redoubling of that pain when that purpose is not fulfilled, he can also be, conversely, a reminder of the freedom of a full-body sexuality which does not place exclusive priority on generation and its organs. Restricting the purpose of sexuality to reproduction causes frustration and jealousy when reproduction fails, as Reuben’s biblical associations show. Blake calls Leah, Reuben’s mother, and Rachel, Jacob’s other wife, ‘Daughters of Deceit & Fraud’ (J 69:11). They are the daughters of Laban, who practices deceit and fraud, and they also work by trickery themselves. Jacob falls in love with Rachel and makes a bargain with Laban: ‘I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter’ (Gen. 29:18). When the wedding night arrives, Laban organizes a bed trick, replacing Rachel with the older sister, because ‘it must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn’ (29:26). Sexual desire is impeded by trickery, because of social convention. Jacob must serve seven more years to have Rachel as a second wife (29:27). Leah is the unloved wife, but she is the fertile one, because of pity. ‘And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and

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If there be among you any man, that is not clean by reason of uncleanness that chanceth him by night,5 then shall he go abroad out of the camp, he shall not come within the camp: but it shall be, when evening cometh on, he shall wash himself with water: and when the sun is down, he shall come into the camp again. (23:10–11)

William Blake and the Body

she called his name Reuben: for she said, Surely the Lord hath looked upon my affliction; now therefore my husband will love me’ (Gen. 29:31–32). Reuben, then, is a child of pity. As The First Book of Urizen suggests in the relationship between Los and Enitharmon, generative sexuality (as depicted in Genesis as well as its parody, the Bible of Hell) is driven by pity rather than love, and conflict results. In Urizen, Los is jealous of Orc; in Genesis, Rachel is jealous of Leah. When Reuben, the product of Leah’s fertility and thus the symbol of Rachel’s jealousy, brings Leah the mandrakes, Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son’s mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son’s mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son’s mandrakes. And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes. (Gen. 30:14–16) They effectively turn Jacob into a harlot. They trade their husband for vegetables just as Jacob traded pottage for his brother Esau’s birthright. Apparently, generation and its accompanying laws render the value of a human life equivalent to the value of vegetables. Deception is quite equally spread between male and female in this family, while Reuben (like the similarly birthright-deprived Esau) seems a helpless pawn in their game, providing the mandrakes which are traded, and being the jealousy-inducing son. The Jerusalem passage in which Leah and Rachel receive their epithet describes the conglomerate form of the Sons of Albion, including Hand (compared to Reuben [ J 34[30]:36]; they are both firstborn sons [Stevenson 695]). Envying stood the enormous Form at variance with Itself In all its Members: in eternal torment of love & jealousy: Drivn forth by Los time after time from Albions cliffy shore, Drawing the free loves of Jerusalem into infernal bondage; That they might be born in Contentions of Chastity & in Deadly Hate between Leah & Rachel, Daughters of Deceit & Fraud Bearing the Images of various Species of Contention And Jealousy & Abhorrence & Revenge & deadly Murder. (69:6–13) Reuben, being the son of Leah, is the type of beings ‘born in Contentions of Chastity & in / Deadly Hate’. Blake makes use of contemporary ideas of human gestation: the thoughts of the mother (‘various Species of Contention’) imprint themselves on the child in the womb, a possibility

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emphasized by the double meaning of the phrase, ‘Bearing the Images’. G.S. Rousseau, in ‘Science and the Discovery of the Imagination in Enlightened England’, gives this explanation, from Robert James’ Medicinal Dictionary (1743–1745): ‘To the Virtue of the Mother’s Fancy . . . have been ascribed the Lineaments of the Embryo or Foetus . . . with the Marks imprest upon its Body, both at and after any Time of Conception’ (Rousseau 117, 122). Imagination, impression and lineaments suggest a connection with Blake’s conception and creation of printed words and images. Here, though, ‘infernal bondage’ is practiced instead of the infernal methods which reveal the infinite, and expunge the notion that the body is distinct from the soul (MHH 14:14–19). ‘Jealousy & Abhorrence & Revenge & deadly Murder’ are the images revealed by a sexuality which not only separates body from soul, but the genitals from the rest of the body, and concerns itself with bringing souls into vegetative existence. Like Urizen’s ‘books formed of me-’ (BU 4a:24), this reproductive sexuality produces copies of the parent; Urizen’s books are binding lawbooks, and such children are bound by their parents in their very being, their physical form being imprinted by their mother’s fancy. Among the ‘contentions of Chastity’ referred to in the passage above is Rachel’s giving her concubine to Jacob to bear children on her behalf (Gen. 29:31–30:3). Jerusalem 69 highlights the practice of concubinage by concluding that this situation is ‘not like Beulah / Where every Female delights to give her maiden to her husband’ (69:14–15). Rachel does not delight in giving her maiden to her husband but rather does it out of envy. In fact, whenever a woman in Genesis gives her maiden to her husband, it is not (explicitly, at any rate) done for sexual pleasure, but rather as a remedy for barrenness. There have been rumours that Blake desired to follow the practice of concubinage. The issue arises also in Visions of the Daughters of Albion, where Oothoon offers to catch girls for Theotormon and delight in their enjoyments (10:23–9). In their commentary on the poem, the editors of The Early Illuminated Books argue that ‘it is difficult to believe that the work was not influenced in some way by Blake’s own relationships with women, particularly his wife Catherine’, and give a résumé of available support for Blake’s position on the issue (230–1). Apparently, the Swedenborgian church William and Catherine attended in 1789 soon after suffered a schism over concubinage. In 1826 Blake contended to Henry Crabb Robinson that the Bible advocated polygamy. Gilchrist’s biography indicates that early in the Blakes’ relationship there was ‘discord’ involving ‘jealousy’ in Catherine. Whether or not these are hints of a real-life application of the idea, they indicate that Blake was interested in the concept of concubinage through much of his adult life. In relation to Jerusalem 69, Wicksteed comments that ‘Although it must remain for some an open question’, he finds it impossible to believe that ‘Blake in practice ever strayed from a strict monogamy’. In theory, however, he seems certain that Blake’s ‘reading of the Old Testament and his own reasoning convinced him that a childless

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wife should delight “to give her maiden to her husband” ’ (Wicksteed, Jerusalem 215).6 Edwin J. Ellis, in his dubiously titled biography The Real Blake, imagines (based on the poems ‘Mary’ and ‘William Bond’) a jealous argument between William and Catherine over the possibility of another woman. Ellis, referring to another example of concubinage in Genesis, narrates that Blake ‘claimed the right of Abraham to give Hagar what Sarah refused’ and threatened Catherine ‘that he would take some one else in her place, some merry and attractive girl who should do him justice’ (90–1). Ellis takes liberties with the Bible as well as Blake: Sarah did not frigidly refuse, but rather could not have children (Gen. 16:1–6). Though Ellis, like Blake, considers ‘delight’ to be the motivation for giving the maiden to the husband, it is still associated with fertility problems. If the wife who should give her maiden to her husband is considered frigid as well as barren, then a biographical parallel might go something like this: Catherine would be in the unfortunate position of the unloved wife, if William indeed desired someone more ‘merry and attractive’. Catherine could be seen as a parallel to Leah whom Genesis describes as ‘tender eyed’ in contrast to Rachel who ‘was beautiful and well favoured’ (29:17), if one gives credence to the Othellolike story that William married Catherine because she pitied him for his rejection by the more seductive Polly Wood to whom he felt a strong attraction (King 39; Gilchrist 38). Poor Catherine would then be, like Leah, a substitute for the desired wife, but unlike Leah, not pitied by God and made fertile though unloved (Gen. 29:31–33). Thus Reuben would be the firstborn who never manages to be born. Barrenness is most often taken to mean not conceiving a child. It could also mean not carrying a child to term. Ellis presents his story of the quarrel as the reason ‘why this vigorous and unstained young couple’, William and Catherine Blake, ‘lived childless all their lives’ (91): a pregnant Catherine, overcome with emotion, fell and lost the baby. Later, Kerrison Preston in Blake and Rossetti presents the tale and its underpinnings as widely accepted: ‘recent psychology and scholarship have generally agreed upon certain biographical details revealed in Blake’s writings, and it is probable that a baby, expected for some months, through some accident of miscarriage was not born’ (29). If belief in the Blakes’ lost child had some currency in the first half of the twentieth century, speculation has dropped off, but curiosity has not. For instance, James King in his biography feels the need to state that ‘the reason for their childlessness is not known’, and surmises that ‘theirs was not a marriage which would likely have welcomed children’ (130). Peter Ackroyd similarly muses, ‘it was a childless marriage . . . although perhaps in a sense the true children were themselves’ (83). These writers recognize a possibility open to the Blakes, if not, apparently, to the women of Genesis: they could certainly have been childless by choice. Foster Damon, though, considers failed pregnancy to be the explanation for the Blakes’ lack of children, and sees it reflected in Blake’s works. ‘One speculates: might not

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Catherine have given birth to a stillborn girl? Perhaps The Book of Thel, with its strange ending, was an elegy to the Blakes’ dead daughter, their only offspring’ (Dictionary 401). While Damon warns that he is speculating, he becomes specific enough to decide the sex of the child. He finds related imagery in Blake’s final prophecy. Quoting Jerusalem 56:13–16, ‘There the Daughters of Albion weave the mortal body on the golden Loom of Love, “a Garment and Cradle . . . for the infantine Terror, for fear at entering the gate into our World of cruel Lamentation, it flee back & hide in Non-Entity’s dark wild” ’, Damon comments, ‘This is evidently a miscarriage’ (Dictionary 401). These speculations are based on what the writers know of Blake from his writings, and Damon finds his suggestions in Thel and Jerusalem, which are separated by a wide range of time. This alone would make it difficult to posit a biographical basis for the Blakes experiencing miscarriage: when did it happen? Yet, the intensity of the loss could cause even one miscarriage to be recalled continually over a lifetime. Kim Kluger-Bell, in Unspeakable Losses: Understanding the Experience of Pregnancy Loss, Miscarriage and Abortion, explains that grief over a lost baby can recur even 20 years later, especially if triggered by a reminding event (25). Alternatively, the appearance of miscarriage-related imagery over such a long period of time could be accounted for by more than one failed birth, as Ellis suggests (91). Even if the time period could be pinpointed, it is nearly impossible to discover evidence of a miscarriage. Ruth Richardson, author of Death, Dissection and the Destitute, observes that miscarriage records from the eighteenth century are few, and the British National Health Service today does not record miscarriages.7 Rosemary Mander also notes that ‘in the U.K., registration of miscarriage is not required, neither is burial or other ritual’ (43). Difficulty in finding a record, then, or finding a record which is uncertain, does not necessarily mean that a miscarriage did not occur.8 A lost baby can also be lost to history. The few places where rare evidence of miscarriage can be found include burial records, doctors’ and midwives’ records, and hospital records. The available records relating to interments at the Blakes’ parishes (St Martin’s in the Field and St James), and at Bunhill Fields where the Blakes were buried, offer no evidence of Catherine’s possible miscarriage. They include interment order books, churchwardens’ accounts, burial accounts, and sextons’ daybooks. Though children as young as two days old are entered in the Bunhill Fields burial register, among these burial records only the St Martin’s sexton’s daybook records abortives. The difficulty with doctors’ or midwives’ records as a source is that it is unknown who would have attended Catherine. Doctors in the Blakes’ acquaintance include John Birch, whose ‘Electrical Magic’ ameliorated Catherine’s health in 1804, and William Guy, who attended William Hayley when he fell from a horse a few days before Blake’s trial (Bentley, Blake Records 73, 144). No records left by Birch or Guy

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could be found for consultation.9 Of course, William and John Hunter were medical experts known to the Blakes. William Hunter’s obstetric clientele, though, were of the ‘charmed circles’ of society, as Roy Porter puts it in his article ‘William Hunter: a Surgeon and a Gentleman’. His ‘ultra-fashionable practice’ included nobility such as Queen Charlotte whose physician he became in 1762 (11–12). He was unlikely to have assisted Catherine Blake because of this exclusivity, but also because he died in 1783, less than a year after the Blakes’ marriage. Though John Hunter has left case studies, none relate to miscarriage. The records of lying-in hospitals in the London area which survive from the time are those of the British Lying-In Hospital, the General Lying-In Hospital in Lambeth, the City of London Maternity Hospital in Islington, and Middlesex Hospital. In the Minutes of the Weekly Board of the British Lying-In Hospital in Endell Street, in Holborn, a ‘Cath.e Blake’ is listed as a patient on 26 August 1796.10 Usually, names reappear week after week (the women remaining in the hospital) then are entered in the list of those discharged. ‘Cath.e Blake’ appears only once, with no other details. The Admissions Registers of the British Lying-In Hospital also survive, but from May to October of 1796 there is no entry for a Catherine Blake. The Admissions Registers give the name and occupation of the husband, and list the child’s gender and birth date, sometimes leaving a blank space or indicating a stillbirth. The discrepancy, then, is a lost chance to confirm whether this is the same Catherine Blake, or to verify that she suffered a miscarriage. Catherine Blake must have been as common a name as William Blake was in London at the time; still, in all of the sources consulted, no other Catherine Blake appeared (nor any Catherine Boucher) except in instances already known to relate to Blake’s mother, sister or wife.11 The fact that this Catherine’s name is entered only once, and only in the British Lying-In Hospital minutes and not in the formal admissions register, suggests that her case was unusual. Perhaps she ‘disappears’ because she did not successfully give birth.12 Lying-in hospital records were checked as an unlikely possibility. Women were usually admitted far into their pregnancies (often at eight months) and sometimes in labour. ‘Cath.e Blake’ is an exception in that her name is recorded only once; she may have been an exception to this regular practice as well. Many lying-in hospitals were charity institutions; some received unmarried women. However, the British Lying-In Hospital accepted only married women with references from subscribers. The Admissions Register shows that wives of tailors, servants, shoemakers, bakers and sailors were accommodated there. According to Bentley, the Blakes were of a higher social status than people of these occupations, despite their unstable financial status through the course of their lives and their respective fathers being a hosier and a market-gardener.13 The Blakes lived in Lambeth in 1796, which makes it seem that Catherine would be going unnecessarily out of her way in attending a hospital in Holborn. If Catherine knew a subscriber

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to the hospital who could recommend her, this would be a reason to prefer the Holborn hospital; however, a list of subscribers is not available. In 1796, Catherine was 34, childbearing age, but the ‘evidence’ of Blake’s poetry would point to an earlier date; however, it also speaks of miscarriage much later. Perhaps this is, among more than one failed pregnancy, the only instance where a record survives, if it is the same Catherine Blake. Since records of miscarriages are almost nonexistent, finding even minimal evidence is remarkable. Richardson suggests that since there is no official marking of the loss of a child through miscarriage, such a loss may only be recorded for history through poetry, often the mode of expression for deep, private emotions with no other outlet. Her hypothesis is borne out in late-twentieth-century works on miscarriage, such as Hidden Loss, a collection edited by Valerie Hey and others which combines medical advice with confessional writing, particularly poetry. However, since creative expression need not take its inspiration from reality, an artistic depiction of the loss of a child could derive from second-hand knowledge acquired from friends or books, or a sympathetic imagining of the experience. One of the few artworks we have by Catherine Blake, dating from around 1800, is a painting of a scene from Matthew Lewis’ The Monk: Agnes clutching her dead child (Butlin 1191, cat. C1). This could be a very significant choice of subject. Catherine may be preserving an otherwise unrecorded loss of her own through creating an image of a similar loss. Or, she may simply be responding to something read rather than experienced, a scene any ‘sensible’ female reader would find affecting. As for William, we shall see that he depicts miscarriage from the perspectives of the woman and child, perspectives foreign to an adult male. While his miscarriage imagery might have drawn on his and Catherine’s own childlessness, Blake could not have written entirely from personal experience. Blake could gain knowledge of miscarriage from friends in the medical profession, such as Birch, Guy and the Hunters.14 He could also learn from books on obstetrics and midwifery; his interest in physiology and birth make it plausible that he would read books on those subjects. Two of the medical books for which Blake produced engravings involve related topics (Essick, Commercial 33–4). While Thomas Henry’s Memoirs of Albert de Haller touches on Haller’s discoveries about conception and foetal growth, John Brown’s Elements of Medicine contains some facts on miscarriage. In addition, Blake lived in the aftermath of the controversy over ‘man-midwives’.15 Male doctors becoming involved in childbirth, and introducing new techniques and instruments such as forceps, caused a proliferation of works offering instruction, information and argument on obstetrics, including problematic pregnancies. Important figures in this scene include William Smellie, and William Hunter. Smellie and Hunter were friends; both produced obstetrical atlases (Roberts and Tomlinson 451). Hunter’s Anatomy of the Human

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Gravid Uterus includes illustrations of abortions, while Smellie’s case studies provide detailled information on miscarriage. Blake’s Proverb of Hell, ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’ (MHH 10:12–13) gains new resonance when one considers a belief cited by Smellie: ‘Abortion may be . . . occasioned by uncommon longings for things that cannot be soon or easily got, or such as the woman is ashamed to ask for, namely different kinds of food and drink. These appetites, if not gratified, sometimes produce a miscarriage’ (1:146). The Book of Ahania begins with parent-child conflict between Urizen and Fuzon and continues through the murder of the son by the father using a bow made from a snake’s ribs: ‘O nerve of that lust form’d monster!’ (4:27). Since, as Hilton points out, ‘nerve’ can denote ‘penis’ (Literal 92), Urizen’s apostrophe suggests hatred of sexual activity as bringing death, not life. Los is again seen attempting to give shape to human bodies, but failing and producing horrors. The Eternal Prophet beat on his anvils Enrag’d in the desolate darkness He forg’d nets of iron around And Los threw them around the bones The shapes screaming flutter’d vain Some combin’d into muscles & glands Some organs for craving and lust Most remain’d on the tormented void: Urizens army of horrors. (5:27–35) Ahania laments being cast out from Urizen, and cast out from physical existence itself: ‘Her voice was heard, but no form / Had she’ (5:49–50). She may also lament being deprived of the ability to bear children. Images of fertility culminate in the burial of ‘bones from the birth’: The sweat poured down thy temples To Ahania return’d in evening The moisture awoke to birth My mothers-joys, sleeping in bliss. But now alone over rocks, mountains Cast out from thy lovely bosom: Cruel jealousy! selfish fear! Self-destroying: how can delight, Renew in these chains of darkness Where bones of beasts are strown On the bleak and snowy mountains

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Embodiment: Reuben 111

Where bones from the birth are buried Before they see the light.

Burial before seeing the light suggests that life is pre-empted; a child is dead before it is born. The presence of bones, and indications of the shapelessness of the potential child, recur in Smellie’s descriptions. In one case the baby’s bones are saved in a box; in another, along with ‘a fluid of a brownish colour and mortified smell, continually draining from the vagina . . . several bones of the fingers and toes of a child, came away’ (2:149, 144). In the late eighteenth century it was common for the remains of a miscarried child to be buried (Richardson). In The Book of Thel, as Damon proposes, Thel’s flight back into the vales of Har can be seen as a conscious choice not to be born: ‘the refusal of a yet unbodied soul to descend into this mortal world of “dolours & lamentations” (Thel 6:6)’ (Dictionary 401). A voice from her own grave asks questions like, ‘Why a Tongue impress’d with honey from every wind? / Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?’ (8:16–17). This voice of death questions not only why the functions of the senses should be potentially dangerous and painful, but also why the sense organs should exist at all. Again, for Blake, sense organs are an important, perhaps synechdochic part of the mortal body’s formation. Thel, like an embryo forming its organs, dwells in a vale, an image of the womb.16 She does not emerge from the vale mature and whole. Damon also sees Thel as ‘the innocent girl on the verge of Experience . . . frightened at the thought of some day becoming a mother’ (Dictionary 401). A twinning occurs. Blake is fond of such identity confusion, as when characters’ spectres and emanations, born like children, are actually aspects of themselves. For Damon, Thel is both the miscarried child frightened of being born, and the girl frightened of becoming a mother. Thel laments that she feeds and nurtures no one, so she may also be a woman who suffers a miscarriage: a mother with no living child. She says of herself, ‘And all shall say, without a use this shining woman liv’d, / Or did she only live. to be at death the food of worms’ (5:22–3). Helen Bruder finds that in Thel, ‘the Worm is a dual symbol, representing both an infant and a penis’ (49). Since worms also eat corpses, the symbol is triple, uniting sex, conception and death. In The First Book of Urizen, the worm emphasizes the discomforts of pregnancy, and the child’s feeding on the mother, even eating away her very life: ‘Enitharmon sick, / Felt a Worm within her womb’ (17:19–20). The worm, like the serpent in the (reversed) series ‘beast, bird, fish, serpent & element’ of Urizen’s growth (or shrinking) (BU 3:15), is an early form of the foetus, a child not fully formed. In the worm image, death is present at the outset of life. The worm in the womb is also like an abortive birth, the

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remains of which eat away at the health the mother and of future babies. John Brown writes, ‘the most powerful agent in bringing [a miscarriage] on, is some taint left since a former abortion, which encreases in proportion to the number of abortions’ (2:329). The fact that Blake refers to Thel as ‘the Virgin’ when she flees at the poem’s close could discount this interpretation: she could be a woman who has never had sex nor conceived a child, rather than a woman who conceived and lost the baby. However, she is a virgin who has glimpsed experience.17 In addition to being acquainted with the worm as penis, infant and death image, she is given passage into the womb/tomb, to witness the ‘secrets of the land unknown; / . . . the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous [phallic] roots / Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists’ (8:2–4). Calling her a virgin could show how states between virgin and mother are unaccounted for in definitions of feminine identity. Since a woman who miscarries does not bear a child, she is not a mother; this is another way in which the identities of mother and child are interrelated. Valerie Hey, in her essay ‘A Feminist Exploration’ in the collection Hidden Loss: Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy, illustrates the identity problems caused by miscarriage: if being pregnant is being ‘in the club’, then ‘being unpregnant leaves you apparently with no clubs left to join’ (56). Since there is no category for an almost-mother, it is as though Thel remains a virgin by default. She cannot call herself a matron like the matron Clay, and cannot be given the mature status and approval which come with motherhood. In fact, the Clay takes that status away from her, acting as mother to the worm in Thel’s stead: ‘The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice, & raisd her pitying head; / She bowd over the weeping infant, and her life exhal’d / In milky fondness’ (6:7–9). Thel commits her motherhood to the clay in which her child is buried. As a situation in which a woman’s status is suspended between virginity and motherhood, miscarriage resembles virgin birth. In miscarriage, the full result of sexual intercourse in generation is not apparent. If sex is thought of as being for the purpose of procreation, then miscarriage can be considered a failure to fulfil one’s complete sexual function. Blake’s views on genital sexuality would undermine such a restrictive perspective that a woman should be either a virgin or a mother. These limiting categories have repercussions for both the male and female, as Oothoon sees when she explains how ‘The moment of desire!’ is reduced to ‘the self enjoyings of self denial’ (VDA 10:3, 9). Sexual activity should be prolific, not necessarily producing children exclusively, but other kinds of ‘infant joys’: emotions, attachments, and ideas can be created and communicated. To consider mortal children the only product of sex is an excessively narrow view, one which blocks the expressiveness of sexuality and closes young men and women in the chambers, shadows, curtains and pillow folds of the secret, shameful variety of masturbation Oothoon laments (VDA 5, 7). Blake’s com-

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ments on concubines being taken because of delight rather than barrenness, though problematic in apparently serving only masculine desire, would argue for the value of enjoyment over fertility. Hobson, particularly, is able to redeem the episode where Oothoon procures girls for Theotormon by suggesting that she likes to watch: she gains autoerotic pleasure for herself, ‘as implied by her recumbent posture and the phrase “bliss on bliss”, which applies to herself as well as to Theotormon and the “girls” ’ (35). Indeed, Hobson argues that the ‘jarring quality’ of this scene ‘is not just subservience to the male, but also the implications that Oothoon takes sexual delight in watching someone else perform and, less directly, that she herself may shrink from sex with others. Blake, in other words, here dramatizes and celebrates sexual perversion, more openly than anywhere else in his early writings’ (34). Hobson claims the scene ‘provok[es] critics to employ terms such as “voyeur” and “perverted” ’, partly because it ‘raises the possibility of sexual gratification other than through heterosexual’ and I would add, reproductive, ‘intercourse’ (34–5). If the misunderstanding of the sexual status of a woman who suffers miscarriage adds insult to injury by giving no value to sex when it does not result in birth, then the concept of virgin birth does the opposite. It endorses the excessive importance of generation, and erases sexual pleasure. This reasoning could be what lies behind Blake’s vitriolic comments on virgin birth in an epigram ‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Johanna Southcott’. Southcott claimed to be carrying a messianic baby. Blake writes, Whateer is done to her she cannot know And if youll ask her she will swear it so Whether tis good or evil none’s to blame No one can take the pride no one the shame. (E 501) Blake implies that virgin birth only exists as a dodge to deny sexual intercourse with a human father. He also, apparently, seeks to undermine female claims to independent procreation: a virgin mother is not seen by Blake as having agency in her motherhood, for good or for ill, but rather this conception is something done to her, and no one is responsible for it. Furthermore, Southcott’s child is a promise never fulfilled, an unreality, as much a lie as claiming to become pregnant without having sex with a man. It turned out that Southcott’s pregnancy was false: her autopsy revealed that she was not carrying a child (Paley, ‘Prince’ 287). Though Blake in The Book of Thel shows sympathy for both mother and child with a remarkable sensitivity to the pain added by the complications of their status, he is also able to treat the difficulties of motherhood with hateful scorn. He does so here with Southcott and Mary, and, as previously seen, with Leah and Rachel and their counterpart in mandrakes, Enitharmon, not to mention the odium he pours

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on Tirzah. If embodiment is seen as a positive, merciful action, as it can be in the work of the daughters of Los, then its failure is tragic, a sorrowful blow to the very idea of creation. However, if embodiment is seen as a cruel imprisonment, as it is in Tirzah’s actions, it is an example of the flaws inherent in female efforts to create. Los attempts nonconventional births in his bindings of Urizen and Reuben, but his actions are not entirely positive or successful, probably because he is not creating emotions or works of art, but solid and opaque physical bodies. The failure of conventional birth from the female, and the accompanying failure of male attempts, displays the failure of material creation; as Blake writes, ‘This World is too poor to produce one Seed’ (AR E 656). Thel’s motto, in which Bruder detects ‘obvious gendered significance’ (207), can be read as an expression of the mystery of human gestation, and the struggle over which gender is most responsible for it. Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole: Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl? (1:1–4) What is in the pit, or womb? The motto recalls The First Book of Urizen’s exploration of the various possible explanations of conception available in Blake’s time. Different factions argued whether it was the female egg or the ‘animalcules’ of the male sperm which grew into the child, each seeing the other element as only a catalyst or nurturer (McLaren, ‘Pleasures’ 334). What occurred in that hidden place? The ‘mole’ that might know what is in the ‘pit’ shares its name with a feminine disorder. A false pregnancy which consists of a growth in the womb instead of a foetus, was called a ‘mole’ (Smellie 2:81). Smellie explains that moles ‘generally’ occur ‘in women betwixt the age of forty-five and fifty, or later, when their Menses begin to disappear’, but ‘sometimes from internal or external accidents that may produce continued floodings’ (1:105), the kind of accident Ellis imagines happened to Catherine Blake. If the silver rod and golden bowl are penis and vagina, then Blake questions whether wisdom can be put in the rod. Wisdom is an emanation or child of God (see Prov. 8:22–31); can such a spiritual being be carried through the penis? Is the golden bowl capable of holding an ‘infant Love’ ( J 82:37)? These rhetorical questions address but do not solve both the mystery of human procreation and a closely related question: whose fault is it, the man’s or the woman’s, when procreation fails? Thel’s lamentations are echoed in the sentiments of twentieth-century writing on miscarriage which emphasizes that women are still defined as mothers, and if one fails to bear a child, one is a failure as a woman regardless of – or rather because of – other achievements. Taking on activities

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outside the female sphere is often mistakenly blamed for stress or health problems thought to cause miscarriage (Herz 67; Lachelin 32; Hey 63–6). Bruder finds that, for many male critics, Thel is tiresomely sorry for herself: Robert F. Gleckner complains of her ‘persistent whining’, Michael Ferber predicts that her ‘self-regarding’ attitude will cause her to ‘become a bitter old maid with grey hairs on her head’, and Stephen Behrendt claims Thel has chosen to ‘wallow in self-pity and cynicism’ (in Bruder 40, 45, 200). Some women critics, however, such as Anne Mellor and Nancy Bogan, admire Thel as a protestor rejecting a male-centred world (in Bruder 53). Similarly, feminist writings on miscarriage document derisive attitudes to women’s emotions, and assert the right to grieve. Valerie Hey argues that Women are often unused to getting support: characteristically we are supposed to provide it. Asking for it for ourselves, for as long as necessary, seems daunting, especially if we are discouraged in the business by simple-minded injunctions to ‘pull yourself together’ (i.e. stop wanting support – be a woman and provide it); ‘try for another as soon as you can’ (another version of the same thing: stop brooding – start breeding); ‘take better care of yourself’: (i.e. it was all your own fault anyway, you shouldn’t have a paid job, have gone out, and so on). (71) The problem is compounded by viewing miscarriage as an ‘insignificant menstruation-like event’ (Mander 42), and seeing the miscarried child as not a child but a foetus, or even a ‘product of conception’ (Hey 60): the event itself is belittled as well as the woman’s emotional reaction to it. At the one point in the poem when Thel is comforted, she says in response to the Matron Clay, 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 form: but that he cherish’d it With milk and oil, I never knew; and therefore did I weep, And I complaind in the mild air, because I fade away, And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot. (7:8–13) Thel is comforted to know that even a worm – the image of death in the womb – is cherished by God; that a lost baby can be seen as a baby, an individual soul whose existence and well-being is valued in the spiritual realm, if not in the material world. Hey touches on the problem of the word ‘abortion’ being used both for the wilful and accidental termination of a pregnancy. She explains that though Hidden Loss’s contributors are all pro-choice, they question the

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‘unhelpful tendency’ of ‘pro-choice politics . . . to converge with the medical discourse that makes statements about the status of the unborn child which fail to acknowledge its humanity’ (68–9). We have already seen that Hunter, Smellie and Brown use the word ‘abortion’ for miscarriage. Angus McLaren finds statements similar to those described by Hey circulating in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Britain. Though purposeful abortion was not made a statutory offence until 1803, he writes, ‘the century witnessed a rising tide of hostile comments aimed at such action’. According to McLaren, ‘throughout the 1700s, the view was still held that foetal life was not present until animation or “quickening” ’ (Birth Control 31). Daniel Defoe, in his Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom – A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed (1727), makes this belief seem too convenient for women as an excuse for abortion: ‘all the while the Foetus is forming, and the Embrio or Conception is proceeding, even to the Moment that the Soul is infused, so long it is absolutely not in her Power only, but in her right, to kill or keep alive, save or destroy the Thing she goes with, she won’t call it Child’ (in McLaren, Birth Control 34). Other writings treat abortion sternly, as a sin. Thomas Short, in New Observations (1750), strangely refers to abortion, infanticide and birth control as suicide: ‘By Suicide is meaned, not only the Destruction of real Beings in the womb, Birth or immediately after; but all nefarious Practices used by wicked Wretches to prevent Conception from their carnal Gratification’ (in McLaren, Birth Control 32). Thel understands that a worm/foetus is loved by God and it is considered a sin to harm it ‘wilful’, but moralizing on abortion fails to consider non-wilful abortion, or miscarriage. In the flood of guilt which combines with grief, it may seem that if termination of a pregnancy is sinful, some sin must have caused the miscarriage. It could be perceived as the result of a particular ‘sin’, as Brown suggests previous (perhaps intentional) abortions can increase the likelihood of later (perhaps unintentional) ones; or as general feeling of divine punishment for sin, sexual or otherwise. This rationalization does not alleviate a sense of injustice because it is the innocent, unborn child who dies for the parent’s supposed sin. Where there is no sin, and where no human being willed the baby’s destruction, miscarriage seems like a cruel act of arbitrary divine power. Thel’s realization differentiates between wilful and non-wilful abortion, and between the punishment of the ‘guilty’ parent and the innocent foetus. She knew God would punish those who ‘wilful, bruis’d’ the ‘helpless’ worm, but she wept because she never knew God cherished the worm itself. A reason for calling abortion suicide, as Short does, may be that the means of abortion in the eighteenth century, including drugs that induce miscarriage, were dangerous to the woman’s as well as the child’s health. In fact, Joanna Southcott tells the story of a woman who dies from taking an abortifacient in her Letters and Communications . . . lately written to Jane Towley (1804) (in McLaren, Birth Control 33). Mary Wollstonecraft’s Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria includes the story of a servant made pregnant by her

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master. He gives her ‘medicine in a phial, which he desired me to take, telling me, without any circumlocution, for what purpose it was designed. I burst into tears, I thought it was killing myself’. When later, in despair, she took the medicine, she found that its effects were ‘violent’; though she survived, she was confined to bed for days (111–12). This twinning of mother and child as victims of abortion parallels the dual role of Thel as both a woman who suffers miscarriage, and the miscarried child. She and the worm share the same fate of lying down in the matron Clay’s cold bed; because she hears that God cares for the worm, she herself is comforted. Like those who behold Reuben’s abortive passages over the Jordan, Thel becomes what she beholds. Thel could be both mother and child, or not-mother and not-child. Readers cannot agree whether to admire or condemn her. Similarly, critics are divided over whether Reuben’s journey is toward or away from salvation. Like Thel, Reuben does not react well to the introduction of sense organs. Los bended his Nostrils down to the Earth, then sent him over Jordan to the Land of the Hittite: every-one that saw him Fled! they fled at his horrible Form: they hid in caves And dens, they looked on one-another & became what they beheld Reuben return’d to Bashan, in despair he slept on the Stone. (34[30]:47–51) Los then shapes Reuben’s eyes, mouth and ears; each time Reuben frightens those on the other side of the river, then returns. Since he never completely takes bodily shape nor permanently passes over the river, he could, among his many meanings, represent repeated miscarriages. In a speech preceding Reuben’s embodiment, Los associates the pains of birth with those of death: ‘I hear the screech of Childbirth loud pealing. & the groans / Of Death’ (34[30]:23–4). John Brown writes, ‘In abortion, the back, the loins, the belly, are pained, like what happens in child-labour’ (2:329). As with the worm in the womb, birth and death are coeval; miscarriage is a birth of death. At the start of Reuben’s embodiment narrative in Jerusalem 34[30], it is said that ‘Reuben slept in Bashan like one dead in the valley’ (34[30]:43), like one dead in the womb. Los tries to make Reuben successfully leave the valley/womb, but each time he fails. Reuben horrifies those who see him, as though he is taboo. Valerie Hey sees losing an unborn child as a nexus of taboos: ‘the general taboo in Western society about speaking of death, a silence which, added to the secrecy surrounding “women’s troubles” and the need to maintain the ideology of blissful motherhood, produces the comprehensive evasions surrounding the experiences of miscarriage’ (54). Reuben fits Mary Douglas’ definition of the unclean or taboo as something that transgresses borders,

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especially bodily borders (53, 121). He is a border-crosser, passing to and fro over the Jordan, and failing to gain the definite shape which would define him as a human being. Rivers (like Styx) are traditionally borders between life and death. As a miscarried child, Reuben embodies the death before birth which Hey calls ‘the ultimate paradox. We are at one moment nurturing life and the next minute embracing death, and at times the distinction cannot be clearly made’, empirical science not always being able to discern whether a baby in the womb is still living (55). Bashan where Reuben slept is a home of the Rephaim which are, as Damon finds, ghosts (Dictionary 346). The ‘Valley of Rephaim’ is associated with Reuben, who flees before the Daughters of Albion in Jerusalem 64, as they weave bodies in a bloody loom. The stamping feet of Ragan upon the flaming Treddles of her Loom That drop with crimson gore with the Loves of Albion & Canaan Opening along the Valley of Rephaim. (64:36–38) The loom/womb drops with gore and opens along the valley of ghosts: it is as though the Loves (like the ‘free loves’ of Jerusalem 69 and the ‘Infant Love’ of Jerusalem 82, personified as babies) are turned into gore and let loose into a land of ghosts. Frye argues that ‘the creation of Reuben fills those who see it with horror or ridicule’ because he embodies ‘the nightmare life-in-death that thicks man’s blood with cold . . . there is no more terrifying vision than a ghost, or spectre, a human form at once dead and alive’ (367–8). Seeing Reuben as a miscarriage epitomizes this incorporation of life, or birth, and death, and fills out Frye’s suggestion that Reuben is like a spectre. As an abortive birth, Reuben brings despair and deathly thoughts, and separates from another being’s body in blood and fibre, as spectres do. Reuben is, as his father Jacob calls him, ‘unstable as water’ (Gen. 49:4), as shapeless and disgusting to those who see him as ‘unclean’ bodily fluids, taboo like the incest he commits. The biblical Reuben does not lose his physical form in a flood of taboos, but he does lose his identity because of another kind of transgression. ‘Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine’ (Gen. 35:22). For this quasi-incestuous act, he loses his birthright; in his desire to return to the womb, he loses the status of being the first to emerge from it. He shows Oedipal tendencies toward his biological mother as well in gifting her with mandrakes. Reuben’s over-involvement with his father’s women allows Blake to cast him, in Paley’s words, as ‘the mother-fixated man’: the faulty product of female birth, entrapped in the webs of female sexuality. This fixation affects Reuben’s identity: he ‘would rather sleep in the womb of Nature than awaken to life in order to realize his own form’ (Paley, Continuing 270). Paley’s observation that mandrakes are foetus-shaped makes particularly

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clear the connection between Reuben losing his birthright through incestual desire and his regressing to a pre-birth state (Continuing 270). Reuben’s difficulty in separating from the mother and becoming an independent being is dramatized by his repeated, unsuccesful trips over the river toward embodiment. When Jacob deprives Reuben of his birthright, he pronounces, ‘Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel [or, have the preeminence]; because thou wentest up to thy father’s bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch’ (Gen. 49:3–4). For Jacob, Reuben’s regressive incest shows a weakness extreme enough to dissolve Reuben’s identity. He is no firstborn; he is not even solid but rather liquid, like a baby that dissolves in a flux, as described by Smellie, before it has fully taken shape. Thel’s motto asks whether the male or female is responsible for successful reproduction; in Jerusalem Los shapes Reuben, rather than, for instance, Tirzah. In the Reuben embodiment passage, ‘Reuben return’d to his place, in vain he sought beautiful Tirzah’ (36[32]:1), sought the maker of the mortal body in vain. Perhaps if Tirzah cannot successfully form him, then Los will try, in an example of that circumvention of normal birth seen in Blake by S.H. Clark, who enumerates ‘the peculiar ways in which Blake’s characters get born – being woven, hammered into shape, released by earthquake – anything rather than the relatively simple expedient of coming out of a womb’ (181). David Punter recognizes in Blake the ‘rage of womb envy’ (Unconscious 92, 98). Seeking alternative modes of childbearing, and imagining a male takeover of reproduction, could be spurred by a frustration with the failure of normal birth from the female. While the male may try to improve on female birthgiving, he does not succeed either. It may be that, for Blake, birth into bodily existence is never a complete success. The ambivalence of Los’ work reflects the ambivalence of embodiment, also seen in Thel’s reaction to the sense catalogue recited by the voice from her grave, and the reactions of Reuben’s observers to his horrible new-formed body. They flee the sight of him and hide, then become what they behold. Northrop Frye, who sees Reuben’s passage over the Jordan as a movement away from salvation, interprets ‘they became what they beheld’ to mean that ‘we see the world as monstrous because our minds are contorted’ (367). Peter Otto insists that Reuben shows those on the other side of the river the reality of their own situation. Since they do not want to face it, they flee into caves and ‘become what they behold’ (145). For Bloom, Reuben repeatedly returns because ‘he has become too grim a reality for the beings he encounters on the other side’. Each sense Los organizes is ‘a truth that those living in delusion cannot bear (though in vain, for once they see him they “became what they beheld” and so learn the reality of their condition)’ (394). Yet, the problem with these formulations is, how could they become like Reuben if they were already like him? Also, these critics imply that

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becoming what one beholds is morally deserved, while Reuben’s effect on others may be an uncontrollable force with tragic results. As with the blaming of Thel, there could be a problematic lack of sympathy here. As we have seen, in the embodying practices of Los, Tirzah and the Daughters of Los, coming into physical existence can be necessitated by an individual’s erring spiritual state – Urizen’s separation apparently sparks his direful changes – but it can also overcome one uncontrollably, through matter’s gravitational pull. Embodiment can be seen as entrapment or rescue, selfinflicted, imposed like torture, or helplessly undergone. That Reuben’s beholders become what they see could be, rather than a condemnation of their spiritual state, a commentary on the human condition. Does it mean that, considering the horrors of bodily existence, we are all abortions, malformed, unsuccessful reproductions of the human form divine? Or, does the occurrence of tragedies like miscarriage cause this life to seem that way? Reuben’s abortive embodiment is followed by a recurrence of the Four Zoas ‘chang[ing] their situations, in the Universal Man’ (36[32]:26). A miscarriage, in this context, is a type of the many kinds of traumatic experience which can destroy the balance of a person’s being, and consequently one’s relationship with others. If the whole passage describing Reuben’s embodiment is seen allegorically, earthly life is likened to an abortive birth. A person is not whole in this kind of existence. Life is bloody, painful and precarious. When the people who live across the river see Reuben, they flee the terrible sight, but still become what they behold. Notably, ‘every-one that saw him / Fled!’, yet ‘they looked on one-another & became what they beheld’ (34[30]:48, 50; my italics): in this light, we are all abortive births, dreadful to look upon. Reuben sleeps in a valley, ‘Cut off from Albion’s mountains & from all the Earths summits’ (34[30]:44). He dwells in the negative space which is also the space in Blake’s illuminated text, surrounding and defining the words and images. Reuben sleeps ‘Between Succoth and Zaretan’ (J 34[30]:45). Here the metal accoutrements for Solomon’s temple were ‘cast . . . in the clay ground’ (1 Kings 7:46). In this position, Reuben is akin to Blake’s plates which take shape through more than one passage under the acid bath (Viscomi 81–4), like Reuben’s passages over the river Jordan. Adam in Elohim Creating Adam (Fig. 2.2, above) also serves to liken the embodiment of illuminated verse to the embodiment of human beings. Being formed out of clay, he is pictured as still partially attached to the ground, like a relief image rising from one of Blake’s plates. When Blake’s plates emerge from the acid Jordan they are, like Reuben, not wholly embodied; they still need to be printed and retouched. Reuben’s abortive creation is related to Blake’s struggle against finality in his works, which cross back and forth over the river that divides print and manuscript, oral and written, visual and verbal, order and chaos.

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Los the blacksmith, often twinned with Blake the engraver, shapes Reuben’s body. Blake’s creation of his Giant Forms is a kind of birth, and one that, like human reproduction, is threatened by failure. Blake’s art theory asserts that conception and execution are inseparable. On the one hand, this theory would seem to exclude the possibility of being able to imagine or conceive something without being able to successfuly create or give birth to it. Of course, this would be difficult to hold to in practice because any kind of ‘miscarriage’ would be disallowed. On the other hand, it could be another expression of birth and death happening simultaneously: something is ‘conceived’ or given life, and also ‘executed’ or murdered, at the same moment. Once something is given shape, that is a kind of death for it if it can no longer grow or change; an idea can be killed in its formation. Morris Eaves sees that Blake’s identification of conception and execution is really for the purpose of prioretizing conception, and ensuring that it influences execution, rather than conception being limited to what is easy to execute. ‘Blake’s value system is strongly at work orienting the items in the series toward conception and away from execution, toward the “Mental” and away from the “Corporeal” (Milton 1, E 95). His investment in the bifurcation of mind from nature is simply too powerful to allow mental invention to be made interchangeable with physical expression’ (Counter-Arts 179). Through this argument Blake may be asserting what he asserts elsewhere, that spirits and visions are ‘organized and minutely articulated’ (in fact, imagination has ‘stronger and better lineaments’ than what the ‘perishing mortal eye’ sees) and ‘Spirits are organized men’ (DC E 541–2). Visions have bodies. It is not so much that if one can see it, one can make it, but rather if one can see it, it has a form. When Blake admits the possibility of a good conception being ruined in the execution, it is in terms of being spoiled, as if it had been executed in harmony with its conception but then was ruined. Blake complains of ‘blotting and blurring demons’ who cause him to be ‘incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what [he] had done well’ (DC E 546). Describing the effects of the ‘most outrageous demon’ Rubens in distracting the artists he possesses from ‘individual thought’, Blake writes, ‘though the original conception was all fire and animation, he loads it with hellish brownness, and blocks up all its gates of light, except one, and that one he closes with iron bars’ (E 547). The conception here sounds like the caverned man, an unrestricted being of ‘fire and animation’ closed up in the ‘hellish brownness’ of matter so that the inlets of light are blocked. Artistic ideas, then, just like human beings, can be imprisoned by bodies which obscure rather than show forth their eternal forms. Blake considers both human beings and artistic ideas to be preexistent. Before they are ever embodied or executed on earth, they are already embodied and executed in eternity: they already have forms. In a letter to Flaxman, Blake claims: ‘In my Brain are studies & Chambers filld with books & pic-

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tures of old which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity. before my mortal life & whose works are the delight & Study of Archangels’ (E 710). These works are accessible to Blake: they are in his brain. Presumably, he can create versions of these works for his mortal audience, just as he takes previously etched plates, reprints and embellishes them for different ‘copies’ of his illuminated books. Whatever may happen with his earthly works, Blake knows he already has a complete and impressive oeuvre with an appreciative audience of archangels. In The Four Zoas, Blake envisions an eternal existence for children: ‘The Moon has chambers where the babes of love lie hid / And whence they never can be brought in all Eternity / Unless exposed by their vain parents’ (E 366). Like the artworks, the babes of love are brought forth and exposed, rather like a preformationist foetus which simply grows and unfolds, already having its shape. The previous state is beautiful, peaceful and safe. It may be too safe: they ‘lie hid’ from experience and communication. The following lines, however, make this state seem preferable to exposure by vain parents wishing to embody copies of themselves. The word exposure recalls the ancient Greek practice of taking unwanted children and putting them out to die; Blake’s lines, then, equate having a child with rejecting it and exposing it to death. The vanity of the parents could also be like the vanity of Reuben’s search for Tirzah. The babes are exposed in vain by parents whose unborn children do not live to term: a different, unwilling way in which birth means exposure to death. The idea of preexistence works along with Blake’s insistence on the continuity of conception and execution to assert that though a child or artwork may fail to be physically embodied, it does definitely exist. On earth, one has to be born to be someone; for Blake, not necessarily. At the same time, Blake’s belief in pre-existence in eternity is the basis for both his sympathetic treatment of miscarriage and his deprecation of maternal birth. Blake can give value to the experience of miscarriage because he gives pre-existence to the infant soul. However, in giving value to eternal existence, mortal existence which can obscure and imprison it is devalued. Birth into the mortal body, into the world of nature, associated with females, can be an imprisonment and obfuscation of a pre-existent eternal form. Thus Blake can see all birth as misbirth, a deformation of an ideal, transparent, unrestricted shape. However, since Blake’s eternal artworks reside in his brain, not all birth cuts a being off entirely from eternity. Embodiment in its positive sense reinforces form, and some bodies clothe the eternal form in garments which cling closely enough to show it forth rather than hide it. Similarly, in emulating the ‘wonderful originals’ (DC E 531) (ancient, like the Ancient Britons), not all works of art blot and blur the true shape of the conception, and not all encumber the work with excessive layers of execution. Physical embodiment is not the end of existence: it should be reflective of, subordinate to, spiritual form. This is the reverse of Reynolds’ scheme, in which a general, ideal form should be abstracted from earthly

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examples, freed from all local eccentricities and faults. Blake, on the contrary, sees individual character and even flaws as part of ideal forms; in the Public Address, he claims of ‘every Object in a Picture’ that ‘its Spots are its beauties’ (E 575). Morris Eaves explains that ‘generalizing . . . is fundamental to optical reproduction’ and works together with the division between conception and execution to make art more suitable for mass-reproduction. An image made up of a generalized form, such as a lozenge or a pixel, can be reproduced in a mechanized way which only requires ‘the average of human effort and ability’ (Counter-Arts 194–5). However, Blake does not value reproduction, artistic or human. In his episodes of concubines given for pleasure, and conversely in his perception of the effect an overvaluation of reproduction has on the experience of miscarriage, Blake envisions sexuality without the necessity of procreation, imagining being able ‘to rise from Generation free’. Eaves, comparing art to the quintessential example of mass-production, the making of automobiles, explains that when the focus is on production, conception is constrained rather than served by execution. Rather than there being ‘an idea that originates in the heads of designers who then figure out how to execute it’, conception is ‘an accommodation to the materials and methods of production at hand and to the perceived demands of consumers’. Recalling Blake’s blotted work, spoiled by excessive execution, ‘as the conception end of the sequence empties of intellectual labour, the execution end compensates with physical labour’ (Counter-Arts 256). Excessive importance placed on reproduction in art, then, exacerbates the tragedy of miscreation. Artworks are born without having a soul conceived for them, in a kind of virgin birth, a creation without intellectual or physical pleasure. Excessive focus on production damages both human sexuality and artistic creation. Pre-existence faces and solves problem of failure of earthly creation: it provides consolation, yet also underlies hatred of the physical for its restrictions, for its failure to give appropriate form to spiritual beings. Because of this hatred, it also reopens the problem of solipsism: if artworks and humans pre-exist, then would it not be better for them never to be exposed, embodied and obscured? The ambivalence of Blake’s lines on the babes in the moon’s chambers gives the lie to that: they lie hid, safe but unseen and unseeing. The babes could be personified emotions, infant joys, instead of (or as well as) children, in which case non-reproductive sexuality, and artistic practice which does not direct itself exclusively to creation of a product for an audience or buyer, is valued as expression. It is an embodiment of joy, an emotion, a spiritual idea given being through action, a being not necessarily physical because its body is a process rather than a product. The problem with process, though, is that it can disappear. The difficulty with considering the failure of artistic creation is similar to the difficulty with considering children never born: where is the evidence of their existence? Failed creations are usually never seen, because they do not gain

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a visible form. Curiously, though, the one piece of Blake’s work in metal which remains to posterity is a fragment of a discarded plate (America plate a). We have already seen how Blake emphasizes rather than hides process in his works. If he is going to emphasize process, he must also recognize and struggle with the possibility of failure because at any point in a process, failure is still possible: only completed works are home free. Even then, there is the possibility of failure to communicate, also recognized by Blake. Jerusalem’s abortive ‘To the Public’ exemplifies this: Blake does not camouflage the process of gouging, nor the failure of coherent expression. If a work of art, or even a human being, fails to take material shape, for Blake that does not mean their existence should be hidden, lost or denied. Los, a creator who often seems to botch his work, ‘walks round the walls’ of Golgonooza, and there sees all that has existed in the space of six thousand years: Permanent, & not lost not lost nor vanishd, & every little act, Word, work. & wish, that has existed, all remaining still In those Churches ever consuming & ever building by the Spectres Of all the inhabitants of Earth wailing to be Created: Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, meer possibilities: But to those who enter into them they seem the only substances For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear, One hair nor particle of dust. not one can pass away. ( J 13:59–14:1)

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Divisions and Comminglings: Sons and Daughters

Blake conceives of human beings as multiple. On the large scale, Albion is the cosmic man and all humans are a part of him, just as the body of Christ is supposed to contain all Christians, according to St Paul (1 Cor. 12:12). But each of those humans contained in the cosmic man is also composed of other beings. Every human has component parts. There is the (male) human, the overriding, core or true person to whom the other components should be subordinate; there are the emanation and the spectre; and, there are the children. The emanation and spectre are, indeed, like children since they are ‘born’, if not from the womb, from other places on the body of the human, such as the bosom (which can connote ‘womb’) or the back. It is as though each person is a family. Furthermore, these subordinate parts can also multiply in different ways, whether by having offspring, or by splitting into multiple beings. The result is an overwhelming proliferation, a Chinese box effect which recalls preformationist embryology and its idea of emboîtement: all future generations to be descended from one person are already contained in that person. It also recalls the long lists of genealogies in the Bible, such as in Genesis, ‘the book of the generations of Adam’ (5:1). In Genesis, the chains of who begat whom continue without interruption (and without females) until a problem arises, an unusual situation such as barrenness which requires a fuller narration. For Blake (who has his own book of ‘the Generations of the Giant Albion’ – Jerusalem [7:49]), generation itself is the problem. Though Blake often focuses on the failure of procreation, whether ‘normal’ birth from a female or shaping by a male, and displays bizarre variations on birth, occasionally he considers what Clark, noting its infrequency in Blake, calls ‘the relatively simple expedient of coming out of a womb’ (181). The Songs of Innocence and of Experience are populated by many children whose bodies are not horribly malformed, nor the products of earthquakes, direful changes, or gruesome emergences from alternative bodily orifices. The two Songs closest to the moment of birth are ‘Infant Joy’ (SIE 25) and ‘Infant Sorrow’ (SIE 48). ‘Infant Sorrow’ seems to take a Calvinistic 125 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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view of human beings as innately evil: nothing but birth has occurred to deface the innocence of this fiendish child who immediately causes pain to his or her parents: ‘My mother groand! my father wept’. Yet if the child is a terror, so is the ‘dangerous world’ in which he or she is ‘helpless, naked’ as well as ‘piping loud’. The parent/child relationship here is characterized by ‘struggling’ and ‘striving’ against the father and being ‘bound and weary’, sulking upon the mother’s breast. Like Blake’s later family relationships, this one seems a tangle of unfathomable motivations, secret desires and frustrations. Are the parents restricting the child who should be free, or is the child torturing the parents? Is the child really a fiend or does it only appear so to its parents? The child is ‘a fiend hid in a cloud’, the reason for its fiendishness obscured, unless it is the very cloudy insubstantiality of material existence. While ‘Infant Sorrow’ is a monologue spoken (somehow) by the infant about itself and its parents, ‘Infant Joy’ is a dialogue. One speaker is clearly the infant, but the other’s identity is left open: it is someone asking, ‘What shall I call thee?’, so it could be a parent naming the child, or it could be anyone capable of speech (or not, since the infant speaks) simply addressing the child. An angel, for instance, could be speaking: angels are in the habit of recommending names for children (Luke 1:31), and the illustration (as far as Blake’s illustrations are meant to correspond with his verses) shows both a mother and an angel contemplating the child. The infant may be an infant human, but it also may be an infant joy, a newborn emotion. The second speaker could be the ‘parent’ of this personified emotion he or she is experiencing, or could be the perceiver of the emotion in another. Even then, the second speaker is parent to a joy: the exuberance, smiling and singing in the second stanza, some of which must belong to the second speaker no matter how the dialogue is broken up, indicates that this emotion is contagious, and perceiving the birth of joy in another can cause the birth of joy in oneself. If ‘Infant Joy’ personifies a feeling, then ‘Infant Sorrow’ may do so too, describing the effects of the arrival of sorrow on a man and woman who react as one might to melancholy: groaning, weeping and trying however unsuccessfully to contain it, as in ‘swadling bands’. Though the children of Songs of Innocence and of Experience are ‘real’ and ‘normal’, they share characteristics with Blake’s strange and failed births. Their births too are treated with a combination of disgust, terror and sympathy. Also, in the idea of infants as personified emotions, these children are like the more bizarrely born ones: they are embodied aspects of their parents’ personalities, and their embodiment is contagious, causing others to become what they behold. Though Orc is one of the few characters Blake describes as born in the traditional manner of being conceived, gestating in the womb, and then emerging from it, his origins show that, like characters who split from their ‘parents’ more by osmosis than reproduction, he, and his mother, are really aspects of the father. In The First Book of Urizen, Los’ feelings of pity cause

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him to divide and produce a globe of blood which grows into ‘A female form’ (16:7). Pity causes this male birth, and the emanation is named Pity by the observing eternals (17:1): she is Los’ emotion personified. The episode draws on Paradise Lost in which Sin is given life through a mental act of Satan’s. Satan, like Blake’s ‘men’ who ‘forgot that All deities reside in the human breast’ (MHH 11:15–16), forgot that Sin was generated by himself. She reminds him, In Heav’n when at th’ assembly, and in sight Of all the Seraphim with thee combined In bold conspiracy against Heav’n’s King, All on a sudden miserable pain Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast Threw forth, till on the left side op’ning wide, Likest to thee in shape and count’nance bright, Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed, Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized All th’ host of Heav’n. (II:749–58) Satan is the first to conceive of sin, and when the seed of sin in Satan’s mind becomes ripe for birth, he feels birth pangs and goes through a strange kind of labour. Los experiences similar travail, and in both cases eternals look on amazed. One difference, though, is that Sin’s birth from Satan’s head ‘a goddess armed’ draws on traditional myth more, and female birth less, than Blake’s ovum-like globe of blood. As well as her birth, Sin must also narrate to the forgetful Satan his reaction to her. Looking on sin, he is inspired to sin, not just because that is what she is, but also because she is his conception. Sin inspires sin, and conception inspires conception. Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing, Becam’st enamoured, and such joy thou took’st With me in secret that my womb conceived A growing burden. (II:764–7) Los responds to Enitharmon in a similarly self-perpetuating and selfreflecting fashion. ‘Los saw the Female & pitied / He embrac’d her, she wept she refused’ (17:10–11): perceiving her causes pity to arise in him, and, selfdivided, the person divided from him acts contrarily to his desires. As before, pity again results in reproduction, and Los becomes something other than himself as he begets ‘his likeness / On his own divided image’ (17:15–16).

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The child of this union must be another personified aspect of Los since produced from Los coupling with a part of himself. He is an infant sorrow: ‘In his hands [Los] seiz’d the infant / He bathed him in springs of sorrow / He gave him to Enitharmon’ (18:3–5). If Orc is a physical representation of an emotional or psychic aspect of Los, then it makes sense that Los’s emotional reaction to his son is physicalized. After Orc is born, Los is afflicted by ‘the Chain of Jealousy’ (18:24). A tight’ning girdle grew, Around his bosom. In sobbings He burst the girdle in twain, But still another girdle Opressd his bosom. In sobbings Again he burst it. Again Another girdle succeeds. (18:9–15) These burst, discarded girdles form themselves ‘Into an iron Chain / In each other link by link lock’d’, which is used by Los and Enitharmon to bind Orc (18:19–20, 21–4). As in ‘Infant Sorrow,’ the parents bind their sorrow in swaddling bands, here jealousy is bound in a chain. Such emotions bind, and are bound by, the one who feels them; there is also a mutual struggle against these controlling efforts. The Chain of Jealousy, as pictured on plate 19 of Urizen, is red and resembles interwoven veins, gruesomely literalizing blood links as well as displaying bodily fibres involved in feeling. In the Four Zoas, the Chain of Jealousy is called ‘the bloody chain’ (V:92, E 341), and the cause of jealousy is revealed: Los saw the ‘ruddy boy / Embracing his bright mother & beheld malignant fires / In his young eyes discerning plain that Orc plotted his death’ (V:80–2, E 340). The Oedipal indications of the father’s envy of the child represent a major ‘horrid’ element in ‘unnatural consanguinities and friendships / Horrid to think of when enquired deeply into’ ( J 28:7–8): blood relationships so intimate they do not bear close examination. Upon deep enquiry, the ‘natural’ relationship between parent and child becomes the ‘unnatural’ Oedipal impulse. If the child is, like Orc, really a personification of a part of the parent’s psyche, then its flesh and blood embodiment means revelation of interior processes, emotions, drives, which may well appear horrid when brought to light. The substitution involved in the Oedipal scenario suits seeing Orc as an aspect of Los: the son wants to take the place of his father in emotional and physical relationship to his mother, while the father sees a product of that relationship threaten his position. The murderous impulse each feels toward the other, whom he is supposed to love as kin, a part of himself, is shameful. Perhaps Orc also personifies this contradictory, taboo urge in Los. Indeed, it could

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only be revealed through the presence of Orc, the object as well as the personification of Oedipal jealousy. Again, the thought produces and reproduces its embodiment. In The Four Zoas, ‘a tightening girdle grew / Around [Los’s] bosom like a bloody cord’ (V:84, E 340): especially since ‘bosom’ can stand for ‘womb’, the Chain of Jealousy resembles the umbilical cord. Though we see Orc being born of a woman, there is still the suggestion of a male birth, adding a physical dimension to the idea that Orc is a personified aspect of Los, born from his psyche. The similarities to Paradise Lost continue. In The Four Zoas, the birth of Orc form Enitharmon is described by Los in this way: ‘he rent his discordant way / From thy sweet loins of bliss. red flowd thy blood’ (V:225–6, E 358), echoing the birth of Death which results from Satan’s lust for his own image in Sin. Sin tells Satan that Death ‘breaking violent way / Tore through my entrails’ (II:782–3). Death, like Orc, is then pictured lusting after his own mother; the result is monsters who are described as ‘bursting forth’ (II:800). Unlike Orc, Death consummates his desire for his mother. Whether Orc’s affection for his mother is sexual, or just perceived so by Los, he is bound and prevented from moving, let alone indulging.1 But, if children are the consequences of their parents’ actions and desires, then they fulfil a prophetic function, according to Blake’s definition of prophecy, ‘If you go on So/the result is So/’ (E 611). Such consequences cannot be completely quieted by binding. In Urizen, ‘All things. heard the voice of the child / And began to awake to life’ (18:28–9), and in The Four Zoas, Los regrets his actions and returns to free Orc, though it is too late: the organic chain has grown and become one with Orc who has also grown one with the rock (V:156–71, E 342). Though in the first case repression is not complete, and in the second it is too complete, in both the consequences are beyond the control of their instigator, Los, and backfire on him. The ramifications of generation are also relentless; once the self-reflection begins, it proliferates. Enitharmon ‘bore an enormous race’ (BU 18:45), catalogued in The Four Zoas in nine long lines with an addition, ‘And myriads more of Sons & Daughters to whom our love increased / To each according to the multiplication of their multitudes’ (VIII:357–68, E 380). Though the similarities to Satan’s family relationships in Paradise Lost seem to have ended with the deflection of Orc’s incest, there is in both cases after the birth of the first child a startling and uncontrollable increase in reproduction. For Sin, this increase takes the form not only of a ‘brood’ (II:863) being born rather than one child, but in an abominable repetition of birth: these monsters are ‘hourly conceived / And hourly born’ (II:796–7). Sin complains, when they list into the womb That bred them they return, and howl and gnaw My bowels, their repast; then bursting forth

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Afresh with conscious terrors vex me round, That rest or intermission none I find.

Not only the reproduction, but also the Oedipal desires repeat themselves, with these creatures returning to the womb ‘when they list’. The relationship to the mother here, though, is antagonistic, as it is to the father in the case of Orc and Los. There are only a few indications that Orc hurts or ‘gnaws’ Enitharmon: the early beastly stages including the worm in the womb, the labour pains, and the statement, ‘he grew, / Fed with milk of Enitharmon’ (BU 18:6–7), a reminder that even normal babies live by feeding off their mothers. Sin’s brood, though many, act as one: while outside they are able to ‘vex [Sin] round’ on all sides, when they return they are surrounded and unified by the womb. The children of Los and Enitharmon also unify and multiply, since their individual names are given, and they are also referred to collectively as ‘myriads’ and ‘an enormous race’. Such a portrayal is appropriate to children because, as part of their parents, they are not exactly the same as them, yet not exactly different; also, siblings are not exactly the same as each other, yet not exactly different. Children exemplify the crossovers between unity and diversity. In Jerusalem, the Sons of Albion are associated with the image of the polypus, which is for Blake a way of demonstrating the dynamics of divisions and comminglings in sibling relationships, as well as the pain and antagonism which come with reproduction. The Sons are explicitly aspects of Albion externalized: ‘His Children exil’d from his breast pass to and fro before him’ are also ‘All his Affections’ which ‘now appear withoutside: all his Sons’ ( J 19:1, 17). Vala is supposed to be their mother ( J 78:15), but we do not see them born from her; we do see them emerge from their father’s chest, ‘In stern defiance [they] came from Albion’s bosom’ (32[46]:10). Though this defiance seems to be an emotional version of the violence with which the offspring in Urizen and Paradise Lost burst forth, as a polypus they grow from Albion’s bosom. ‘The Twelve Sons of Albion / Enrooted into every Nation: a mighty Polypus growing / From Albion over the whole Earth’ ( J 15:3–5). They grow out of his emotions, like Los’s ‘girdle grew / Around his bosom’ then burst to make a link in the umbilical Chain of Jealousy (BU 18:9–10). The exile of Albion’s children from his breast is a result of his spiritual state, and is a part of the sympathetic suffering of his world: His Giant beauty and perfection fallen into dust: Till from within his witherd breast grown narrow with his woes: The corn is turn’d to thistles & the apples into poison The birds of song to murderous crows, his joys to bitter groans! (J 19:8–11)

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(II:798–802)

These lines, from the plate on which his children are described as exiled from his breast, move from the immaterial to the material and back again: beauty and perfection fall into dust, and joys and groans end a list of withering, hurtful and killing things. The ‘birth’ of the sons is a part of this deathly phenomenon. The word ‘murderous’ in its double meaning, a murder of crows being a group of crows, links proliferation with malicious intent. The sons multiply in order to antagonize their parents; throughout Jerusalem the multitude of the sons is frightening as they divide and join in order to ‘devour Albions Body of Humanity & Love’ (70:9). However, their existence separate from their parent simply displays the parent’s own negative qualities: Los would not be murderously, Oedipally, jealous if Orc were not there to both provoke and symbolize that emotion. The world is becoming poisonous because of Albion, and it poisons Albion and his members: his children and his world seem to be working against him, but he is really working against himself. On plate 69, there is a short but disturbing instance of Albion’s children becoming one. It makes use of the idea of the child devouring the parent, as Sin’s brood devours her from within. Then all the Males combined into One Male & every one Became a ravening eating Cancer growing in the Female A Polypus of Roots of Reasoning Doubt Despair & Death. ( J 69:1–3) Here, one meaning of the polypus is specified: it is a cancer. A description of this ‘very common disease of the uterus’ from a 1793 anatomy book, found by Nelson Hilton, is nauseating to read: ‘the most common kind is hard, and consists evidently of a white substance, divided by a very thick membranous septa. Another sort of polypus . . . consists of a bulky, irregular, bloody mass, with a number of tattered processes hanging down from it’ (Baillie, in Hilton, Literal 89). Both varieties consist of a mass that is divided, having parts or ‘processes’ emerging from it. The location of the polypus also allows it to be seen as more than one thing at once. Leopold Damrosch reads the passage as describing ‘the growing foetus . . . likened to a spreading malignity’ (204). Is it a foetus or a disease? Even healthy pregnancy usually makes women feel ill; Blake associates embryos with worms. The cancer is ‘ravening eating’; a foetus partakes of its mother’s nourishment. The cancer is ‘growing’, dividing cell by cell, inexorably; so does the child. Many of these connotations are also suggested by the other meaning of ‘polypus’, which is ‘a species of hydra, which, although cut in a thousand pieces and in every direction, still exists and each section becomes a complete animal’ (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1st edn, in Hilton Literal 87). The polypus is very much like Albion’s children who can exist as one creature, or split into many separate ones, and survive. In the passage at hand, the

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epithet ‘Polypus of Roots’ reflects this ability: a cut root, too, can grow into another plant. ‘Roots’ also evokes the appearance of the polypus which has ‘many feet’ (Sandys, in Hilton Literal 88). Roots and feet are both euphemisms for genitals; the polypus has ‘no organs of generation, as every part of the bag is endowed with that power’. It is called a bag here because some varieties ‘are simply a bag or stomach’ (in Hilton Literal 88).2 The aforementioned ‘feet’ of the polypus or ‘ravenous fish’ are used to catch its prey (Sandys, in Hilton Literal 88): reproduction and greedy devouring are once more connected, in a different way. The polypus is a symbol of purely bodily existence, disgusting in its voraciousness and its multiplication. The polypus lends itself to such a symbolic purpose since it ‘may be regarded as the link which connects the animal and vegetable Kingdoms’ (Buffon, in Hilton Literal 88). The polypus is somewhere between animal and vegetable, somewhat like a vegetating human shooting out phallic and thirsty roots. Complicating such comment on physical existence, the polypus lines in Jerusalem 69, so sickeningly physical, are suddenly described as mental. It is ‘A Polypus of Roots of Reasoning Doubt Despair & Death’ (69:3). These last four words make a progressive list of mental activities which can follow each other, multiplying dark thoughts as relentlessly as cancer, culminating in a death which is both physical and spiritual.3 In lines that follow, a division occurs which is simultaneously material and mental: ‘Envying stood the enormous Form at variance with Itself / In all its Members: in eternal torment of love & jealousy’ ( J 69:6–7). Again jealousy causes and is embodied in reproduction, but this time it is not only the father’s jealousy which is spurred by and personified in the son: it is the sons’ jealousy reflected in each other, causing internal variance among the offspring born of their father’s self-division. The divisions and unifications of Albion’s children are complex, if not impossible, and they involve relationship shifts akin to the substitution on which the Oedipal conflict relies. Adam, who is Scofield: the Ninth Of Albion’s sons, & the father of all his brethren in the Shadowy Generation. Cambel & Gwendolen wove webs of war & of Religion, to involve all Albions sons, and when they had Involv’d Eight; their webs roll’d outwards into darkness And Scofield the Ninth remaind on the outside of the Eight And Kox, Kotope, & Bowen, One in him, a Fourfold Wonder Involv’d the Eight – Such are the Generations of the Giant Albion. ( J 7:42–9) If Jerusalem is the book of the generations of Albion, this is a very complicated list of begettors and begotten. The sons and daughters generate many configurations, which rarely duplicate. The one described above is never

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often by birth-pangs & loud groans They divide to Twelve: the key-bones & the chest dividing in pain Disclose a hideous orifice; thence issuing the Giant-brood Arise as the smoke of a furnace, shaking the rocks from sea to sea. ( J 70:11–14) They emerge violently from the chest, as Sin’s brood did from her womb; here, the bosom again stands for the female genitals. The ‘hideous orifice’ recalls the vagina in this gruesome parody of birth (Clark 180). Like the distortion of the female body and its reproductive process seen in Sin, this occurs ‘often’, not allowing Hand and the other sons to be either one or many, constantly crossing the border between interior and exterior. Mary Douglas’s theory that the body’s borders symbolize the social borders created by taboos, and so the transgression of bodily borders represents a threat to order, intensifies the suggestion of a bizarre variety of incest occurring between Sin and her brood, and Hand and his brothers. Returning to and re-emerging from the parody of a womb, they disrupt any set relationship, adding to the instability which allows a brother to be a mother. The location of the action is a point of division: ‘the key-bones & the chest dividing in pain / Disclose a hideous orifice’. The illustration of this strange birth on plate 50 captures the process of ‘dividing’. The sons issue from a dark vertical slit in Hand’s chest, and in succession from each other’s chests or ‘bosoms’. Each son steps on the head of the previous one to aid his own progress and, in the case of the last to emerge, to hide his genitals. Though linked, they are antagonistic; though commingling, they suppress the pleasures of union and turn their energies to violence. The link between embodiment and violence is seen in diverse aspects in the Daughters of Albion; some of these aspects are interconnected by weaving imagery. The merciful weaving done by the Daughters of Los is foiled by that of Albion’s daughters: ‘The stamping feet of Ragan upon the flaming Treddles of her Loom / That drop with crimson gore with the Loves of Albion & Canaan’ (64:36–7). These lines recall Thomas Gray’s poem ‘The Fatal Sisters’,4 in which the Norse Fates prepare the ‘loom of hell’ to ‘weave the crimson web of war’. Glitt’ring lances are the loom, Where the dusky warp we strain, Weaving many a Soldier’s doom, Orkney’s woe, & Randver’s bane.

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repeated. As was suggested, generation is itself the problem. It is either a physical impossibility or an incest law transgression for anyone to be the father of his brethren. While Scofield is ‘the father of all his brethren’, plate 70 sees Hand, yet more inconceivably, become the mother of his brothers.

William Blake and the Body

See the griesly texture grow, (’Tis of human entrails made) And the weights, that play below Each a gasping Warriour’s head. Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore, Shoot the trembling cords along. Sword, that once a Monarch bore, Keep the tissue close & strong! (29) This poem resonates with Blake’s descriptions of human sacrifice perpetrated by the sons and daughters of Albion in Jerusalem, as Jason Whittaker notices in his William Blake and the Myths of Britain. He argues for the influence of these Fates on the depiction of the daughters of Albion as ‘violent goddesses of sacrifice and war’, and finds that in the illustrations to Gray Blake depicts ‘this scene with relish, showing the sisters manipulating the spears and hanging entrails’ (83). In addition, ‘The Fatal Sisters’ shares with Jerusalem half-familiar lists of names, including people with place names (Orkney), and supernatural figures (Mista, Sangrida, Hilda, Gondula, Geira) who orchestrate the described destruction: as in Blake a group of siblings act as one, and act violently. Gray’s poem adapts mythology (Celtic and Greek as well as Norse [Whittaker 81]), and places these words in the mouths of divine figures: ‘We the reins to slaughter give, / Ours to kill, & ours to spare’ (30). The echo of ‘The Fatal Sisters’ in Jerusalem associates the daughters of Albion with both embodiment and war, and through the presence of bloodthirsty ancient divinities, carries the association into the realm of human sacrifice. On plate 65 of Jerusalem Blake describes some real, contemporary ‘Human Miseries’ of the material world. War replaces the works of peace, such as weaving, ‘And all the Arts of Life. they changd into the Arts of Death in Albion’ (65:16). The division of labour is one aspect of divided existence: the myriads of eternity . . . grind And polish brass & iron hour after hour laborious task! Kept ignorant of its use, that they might spend the days of wisdom In sorrowful drudgery, to obtain a scanty pittance of bread: In ignorance to view a small portion & think that All, And call it Demonstration: blind to all the simple rules of life. (65:23–8) Narrowing sense perception, physically portrayed by Blake in descriptions of embodiment, is echoed in the enforced ignorance of a mere cog for a factory wheel. Images of enclosure from greater reality become increasingly claustrophobic in Blake’s vision of the fate of press gang victims.

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We were carried away in thousands from London; & in tens Of thousands from Westminster & Marybone in ships closd up: Chaind hand & foot, compelled to fight under the iron whips Of our captains; fearing our officers more than the enemy.

Taken from the big city of London, then from the smaller boroughs, men are closed up in ships. Then the constraint is directly on their bodies (their hands and feet) and then it is within (compulsion and fear). War, in contrast, will open their bodies, but this is no relief from their former imprisonment. This is no warbling brook, nor shadow of a mirtle tree: But blood and wounds and dismal cries, and shadows of the oak: And hearts laid open to the light, by the broad grizly sword: And bowels hid in hammerd steel rip’d quivering on the ground. (65:50–3) The images can refer to war, and to human sacrifice. The torn out heart and bowels recall pagan rites of sacrifice and divination, practiced by such diverse peoples as the Druids and the Aztecs. Whittaker comments on the ‘confusion of cultural ideas’ in Gray’s ‘Fatal Sisters’ which conflates Greek, Celtic and Norse mythologies, that ‘such confusion would be readily accepted by Blake for whom Albion was a melting pot of races and histories’ (81). Blake may have felt justified in depicting sacrifices part Mexican and part Druidical through placing William Stukeley’s Stonehenge alongside Clavigero’s History of Mexico. The engraved illustration of ‘A Mexican Priest’ in Clavigero (opposite 273) pictures the holy man with a cloth over his head, a cloak over one shoulder, a loincloth and sandals. Stukeley’s conception of ‘A British Druid’ (opposite 1) is clothed in a very similar way: the veil is the same; the cloak is over both shoulders, and he wears a tunic and sandals. The only differences in clothing could be accounted for by the difference in climate between Mexico and Britain. This striking visual similarity is evidence of a desire felt by mythographers of Blake’s time (Bryant as well as Stukeley among others) to reconcile and intertwine (or reduce to Judeo-Christian history) the ancient history of all nations (see Feldman and Richardson 124–5, 241–2). The heart is the chosen organ for ancient Mexican sacrifice; tearing out the heart, and other details of Aztec human sacrifice which appear in Jerusalem, can be found in Clavigero’s History of Mexico.5 In Jerusalem 65, above, Blake emphasizes that the innards were previously hidden, doubly hidden in body and in armour, suggesting divination from entrails which seeks to discover hidden truths, to unveil the obscure future, by penetrating the body’s equally secret interior. Paul Henri Mallet attests that the druids ‘inferred what success would attend the enter-

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(65:33–6)

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prize which was the object of their sacrifice’ from the ‘degree of impetuosity with which the blood gushed forth’; ‘they also opened the body to read in the entrails, and especially in the heart, the will of the gods, and the good or ill fortune that was impending’ (135–6). Whittaker finds, in a translation by Milton of Tacitus’s Annals, a similar claim, which provides the link to war wounds: ‘whom they took in Warr they held it lawfull to Sacrifice; and by the entrails of men us’d divination’ (160). Clavigero explains that the victims of human sacrifice were prisoners of war; the more successful Mexico was in empire, and the more victories they had, the more human sacrifices they would make (278). Mallet concurs: ‘The Mexicans once offered up to their gods, upon one single occasion, five hundred prisoners of war’ (139). According to Mallet, the druids’ victims were chosen from ‘among the captives in time of war, and among the slaves in time of peace’ (133); war and slavery (combined in Blake’s description of forced conscription) are the sources of human sacrifice victims. The druids themselves, according to Caesar’s Gallic War, were exempt from military service: ‘The Druids usually hold aloof from war, and do not pay war-taxes with the rest; they are excused from military service and exempt from all liabilities’ (337). The Sons of Albion torture Luvah as a Druidical human sacrifice. The perverse relationship between torturer and victim is a kind of conjoining. Hark! the mingling cries of Luvah with the Sons of Albion Hark! & Record the terrible wonder! that the Punisher Mingles with his Victims Spectre, enslaved and tormented To him whom he has murderd, bound in vengeance & enmity Shudder not. but Write, & the hand of God will assist you! (47:12–16) A subordinate element of the human personality is taken over by the torturer. This terribly intimate action is reflected in the ‘mingling cries’ of torturer and victim. Elaine Scarry, writing about torture, observes that just as a person in pain reverts to sounds prior to language, the cries and screams of human hurt, so the person inflicting pain reverts to a prelanguage, uncaring noises remembered in the accounts given by former political prisoners and sometimes included in fictional accounts of brutality. (43) In saying ‘Shudder not. but Write, & the hand of God will assist you!’ Blake struggles against inarticulate horror. Scarry observes that intense physical pain has an ‘ability to destroy language, the power of verbal objectification, a major source of our self-extension, a vehicle through which the pain could be lifted out into the world and eliminated’ (54). Blake fights against ‘shud-

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dering’, a non-verbal reaction to physical horror, and considers putting this horror into words to be an action God’s own hand would assist. The process is similar to Blake’s concept of ‘Giving a body to Falshood that it may be cast off for ever’ ( J 12:13). One of the characteristics of the devil is his shape-shifting ability: he can take on a deceptive body, and clothe ideas in a deceptive body of language. In Paradise Lost, Satan takes on the form of a serpent, chosen as the ‘subtlest beast of all the field’ and so the ‘fittest imp of fraud’ (IX:86). He speaks deception, and the reason he gives for his ability to speak is also deception: he says it was a result of his eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (IX:594–601). Scarry’s observations on the names torturers give their methods reveal deception both bodily and linguistic. She lists examples of torture names such as ‘the tea party’ and ‘the telephone’. In all these cases the designation of an intensely painful form of bodily contortion with a word usually reserved for an instance of civilization produces a circle of negation: there is no human being in excruciating pain; that’s only a telephone; there is no telephone; that is merely a means of destroying a human being who is not a human being, who is only a telephone, who is not a telephone but merely a means of destroying a telephone. . . . the torturer’s idiom not only indicates but helps bring about the process of perception in which all human reality is made, no matter how screamingly present, invisible, inaudible. (44) Blake’s effort to ‘Shudder not. but Write’ is thus an attempt to reclaim through language, through the body of the text, that human reality which has been denied through language. This is often practiced by martyrs, including Christ. He eases the suffering of others by forgiving his persecutors (Luke 23:34), promising one of his fellow victims paradise (Luke 24:43), and providing his best friend and his mother with an adoptive parent and child, respectively (John 19:27). He expresses his own suffering, saying ‘I thirst’, and crying, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ( John 19:28, Matt. 27:46). In these last two instances, the role of language is foregrounded. The first words are spoken ‘that the scripture might be fulfilled’: they are a double expression, and a double validation of pain in that Jesus’s words cause a parallel between his experience and the precedent experience of the Psalmist (Ps. 69:21). The second phrase is preserved in Aramaic (‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’) and then translated, as though the actual, original, spoken words are powerful and carry an authenticity which cannot be glossed. While in torture human life is totally devalued, in sacrifice the life force is treasured. According to Christian Duverger, in his article ‘The Meaning of Sacrifice’, the ritual of Aztec blood sacrifice is planned specifically to release

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the greatest and most powerful life energy from the victim. By pushing the victim to exhaustion, and then removing his or her still beating heart, the priests hope to extract ‘the energy reserves of the afterlife’ (380). Clavigero notes that the heart is still palpitating when it is removed (279). The life force is valued, ironically, in its release in death. The victim holds an esteemed position; Clavigero cites a female victim consecrated as the honourary mother of the tribe’s gods (125). Mallet claims that ‘the wretches upon whom the lot fell, were treated with such honours by all the assembly, they were so overwhelmed with caresses for the present, and with promises for the life to come, that they sometimes congratulated themselves on their destiny’ (133–4). This parallels the dubious function of heaven in relation to present atrocities epitomized in Blake’s ‘Chimney Sweepers’ poems. In both Innocence and Experience, the sweeps are ‘happy’ in spite of their lot (SIE 12:23, 37:9). The sweeps are victims of human sacrifice because, for the advantage of others, death awaits them. The speaker of the Innocence version is sold by his father and emphasizes, ‘your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep’; his friend Tom has a vision in which ‘thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack / Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black’ (12:2, 4, 11–12, my italics). According to the child of Experience, his parents, God, and the religious and secular rulers of society are benefitting from his being ‘clothed . . . in the clothes of death’, since the parents, believing they have ‘done [the child] no injury’, ‘are gone to praise God & his Priest & King / Who make up a heaven of our misery’ (37:10–12). The poems at once demonstrate and resist the idea of the interchangeability of these sacrificial victims. The Experience sweeper is ‘A little black thing among the snow’ (37:1), yet cannot be merely a ‘thing’ since he is able to communicate original insights. In Innocence there are ‘thousands of sweepers’ in Tom’s dream. The list of names which follows asserts some remnant of individuality, as Heather Glen finds (98), but at the same time, because they are in a list (like the proliferating sons and daughters of Albion), the names suggest a generic, arbitrary group, especially since the names are common ones, and one sweeper had to be named Jack in order to rhyme with the coffins of black. However, we have some physical description of the singled out sweep (singled out by a nameless speaker) – he has white hair ‘that curl’d like a lambs back’ (12:6) – and an imaginative dream as a hint of his personality. By transferring the concept of human sacrifice to the injustice of child labour, Blake demonstrates that atonement does not work, largely because one human being cannot take the place of another. The sins of parents and society are in no way washed clean through offering up these children as scapegoats. They are being sacrificed not for any sins of their own. The Innocence poem makes this clear, as in Tom’s vision of resurrection the sweeps are baptismally cleansed, but of what? Presumably, the soot from ‘your chimneys’; similarly, baptism is supposed

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to absolve original sin which is passed down from parents rather than committed by the child. In Experience, the sweeper’s only sin seems to have been happiness: ‘Because I was happy upon the heath / And smil’d among the winters snow’ is the reason he gives for being ‘clothed . . . in the clothes of death / And taught . . . to sing the notes of woe’ (37:5–8). He is an emotional scapegoat, and his situation particularly shows how sacrifice, rather than being an atonement, is actually a repetition of the original crime. Oedipally, the parents repress their child’s exuberance, his drives and passions. Such a reading seems particularly likely in light of Glen’s study of the reputation of chimney sweeps, known for ‘lawlessness and disorder’; ‘the sense that they flouted the accepted constraints of society was enhanced by the obvious sexual symbolism of their trade – a sexual symbolism acknowledged in popular folklore . . . in the custom of a sweep kissing the bride at a wedding’ (99). Chimney sweeps are thus an uncomfortable reminder of sexuality, conveniently reined in to serve convention by the wedding custom. Because Blake’s sweep is still happy, it seems to his parents that the repression has succeeded in making him a productive member of society and not ‘injured’ him. He now ‘cleans his chimney’ in an acceptable way: literally, uses his energy in work rather than play, and symbolically, channels his sexual energies into non-taboo activities. But, in fact, this sweep is not a happy, willing victim. His happiness is actually a way to resist the sacrifice: not allow himself to be drained and restrained for the profit of society, but to hold on to a portion of his delight, and his human value, in the face of violent treatment. The same is true of the Innocence version: Tom’s dream may be only a dream, but it is a rich inner life which allows him, literally, to rise above his situation: he and his fellows ‘rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind’ (12:18). If it seems to be cold comfort when he awakes, it is not completely, because ‘Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm’ (12:23). The conclusion, ‘So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm’ (12:24) extends the power of Tom’s dream beyond himself. What is Tom’s duty? To sweep chimneys, or to maintain his happy warmth? What is the duty of society? To sacrifice children, or to end injustice? The final line turns the sacrificial equation against itself. Blake suggests that those who consider it a ‘duty’ to sacrifice others in order to fend off harm through some kind of appeasement will be surprised to find that they do in fact need to fear harm. This threat is a reason for encouraging victims to embrace voluntarily the privilege of being killed, and conversely a way in which the victim has some power over the sacrificers. Hubert and Mauss, in their classic essay on sacrifice, explain that the victim (in this case an animal) must be persuaded to allow itself to be sacrificed peaceably, for the welfare of men, and not to take vengeance once it is dead. . . . There is in the

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As in Blake’s suggestion of sacrifice in his press-gang passage, the scheme functions like contemporary injustices. The spirits of conscripts and chimney sweeps are pressed to ‘the welfare of men’; if freed, those spiritual energies could become dangerous. Sacrificers can use language to direct where the life force will be deposited when released. Human victims can also use language to reclaim control of that life force. Unfortunately, this does not involve the practical victory of escaping torture. The Chimney Sweepers of the Songs retain their happiness through self-expression – singing and dancing; creating dreams and sharing them through narration – but they do not escape their sacrificial lot. In fact, their happiness is misinterpreted and serves to perpetuate the sacrifice: the Experience sweep’s parents go to give praise because he is happy and apparently uninjured, while Tom’s dream enables him to be happy and warm as he goes out to work. The energy the sweeps are supposed to release for the good of society is partially held back by them for their own sakes, to retain some dignity for themselves, but even for Hubert and Mauss’ unwilling victim, the only possibility for being dangerous and taking vengeance comes after it is sacrificed and its energy is released. It may seem like a spiritual power which cannot save the body or alter physical reality, but Tom feels physically warm thanks to his vision (12:23): the body and spirit are not completely separate from each other, and so even though retaining one’s inner life does not provide complete liberation, its benefits are not entirely otherworldly and illusory. Sacrifice relies on the assumption that physical and spiritual reality influence each other: sacrificers hope to derive spiritual benefits, often seen through material evidence (such as wealth), from offering up a body and a life. Sacrifice is also an exchange (underlined by Blake in that the Innocence sweep is sold by his father): it invests the victim with value. The victim is admitted to have that material and spiritual power, but only through being treated as the currency of sacrifice; the victim holds the possibility to redirect that power, but not to escape the sacrifice. Christianity’s relationship to sacrifice is problematic: does Christ’s example allow victims to retain their dignity, or simply endure what should not be endured? As Jon Mee finds, ‘Blake, like John Toland before him, made use of potential parallels between druid and Christian priestcraft to undermine the contemporary authority of the latter’ (100); ‘conventional promises of an afterlife as a deception’ were a central issue in this comparison (96). Even William Stukeley, a defender of the druids as receivers of the pure, ancient tradition of the Patriarchs, cannot help but note the dark side of Druidic-Judeo-Christian links.

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victim a spirit which it is the very aim of the sacrifice to liberate. This spirit must therefore be conciliated, for otherwise it might become dangerous when freed. (30)

It is remarkable, that the Romans, who . . . permit[ted] all religions, persecuted only that of the Druids, and the Christian: whence we are naturally led to think, there was a good deal of resemblance. Indeed, the Druids are accused of human sacrifices. They crucified a man and burnt him on the altar; which seems to be a most extravagant act of superstition, derived from some extraordinary notices they had of mankind’s redemption: and perhaps from Abraham’s example misunderstood. (54) Christian redemption and Druidical superstition are delicately separated by misunderstanding. Christ asserts the sovereignty of a higher power over his inner life when he says to Pilate, ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above’ (John 19:11). The decisive element is who is above: the God who, along with ‘his Priest & King / . . . make up a heaven of our misery’ (SIE 37:11–12), or the God who says ‘I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; / Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me’ ( J 4:18–19). Indeed, blood sacrifice only works with a distant god who benefits from the pain of creatures. The mutuality of the God within scenario negates exchange, and so sacrifice is rendered unnecessary: ‘Lo! we are One; forgiving all Evil; Not seeking recompense!’ (J 4:20). If this is the true reality, those who commit human sacrifice will find that they are actually torturing themselves, and gaining nothing. Blake adapts the Christian view of the limited power of the torturer to his concept of the multiple human. The sons are seen ‘Drinking’ the victim’s Emanation in intoxicating bliss rejoicing in Giant dance; For a Spectre has no Emanation but what he imbibes from decieving A Victim! Then he becomes her Priest & she his Tabernacle. And his Oak Grove, till the Victim rend the woven Veil. In the end of his sleep when Jesus calls him from his grave. (65:58–62) Blake avoids the dualistic implication that the body is affected while the soul is not. He realistically shows that portions of the personality (which he personifies, and thus physicalizes) are also affected in torture, but suggests that they can finally be restored. The emanation (65:58) and the spectre (47:13–14) are endangered through union with the torturer, as is the physical body, but the core humanity is not touched. The intimacy between torturer and victim is described in language from the discussion of the annulment of sacrifice by Christ in Hebrews. The first verses of Hebrews 9 refer to ‘the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all’ (9:3). Into this tabernacle ‘went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people’ (9:7). The repression and guilt involved here are intensified by the sexual

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connotations Blake lends to a priest entering a secret place. If God is truly a brother and a friend, residing in the bosoms of humans who also reside in his bosom, these priests have a perverted relationship to God – ironically, because their ritual reflects reproductive, heterosexual sexuality. Since his ideal is God and humans as brothers who mutually penetrate each other (being inside each other’s bosoms), Blake manages to portray ‘normal’ sex and ‘orthodox’ religion as perversions of a perversion. By likening the tabernacle to the ‘Oak Grove’, Blake renders Jewish and Druid sacrifice identical.6 Both are considered debased, mysterious travesties of the ‘true religion’, originally available to both, since the Patriarchs were Druids. Their locations are linked to the female genitals, a debased version of the male genitals, lacking the individual expressive authority of the phallus, and the transparency of the eternal male bosom, and replacing them with hidden mystery. The veil of the tabernacle was rent at the death of Christ (Matt. 27:51), nullifying the old law of sacrifice. Blake allegorizes this, suggesting that the veil of the victim’s body is rent at the resurrection, cancelling the material body’s authority.7 This is also when the torturer’s powers over the victim’s psychic and physical aspects are nullified. The stolen emanation is the torturer’s ‘Tabernacle’ and ‘Oak Grove, till the Victim rend the woven Veil’. Jesus’ calling the victim from his grave enables the victim himself to rend the veil, the earthly illusion that, as in torture, the true human can be completely controlled through his material body. The identification between torturer and victim escalates because Vala is Luvah’s emanation. . . . Sudden they behold Their own Parent the Emanation of their murderd Enemy Become their Emanation and their Temple and Tabernacle They knew not. this Vala was their beloved Mother Vala Albions Wife. (65:68–71) The incestuous relationship confusion, a reflection of the transgression of bodily borders committed in torture, results in a progressive blurring of identity for all involved. The identification between the sons and Vala, whom they have literally ingested, is so close that they feel what she feels: Terrified at the sight of the Victim: at his distorted sinews! The tremblings of Vala vibrate thro’ the limbs of Albions Sons: While they rejoice over Luvah in mockery & bitter scorn. (65:72–4) The presence of Vala within the Sons displays the attraction-repulsion dynamic in the pleasure of inflicting pain. Vala as stolen emanation allows

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Sudden they become like what they behold in howlings & deadly pain Spasms smite their features, sinews & limbs: pale they look on one another. They turn, contorted: their iron necks bend unwilling towards Luvah: their lips tremble: their muscular fibres are crampd & smitten They become like what they behold! (65:75–9) Their attention turns as involuntarily and unpreventably as a spasm, and the pain they were inflicting on the victim rebounds upon them. As in the Reuben episode, becoming what one beholds involves an inundation of the senses. The external world floods through the perceptual chinks in the cavern (holes: be-holed), specifically the eyes. A galloping sympathy, unwanted and uncontrollable, physicalizes the doubling of the torturer and the victim: they become one (be-wholed). The actions of the sons, in torturing their ‘father’ and stealing his emanation, their ‘mother’, recall not only Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex but also the actions of the primal band of brothers he imagines in Totem and Taboo. Whittaker demonstrates that the chastity and the sacrifices of the sons of Albion, whom he associates with the druids, have ‘totemic origins’, and explains how they both function as acts of remembrance and ‘deferred obedience to the Father they rebelled against’ (165–6). It may seem that Blake is ‘predicting’ psychoanalytical ideas to an uncanny extent; rather, Freud’s thought draws upon issues which were lively in Blake’s time, as Whittaker finds. ‘Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, theories on the nature of the family, in particular the original family that served as a prototype of the cultural anthropology pursued by Freud in his meta-psychoanalytic works, sought to explain the beginnings of religious and social illusion’ (125; see also 128). He points to Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social as an example; one which is preoccupied with ‘the dichotomy between individual will and the family’, as Whittaker puts it, or between ‘independence’ and ‘unity’ as Rousseau puts it (125). The divisions and comminglings of the sons, then, can be further understood through this paradigm. René Girard, in Violence and the Sacred, evolves a theory of sacrifice which draws on Freud. ‘The extraordinary number of commemorative rites that have to do with killing leads us to imagine that the original event must have been a murder. Freud, in Totem and Taboo, lucidly perceived this necessity’

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them to feel within themselves the tremblings (which could be of pain or pleasure, or pity) of a component part of the victim. Their rejoicing is mixed with Vala’s ambiguous reaction, stacking powerful emotion on powerful emotion. For the sons, terror holds the attention so strongly that the division between torturer and victim dissolves.

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(92). Girard’s emphasis on the idea of a surrogate victim explains the significance of the double in sacrifice. The victim is necessarily the same as everyone else: ‘A single victim can be substituted for all the potential victims, for all the enemy brothers that each member is striving to banish from the community; he can be substituted, in fact, for each and every member of the community’ (79). This doubling is intensified by Blake: the realization of similarity causes a bodily transformation, and the sons who torture Luvah, Vala who is their mother and whose emotions they feel, and Luvah himself, are all component parts of Albion. As Girard writes, all those involved in doubling ‘occupy the equivocal middle ground between difference and unity that is indispensable to the process of sacrificial substitution’ (161). Girard takes Oedipus as the ultimate example of sacrificial substitution. Incest and patricide both destroy family differences crucial to the operations of society (74). Girard explains, ‘Patricide and incest serve the same purpose here as do twins in many primitive religions. The crimes of Oedipus signify the abolishment of differences, but because the nondifference is attributed to a particular individual, it is transformed into a new distinction’ (76). The resolution of the chaos caused by the slaying of differences depends on the community forgetting that the scapegoat was randomly chosen. Girard suggests that, rather than proving Oedipus’s guilt, the surviving story represents this arbitrary decision, its arbitrariness denied. ‘The whole process of mythical formulation leads to a transferral of violent undifferentiation from all the Thebans to the person of Oedipus. Oedipus becomes the repository of all the community’s ills’ (77). Patricide and incest serve to conceal the sacrificial crisis far more effectively than they reveal it. To be sure, they manage to express both aspects of the crisis, both reciprocity and forced similarities; but they do so in a way that strikes terror into the beholder and suggests that they are the exclusive responsibility of a particular individual. (76) The word ‘beholder’ arises from the onslaught of visual perception at the end of Oedipus Tyrannus.8 Oedipus becomes convinced of his guilt when he sees evidence (Jocasta’s hanging body): he becomes what he beholds. The chorus relates the climactic moment, which the audience is spared from beholding. Oedipus found Jocasta, where we all beheld her, Entangled in the fatal noose, which soon As he perceiv’d, loosing the pendent rope, Deeply he groan’d, and casting on the ground His wretched body, shew’d a piteous sight

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To the beholders, on a sudden thence Starting, he pluck’d from off the robe she wore A golden buckle that adorn’d her side, And bury’d in his eyes the sharpen’d point, Crying, he ne’er again wou’d look on her, Never wou’d see his crimes or mis’ries more, Or those whom guiltless he cou’d ne’er behold, Or those to whom he now must sue for aid; His lifted eye-lids then, repeating still These dreadful plaints, he tore, whilst down his cheek Fell show’rs of blood. (216) For Freud, the eyes stand for the genitals; blinding substitutes for castration (‘Uncanny’ 231). In Jerusalem, the sons of Albion murder Luvah, whose name recalls the word ‘lover’ (Damon, Dictionary 255); and whom Blake associates with sexual love in The Four Zoas Night the Ninth, where Luvah is told along with Vala, ‘Return O Love in peace / Into your place the place of seed not in the brain or heart’ (IX:364–5, E 395). By murdering Luvah, the sons castrate their other father, Albion; they also castrate themselves because they are part of him. The sons sever themselves, and their fathers, from sexual pleasure and union. Similarly, because of his guilt, Oedipus no longer wants to see. The opposite of Oothoon, who is ‘Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears’ and claims, ‘If in the morning sun I find it; there my eyes are fix’d / In happy copulation (VDA 9:22–10:1), Oedipus wishes to be closed to joy, delight and beauty, denying himself the use of perceptive and genital organs, which for Oothoon are one. In both Oedipus and the sons of Albion, potentially liberating bodily experience is refused, recalling Blake’s caverned man who, through one sensual opening (skin/touch/sexuality), can ‘himself pass out what time he please, but he will not’ (Europe, Additional Plate 3:5). If there is any perverse pleasure in closing oneself up, even painfully, and denying oneself a whole range of sensual pleasure, then it is like the negative masturbation described by Oothoon, ‘The self enjoyings of self denial’, which stem from a belief that ‘acts are not lovely’ (VDA 10:9–10). In Oedipus Tyrannus, rejection of sense experience is explicit: Wou’d I cou’d now with equal ease remove My hearing too, be deaf as well as blind, And from another entrance shut out woe! To want our senses, in the hour of ill, Is comfort to the wretched. (220)

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At least, respect the all-creating eye Of Phoebus, who beholds you thus exposing To public view a wretch accurs’d, polluted Whom neither earth can bear, nor sun behold, Nor holy show’r besprinkle: take him hence, Within the palace; those, who are by blood United, shou’d alone be witness Of such calamity. (223) Phoebus, the sun, should not behold Oedipus, in a Blakean reversal of beholder and beheld.9 When the senses shrink they cause the sun, and all heaven and earth, to shrink also (J 66:50, 81–3): the ‘eye’ is ‘all-creating’. Creon fears that any who are not ‘by blood / United’ to Oedipus should see him. In Blakean terms, now that Oedipus has fallen into the body, all who behold him will necessarily become related to him by blood, because the sight of him (which is weighty: ‘neither earth can bear’) will drag them down into the material body. In the Reuben episode, becoming what one beholds is specifically linked to coming into a limited physical form. In Jerusalem 65, as a result of their torture of Luvah, the sons’ ‘necks’ are ‘iron’, ‘their muscular fibres are crampd & smitten’, their bodies harden (65:77–8). As with Reuben, whose infectious and botched embodiment suggests that all mortal births are misbirths, the sons here suggest that taking on a material body is torture, characterized by physical affliction and increasing immobility. The body becomes the torturer and now controls and imprisons them. ‘In howlings & deadly pain’ (65:75), their agony itself severs them from others and from their surroundings because they cannot externalize their pain through articulation. As Elaine Scarry writes, about pain’s ‘totality’, At first occurring only as an appalling but limited internal fact, it eventually occupies the entire body and spills out into the realm beyond the body, takes over all that is inside and outside, makes the two obscenely indistinguishable, and systematically destroys anything like language or world extension that is alien to itself and threatening to its claims. (54–5) She argues that torturers act like pain itself, making everything exterior ‘a giant externalized map of the prisoner’s feelings’ (55). The Sons of Albion

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Oedipus’s wish to ‘be deaf as well as blind’ is an anti-synaesthesia, senses working in concert to perceive nothing. Oedipus’s desire to ‘shut out woe’ suggests that horror floods in, inexorably, at the senses. A speech from Creon shows that while Oedipus has been rendered monstrous by what he has seen, the sight of Oedipus has dire effects on his beholders. Creon recommends,

see only their own pain reflected in each other: ‘Spasms smite their features, sinews & limbs: pale they look on one another. / They turn, contorted: their iron necks bend unwilling towards / Luvah: their lips tremble’ (65:76–8). They are separated from themselves, no longer able to control their bodies. Girard writes, ‘because of the victim, in so far as it seems to emerge from the community and the community seems to emerge from it, for the first time there can be something like an inside and an outside, a before and after, a community and the sacred’ (in McKenna 72). The victim marks the point of definition and separation. The sons and daughters, who divide and unite among themselves, perpetrate divisions and unifications on their victims. They divide the victim’s personality by unifying with his spectre and emanation. They also divide the victim’s body, cutting it with a sacrificial knife. The Knife of flint passes over the howling Victim: his blood Gushes & stains the fair side of the fair Daughters of Albion. They put aside his curls; they divide his seven locks upon His forehead: they bind his forehead with thorns of iron They put into his hand a reed, they mock Saying: Behold The King of Canaan whose are seven hundred chariots of iron! They take off his vesture whole with their Knives of flint: But they cut asunder his inner garments: searching with Their cruel fingers for his heart, & there they enter in pomp. In many tears. (66:20–9) The daughters divide his body, in order to enter it. His blood, normally contained within his body’s borders, is on their skin: a transgression which characterizes sacrificial rites. Mallet finds that, in an Icelandic sacrifice, the victims’ blood was received in a brass vase and, with a brush, sprinkled on the bystanders (128). The practical action of putting aside his curls to be able to bind his forehead is amplified into dividing his seven locks, giving a suggestion of ritual exactitude and mysterious significance, perhaps as illusory as this false religion. Luvah is no longer called by his name, but simply ‘the victim’, reflecting the identity loss torture has caused, and universalizing his role as passion, here tormented and repressed. Division is a theme in the history of sacrifice: division, which is a corollary of unification. The Levitical laws are meticulous about cutting, or not cutting, the sacrifice. For example, for a holocaust or whole burnt offering of a bird, the priest ‘shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder’ (Lev. 1:17). For a peace offering of a goat, the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, which is by the

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The punishment for transgression of these laws is also expressed in terms of division from the unity which is the community: ‘For whosoever eateth the fat of the beast, of which men offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, even the soul that eateth it shall be cut off from his people’ (Lev. 7:25). Hubert and Mauss write that the slaughter of sacrifice left a sacred matter behind it, and it was this . . . that served to procure the useful effects of the sacrifice. For this purpose it was submitted to a double series of operations. What survived of the animal was attributed entirely to the sacred world, attributed entirely to the profane world, or shared between the two. (35) This practice is seen in Druidical sacrifice as described by Mallet: ‘Part of the blood was sprinkled upon the people, part of it upon the sacred grove; with the same they also bedewed the images of the gods, the altars, the benches and walls of the temple both within and without’ (136). According to Girard’s scheme of sacrifice, the separation of the victim from the community invents the sacred: what is sacred is separate. In terms of Mary Douglas’s theory, the things that cross the boundaries of the body and of society (such as, in the microcosm, bodily fluids, and in the macrocosm, the victim) become invested with the ambiguous power of the abomination. The obsession with division or non-division in sacrifice is perceptible in the narrative of Christ’s passion, echoed in the sacrifice of Luvah. One example is the prophecy that none of his bones would be broken (the reason for the piercing of his side) (John 19:32–6); another is his garments. The division of Christ’s clothes among the soldiers and their casting lots for the seamless, indivisible, woven garment is a subject Blake illustrated. His painting foregrounds the gamblers, as Bindman describes, ‘making the soldiers more prominent in the composition than the figures around the cross’ (Fitzwilliam 23). The glow emanating from Christ is obscured by the cross, which is seen from behind, while the gamblers are bathed in a light emanating from the garment, on which they roll the dice. Symbolically, the soldiers’ attention is misplaced whether the garment is considered to be Christ’s mortal or immortal body. It could be his mortal body, since he puts it off at his crucifixion, or it could be his eternal body, since he puts it off to suffer as a mortal on the cross. If mortal, they gamble over something not valuable but perishing. If immortal, they should not be gambling over it, not only because of disrespect, but also because, though indivisible, it cannot

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flanks, and the caul above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away. And the priest shall burn them upon the altar: it is the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet savour: all the fat is the Lord’s. (Lev. 3:14–16)

be owned by one lucky winner; the body of Christ is for all, and contains all. John, the only evangelist to mention the seamless garment, interprets the parallelism of Psalm 22:18, ‘They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots’, as a two-stage operation: ‘Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be’ ( John 19:23–24). This description of how Jesus’ garments were made up could be an allegory of Blake’s fourfold man. The divisible garments indicate that there are parts of every human which can be divided. However, the seamless garment (which is a coat, and so in a way a unifying force over the fourfold divisible garments) cannot be divided: it is what I have called the core humanity. If a garment for Blake is a euphemism for the mortal body, Jesus’ garments indicate that when a human falls into mortality, he is divided into multiple garments, just as Albion is divided into the four zoas, while ideally those four are unified under the seamless coat which is Albion’s humanity. The gamblers, like torturers, are under the mistaken impression that one of them can gain ownership of the indivisible core humanity. Since it glows in Blake’s painting as Christ also does on the cross, it can represent that energy a sacrifice seeks to release, which the victim retains the ability to direct. That ultimate life cannot be stolen like a subordinate portion, such as an emanation or spectre, can be. When the daughters ‘take off his vesture whole with their Knives of flint’ (J 66:26), they may be removing the victim’s clothing, or his skin. This image grimly reappears on plate 68 where the daughters ‘sport before the Kings / Clothed in the skin of the victim!’ (68:32–3). According to a seventeenthcentury account, by a sergeant in Hernán Cortés’s army, the Aztecs ‘flayed the skin off the faces’ of their victims and ‘prepared it afterwards like glove leather with the beards on, and kept those for the festivals when they celebrated drunken orgies’.10 Clavigero’s History of Mexico cites two methods of human sacrifice which involved priests wearing the victims’ skin (125, 283). The daughters of Albion attempt a perverse union with the victim, literally by getting into his skin. While in ancient Mexican sacrifice the victim could be of either gender, the sacrificer was always male. Priestesses were debarred from this highest sacred office (Clavigero 274–5). John Toland refers to ‘learned Druidesses’ but does not indicate whether they performed sacrifices (Critical History 158). Blake reverses the possible gender switch of a male priest wearing a female victim’s skin. In the illustration on plate 69, the female sacrificer on the left holds what could be a severed bearded head if it were not so flaccid (Figure 5.1). Paley in his notes endorses the view of this element as a ‘flayed face’, proposed by Wicksteed (Paley 245; Wicksteed, Jerusalem 215). In the coloured copy (E) there is some phallic embellishment in pen and ink. The female sacrificer on the right is given partially obscured

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Figure 5.1 William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 69.

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but unmistakable male genitals, suggesting that she has donned the skin, and the masculine power, of a male victim. This is the reverse of the function of skin in Blake’s graphic bodies, where it is a diaphanous garment which shows forth, even in female figures, the masculine form beneath. If the skin represents the indivisible humanity which cannot be transferred, then the actions of the daughters show Blake’s condemnation of females pretending to be – dressing up as – ultimately human, rather than subordinate elements of male human forms. Such a pretense, for Blake, requires usurpation and violence. Again similar to ancient Mexican ritual, in which the high priest ‘dexterously opened [the victim’s] breast and tore out his heart, which, while yet palpitating, he offered to the sun’ (Clavigero 279), the daughters ‘cut asunder’ the victim’s ‘inner garments: searching with / Their cruel fingers for his heart’ (66:27–8). The illustration accompanying Clavigero’s description pictures the high priest holding up the heart while it effuses blood, with his other hand still in a vertical slit just left of centre on the victim’s chest (Figure 5.2). The location of the slit, and the priest’s hand pictured inside it, tempts a comparison to the wound in Christ’s side, and doubting Thomas’s insertion of his fingers into it. The victim, though Clavigero wrote

Figure 5.2 Francesco Saverio Clavigero, A History of Mexico. 1787. Plate viii, page 279.

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that he was sacrificed naked (279), is pictured in a loincloth, again recalling the iconography of the crucifixion. In the division of the body, the borders between inside and outside are uncannily blurred. Fingers have never touched these inner surfaces. In Blake’s text the line between word meanings is also blurred; a sound pun and a visual pun skew the relationship between word-surface and word-content. ‘They enter in pomp’, to the pump, ‘in many tears’, tearing their way in (66:28–9). Plate 69 makes explicit the sexual (and religious) suggestions of the entry: ‘Embraces are cominglings: from the Head even to the Feet: / And not a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place’ (69:43–4). If genital, penetrating sexuality is parodied by the entry into the secret heart, even ideal ‘polymorphous perverse’ sexuality has its evil equivalent in the daughters clothing themselves in the victim’s full skin. Torture resembles sex in that there is a desire to produce an intense reaction in another’s body. The torturers try to transcend the isolation of living inside an inescapable body. Since their attempt to free themselves from physical limitations uses physical means, it is bound to fail. Sexuality for Blake has its place in Beulah; Los asks, ‘Humanity knows not of Sex: wherefore are Sexes in Beulah?’ ( J 30[44]:33). Genital, reproductive sexuality is only made possible by a fall from eternity into gender division, evidenced by the external appearance of the female, as in The First Book of Urizen where Enitharmon is ‘the first female now separate’, a sight at which ‘Eternity shudderd’ (16:10–11). Damon explains, ‘In Eternity, sexes do not exist, because there the Humanity is completely one with his Emanation’ (Dictionary 367). Yet, these conglomerate, overridingly male beings who live in eternity can also have intercourse with each other. Non-eternal sexual activity is an imitation of eternal, intellectual intercourse in which the borders between individuals are permeable. In eternity, commingling is complete. Blake’s descriptions are characterized by an impossibly thorough mutuality in which the inhabitants of eternity ‘enter / Into each others Bosom’, and are ‘One Man reflecting each in each & clearly seen / And seeing’ ( J 88:3–4, 98:39–40). Even the subordinate portions of the human personality, the emanations and children, commingle too ( J 88:5–7). This union certainly has a bodily aspect since it involves entering bosoms, but it is also a creative, intellectual activity: they ‘converse’ (J 88:3, 98:28).11 In contrast to the uninhibited joining of spiritual bodies, in the sexual union of physical bodies it is not possible to commingle from head to foot: bodies can touch each other full-length, but only join at certain places of limited flexibility. Though in torture there is an attempt to create more points of joining, more orificies, torture (like anatomization) does so through violence rather than imagination. It cannot be a mutual commingling because it is a hierarchical power relationship, the torturer over the victim. The torturer receives pleasure while the victim feels pain. However, the sons’ torture of Luvah reveals this economy is not stable, but rather the pain can unexpectedly rebound upon the torturers, who become what they

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behold, losing their position of control. With this loss the relationship becomes mutual, in a way: not the mutual untramelled pleasure of eternity, but a mutual pain which involves, even causes, a solidification and narrowing of the body, rendering it more impenetrable. Attempting to become one through sacrifice only results in increased separation. If sex is a lesser imitation of eternal commingling, then torture, a misguided imitiation of sex, is an imitation of an imitation. Mary-Kelly Persyn remarks on the sexual suggestions of the human sacrifices performed in Jerusalem, arguing, for instance, that when ‘the victims’ blood flows over the “fair side of the fair” daughters’ it is ‘a gruesome adjoining clearly taking the place of sexual consummation’ (72). She traces such violent perversion to what she calls ‘the de-facement of the female – all females becoming one’, the loss of identity involved in Blake’s depictions of the conglomerations of the daughters which for Persyn symbolizes the ‘characterization of a human on the basis of purely sexual attributes’ which is ‘a generalization that tyrannizes over and effaces any kind of individuality’ (68). The modesty and chastity demanded of women by society ‘prevents their self-expression’, and because of this ‘it is no wonder than so many of the women in Blake’s poems are crippled emotionally, doomed to evil, pernicious aggression or to helpless passivity’ (65). Though much of Persyn’s article is necessarily spent navigating a way to champion a Blake who regrets women’s loss of identity – a difficult road since he also contends that in Eternity the female has no will of her own (VLJ E 562), and often presents females as ideally assisting male self-expression – the chain of events leading from chastity to identity loss to human sacrifice is convincing. In fact, it helps to explain the solid physicalization which results from sacrifice. The daughters enter the heart and, unlike the ancient Mexicans who tore it out and offered it to the gods, they leave it inside and ‘there they erect a temple & an altar’ ( J 66:29). The figurative tone of this line suggests that the psyche is referred to rather than the body; indeed, the whole passage may be figurative since both ‘inner garments’ and ‘heart’ lend themselves to metaphorical interpretation. Blake brooks no such abstraction of the body: he undermines it through pun. The chaste mental and emotional control, and permanent self-denial, implied by the ‘altar-ation’ of the heart, results in a physical ‘alteration’ of the human body. This is a variation on the embodiment motif in which the organs of sense become enclosed in flesh and thus cause sun and heavens to be ‘shrunk / Away’ ( J 66:50–1). As Nelson Hilton finds, ‘The Eye altering alters all’ (E 485; Hilton, Literal 240). Hilton asserts that ‘with the emphasis on sacrifice’ on plate 66, ‘we may justly fear that this action reflects an image of the body as sacrosanct and mysterious. The body is objectified and so becomes incomprehensible’ (Hilton, Literal 240). Since ‘the altar is the high (altum) place’ (Hilton, Literal 240), it is unavoidably associated with a high god, a god far from the human breast. Ironically, belief in such a god elicits a desire to enter the human

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breast. Because it is sacrosanct and mysterious, it evokes the repressed thrill of the high priest entering alone once a year. God is allegorized in a negative sense, abstracted. Instead of residing in the human breast, God is displaced from there by his altar, which is only a stony symbol of his presence. The divine is separated from the human; the human is also separated from the divine and falls into a world of objects. This fall, as perpetrated by the daughters of Albion, is a consolidation which is really a fragmentation. The victim becomes more solid and definite, but at the same time is cut off from the world by shrinking senses. These senses are described one by one, suggesting that they are not able to work in synaesthetic concert. They pour cold water on his brain in front, to cause. Lids to grow over his eyes in veils of tears: and caverns To freeze over his nostrils. while they feed his tongue from cups And dishes of painted clay. (66:30–3) Cold water poured directly on the brain touches what is normally hidden inside the body. Pouring water recalls baptism, similarly an initiation, perhaps in imitation of water breaking: a signal of birth, the ultimate separation. Pouring cold water on the brain causes lids to grow over the eyes in ‘veils of tears’. A curtain of water flows from the forehead, becomes a bodily fluid, and solidifies into flesh, which confines one to the vale of tears. Blake often refers to the flesh as a veil, which through the complex of weaving imagery relates to the woven garment of Christ’s passion and the garments of this victim’s division. Nelson Hilton finds a further pun here: ‘A “tear” also names the finest fibre (or “marrow”) of flax, making it particularly available for weaving. This gives another version of the creation of the body out of fibres . . . that is, the veil of mystery that is also our flesh’ (Literal 143). The fleshy veil separates the human from eternity. The veil of tears that hangs and clings before the eyes is also a veil of tears, rips through which one can only catch glimpses of the world, the textile version of the chinks in the caverned man’s cave.12 This body-veil has its origins in sacrificial tearing and dividing. Thomas Frosch emphasizes this, in terms of division from the cosmic man. ‘Things are separated from Albion by being literally sliced from his body with a knife; the body and senses of man, in a commonly repeated tag-line, shrink under the sacrificial knife’ (52). Like Blake’s confrontation of the complications of birth, his exploration of the concept of sacrifice shows that the human identity is threatened by taking shape in a material body, and the human body is threatened by its own formation.

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Divisions and Comminglings: Emanations and Spectres

The concept of emanations and spectres, like the concept of children as aspects of their father’s personality, becomes fully manifest in Blake’s late works, but is also discernible earlier. The term ‘emanation’ arises first in The Four Zoas, and though ‘spectre’ is used in The French Revolution, America and Europe, it can be taken in those early appearances to mean simply a threatening ghost. However, Enitharmon before she is called an emanation shows characteristics which will later belong to emanations, and the early uses of the word ‘spectre’ in the illuminated books contain hints of the word’s future uniquely Blakean meaning. In The First Book of Urizen, Enitharmon is ‘born’ from Los; she emerges from him as a globe of blood and as she grows into ‘the first female form now separate’, she is named for Los’s ‘Pity’ which she personifies, and which precipitated her creation (BU 12–17). She is an aspect of Los which divides from him in pain and gore. In America, the spectre is also associated with blood, spherical shapes and multiplication by splitting or rending: ‘The terror’ is described as: like a comet, or more like the planet red That once inclos’d the terrible wandering comets in its sphere. Then Mars thou wast our center, & the planets three flew round Thy crimson disk; so e’er the Sun was rent from thy red sphere; The Spectre glowd his horrid length staining the temple long With beams of blood. (7:2–7) The ‘terror’ in America is Orc, suggesting that casting the individual as a family, Los exuding Enitharmon and Orc as personifications of his emotions and psychic processes, is an origin for the idea of the human’s multiple personality being composed of female emanation and male spectre. The schemes overlap in Blake’s final prophecy, where the sons and daughters of Albion are also called spectres and emanations. The cosmic metaphors used in the above passage also re-echo the microcosm/macrocosm scenario which 155 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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results from Albion being seen as the cosmic man, containing everything. Dörrbecker, in his introduction to America in The Continental Prophecies, explains the significance of the lines: ‘Eighteenth-century astronomers conjectured that the planets and comets had been ejected from solar volcanos that were identified with the sunspots’, and he cites Erasmus Darwin as an example. He adds that here this theory is turned upside-down in that not the planets but the sun itself was ejected by the original planet Mars (33). For the concept of the spectre, this is significant because it suggests that multiple bodies were originally potentially contained in, and then separated from, one body, and also that once separated those bodies can forget their derivative origin and claim primacy. In Europe, the main associaton of the spectre is imprisonment: Enitharmon laugh’d in her sleep to see (O womans triumph) Every house a den. every man bound; the shadows are filld With spectres, and the windows wove over with curses of iron: Over the doors Thou shalt not; & over the chimneys Fear is written With bands of iron round their necks, fasten’d into the walls The citizens: in leaden gyves the inhabitants of suburbs Walk heavy; soft and bent are the bones of villagers. (14[15]:25–31) The severely limited movement of these people is similar to the restriction Blake describes in his portrayals of the origins of the material body. When Los binds the changes of Urizen, he does so with rivets and sodor of iron; also Urizen is ‘in chains of the mind locked up’, while ‘Los beat on his fetters of iron’. The soft, bent bones of the villagers recall the pliable bones of Urizen whose ribs are ‘like a bending cavern’ (BU 9:8–9, 25, 28, 39). The spectre appears when the human falls into material form; the spectres lurk in the shadows, the minimal light accessible to the caverned man. Likewise, the spectre appears when gender division appears, when the human divides into male and female components. Since for Blake the human form is a male, the presence of an independent female, especially one with power, indicates that gender division has occurred; the above scene from Europe is ‘Womans triumph’ dreamed by Enitharmon. With the separation of the genders comes other kinds of separation: the spectre dwells in the shadows of houses where the entrance is defined by ‘Thou shalt not’, indicating the segregation of acts into good and evil deeds characterized by the Ten Commandments. Blake abbreviates the commandment, showing that this separation can go out of control and become a forbidding of all acts, just as spectres can forget they are portions of another being and claim ultimate power for themselves. The Commandments are akin to Urizen’s ‘iron laws’ which he promulgates once himself and his children have taken on fleshy

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form; he curses his children when he sees ‘That no flesh or spirit could keep / His iron laws one moment’ (BU 21:23–6). Since emanations and spectres arise when the division into good and evil arises, it would be foolish to declare that emanations and spectres are themselves always evil, always uncontrollable components of a divided human working against him and embroiling him deeper in a spiritual morass. That the personages of emanations and spectres, and even the dividing of existence, is not thoroughly undesirable, can be seen by looking at how the fall into separation works in Blake’s own cosmos. As the above passage from America suggests, parts of the universe, like parts of Blake’s human, gain separate being through division from each other. In Milton we learn that Beulah is evermore Created around Eternity; appearing To the Inhabitants of Eden. around them on all sides. But Beulah to its Inhabitants appears within each district As the beloved infant in his mothers bosom round incircled. (30:8–11) Beulah is contiguous to Eternity and its very form reveals its status as offspring, and reflects the separated (yet not alienated) being of its inhabitants. This is juxtaposed with a brief description of Eternity in which ‘the Eternal Great Humanity . . . Walks among all his awful Family’, suggesting that the members of that family are unified, rather than separate forms, especially as the emanations ‘trembled exceedingly . . . because the life of Man was too exceeding unbounded’, not defined and differentiated (30:15, 17, 21–2). It seems that occasionally an alternative is needed to eternal unity, in order to save the identity of its component parts. The emanations ask, Give us a habitation & a place In which we may be hidden under the shadow of wings For if we who are but for a time, & who pass away in winter Behold these wonders of Eternity we shall consume But you O our Fathers & Brothers, remain in Eternity But grant us a Temporal Habitation. (30:24–9) Indeed, this reprieve from Eternity is not only necessary for emanations, but also welcome to the eternals themselves, for whom ‘the moony habitations of Beulah, / Are from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant rest’ (30:13–14). The ‘fall’ from eternity, and the formation of human aspects into separate beings, is not necessarily a catastrophe. The closing lines of Jerusalem indicate how the coexisting unity and diversity of eternity is maintained by a cycle of descent into the world of separation and multiplicity, and return to eternal

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All Human Forms identified even Tree Metal Earth & Stone. all Human Forms identified. living going forth & returning wearied Into the Planetary lives of Years Months Days & Hours reposing And then Awaking into his Bosom in the Life of Immortality. (99:1–4) As in the description of the creation of Beulah, the descent is described as repose, a refreshment and collecting of energy. However, the sleep of Albion depicted in the many previous plates of Jerusalem shows that there are many obstacles in the way of reawakening. Pausing from the strenuous mental activity of eternity could result in a too lengthy sleep and a forgetting that this rest is merely a temporary state. One could also forget that one’s separated elements are really part of the self, and become not just divided but severly fragmented or even dominated by a subordinate part of oneself. Blake’s habit of calling embodied beings ‘vegetations’ suggests that material existence is like luxuriant plant life. Unless one keeps moving and actively tending, one can quickly be covered. The fact that there are realms below Beulah, such as Ulro, reveals that the fall can go further than the place of idyllic rest; the redefenition of parts afforded by travel out of eternity can be exacerbated into the imprisonment in mortal tissue seen in Urizen’s binding by Los (later a spectre) and the dream of Enitharmon (later an emanation). The idea that the human personality is multiple, and parts of it might go astray, get out of control, and even be embodied as separate beings, is an affront to identity. A similar threat to the assumption that the human personality is singular and consistent can be found in John Locke’s meditations on personal identity, in a section (‘Of Identity and Diversity’) added to his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1694. Locke finds flaws in the traditional criterion of substance as a unifying force. The material substance of a growing body is always changing, and the immaterial substance of thought is inconsistent, interrupted by forgetfulness and sleep (II.xxvii.4, 10). Neither is the substantial soul a reliable standard, considering the possibility of transmigration, as well as the soul’s unknowability (II.xxvii.14, 27). Additionally, one of Locke’s main arguments in the Essay is that substance itself cannot be known: we only know the accidents which we perceive, the combinations of which cause ideas to arise in our minds, while substance is only a concept we imagine uniting those accidents (II.xxiii.2). How can identity be reliably based on something we cannot know? In hope of obviating these problems, Locke posits consciousness as the personality’s unifying force (II.xxvii.16–17). In his study of the controversy arising from Locke’s new chapter, Christopher Fox explains, ‘Far from insuring the presence of

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life, not only for the elements of humans but also for the elements of universe itself which is now humanized:

the abiding self’, Locke’s critics argued that he ‘destroyed it, by shifting the locus of the personality from the indivisible soul to the floating ideas of an ever-changing consciousness’ (46). The ‘puzzles’ Locke invents reveal the difficulties of defining identity. For instance, ‘should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler as soon as deserted by his own soul’, who would he be (II.xxvii.15)? Similarly, Locke imagines, if a person’s little finger were severed and somehow ‘should this consciousness go along with the little finger and leave the rest of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person, and then self would have nothing to do with the rest of the body’ (II.xxvii.17). Locke imagines impossibilities to emphasize, and attempt to resolve, the instability of the self. Blake depicts personages taking on different identities (for instance Los being a version of Urthona), splitting into multiple persons (such as emanation and spectre), and many individual characters conglomerating into one (as the sons and daughters of Albion do). Such puzzles of identity go beyond Locke’s. The very process of separation and joining is depicted in detail, not just as a hypothetical result. Whereas Locke struggles with the faults in the indivisible surface of the human person in the hope of discovering a unifying standard, Blake focuses squarely on the fractures in personality. Locke’s puzzles, strange as they are, do not consider the soul as divisible or multiple. He imagines someone being more than one person successively, in reincarnation. He pictures the soul being transferred from the prince to the cobbler after the cobbler’s own soul has left. The severed little finger takes the whole consciousness with it, not just a part. Blake apparently considers the soul itself to be either divisible or multiple, if emanations and spectres are part of a greater personality which split off taking their part of spiritual substance with them, and when they reunite, not displacing but joining the other soul, or, the rest of one soul. For David Hume, personal identity is related to perception. He sees the individual not as united by consciousness, like Locke, but as ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, an are in a perpetual flux and movement’ (300). The unification of this flow in a ‘person’ is a habit of thought, a ‘fiction’, rather than something which actually exists (303). Though Hume is near to Blake in seeing humans as multiple, even so multiple that one can hardly keep track of their changes, he is far from Blake for whom the person containing these ever-changing parts is the ultimate reality, the human form divine. While Hume sees the person as composed of fleeting thoughts, memories and impressions, Blake gives personality elements substantial being by personifying them. They are not merely perceptions or thoughts, but conglomerations of mental processes: for example, the spectre is the reasoning power ( J 74:10), not a single rational thought but all that is involved in the power of reasoning. They are presented as people dominated by those

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processes, demonstrating the resulting actions and attitudes. For Blake the individual is not a bundle of thoughts, but a body of bodies, a soul of souls; a person of personifications. In Genesis, there is a suggestion that the first human was manifold. A parallel to the separation of emanation and spectre can be seen in Blake’s striking illustration of the creation of Eve on plate 35[31] of Jerusalem (Figure 6.1). She emerges, shoulders and breast, from the side of Adam. It is difficult to discern how far she has separated from Adam because of Blake’s characteristic muscular distortion. Eve apparently comes from a slit of flesh along the line of the middle bone of the ribcage. Blake has added no blood to mark the opening; neither has he made it seem vaginal (except for making it vertical on the body, and locating it in Adam’s bosom).1 Given this indeterminacy, Eve might not be separating, but growing there like the limb of a tree. This illustration combines the perspectives of the two creation stories in Genesis.2 One version sees Eve being created from Adam’s rib; in Blake’s design, that is the location Eve arises from. Yet, in Genesis, it is explicitly said that Adam’s side was closed up before Eve was made from his rib (2:21–2). The other account devotes less storytelling to the creation of human beings, but its details are suggestive. In Genesis 1:27 it is said, ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them’. The equal footing of male and female here recurs in a parallel verse in Chapter 5: ‘Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created’ (5:2). Symon Patrick in his commentary notes that ‘Adam’ is ‘the common name to both sexes; like homo in Latin’ (Genesis 5:2n.). This verse could mean that man and woman were originally one being.3 The following line encourages this interpretation: ‘And Adam . . . begat a son in his own likeness, after his image’ (5:3). He begat a son in Eve, who was his own likeness. In The First Book of Urizen, Los also begets ‘his likeness, / On his own divided image’, Enitharmon (17:15–16). Before man fell in love with his own likeness, he was created in the likeness of God. If ‘Adam’ was ‘man and woman’, then so was God. Without the gender implications, Alexander Geddes makes the same deduction: ‘if man be made after the image and likeness of God, the latter must necessarily have some semblance of man’ (27). This is one aspect of the one God’s multiplicity. Studies including Mark Smith’s Early History of God show how Jewish monotheism arises from the subsumption of many gods (such as Canaanite deities) into one. Though this study is based on twentieth-century discoveries, it follows on views of the Bible which arose in Blake’s time: the beginnings of the higher criticism which treats the Bible not as a sacred text, but as a text. Alexander Geddes’ ‘Fragment Hypothesis’ sees the Bible as a ‘heterogeneous compilation based on the oral traditions of the Hebrews’ (Mee 165); a deity described by a conglomeration of sources would be a conglomerate deity. Geddes struggles with the problem of the ‘profane’ plural

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Figure 6.1 William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 35 [31].

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What! doth a term, which is equally applied to Beel-zebub the god of Ekron, to Chamosh the god of Moab, to Moloch the god of the Ammonites; to the gods of Hamath, Arphad, Sepharvaim, Ena and Ava, denote the ever blessed Trinity? Yet to all these obscene deities the word [Elohim] is applied by the Hebrew writers. (7) His rationalization recalls modern theories in that it recognizes the shadows of previous polytheism falling (if only linguistically) on the one God. Before the vocation of Abraham, polytheism seems generally to have prevailed: the gods, therefore, would be a general term. The error, in worship, was rectified by the Hebrew legislator: but stubborn language has seldom been known to bend even to legislative power; and a term, once become idiomatical, is not easily dislodged. (8–9) Since Geddes calls the gods of ancient near eastern polytheism ‘obscene deities’, and calls the belief in many gods an ‘error’, though he points toward the later view of Yahweh as one god assembled from many gods, he more closely resembles the overriding eighteenth-century view encapsulated by Jason Whittaker, who also sees a parallel between God’s multiplicity and that of Blake’s human. He argues that the dividing and uniting of the daughters of Albion in Jerusalem ‘doubtlessly stems from the notion that the idolatry of polytheism was a degeneration of the ministers and attributes of the original deity into gods in their own right’ (135). This is simply the reverse of the twentieth-century view: instead of one God being put together from many, one God collapses into many. The possibility of this process working both ways recalls Blake’s cosmic scheme of going forth and returning, between eternity where a unified human is made up of many aspects, and the realms of separation and multiplicity where those many aspects are individually defined. Blake also comments on the relationship between the Jewish God and his many neighbouring deities. When he describes the dinner conversation between himself, Isaiah and Ezekiel, he records this speech of Ezekiel’s: The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception some nations held one principle for the origin & some another, we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other countries, and prophecying

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in ‘Elohim’, the name of God used in Genesis 1 (3), and writes, in a Blakean slew of strange names,

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Blake, who writes ‘I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction’ (13:13–14), suggests that the originating principle could be multiple, or at least variable: each nation holds a different one. The habit of the Israelites calling other principles derivative and cursing other gods as rebellious is presented as their own idiosyncrasy, rather than a truth about the nature of God. In fact, only the vulgar conclude from this that the Jewish perspective is the only true one, to which others must be ‘subject’. Apparently, Blake does not have difficulty with belief in God as multiple, and not just multiple in the static, orthodox stabilization of the vacillation between many gods and one, Geddes’ ‘ever blessed Trinity’. Blake’s interpretation of the Seven Eyes of God, which ‘run to and fro through the whole earth’ in Zechariah 4:10 and ‘are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth’ in Revelation 5:6, testifies to a concept of the deity as manifold. These Biblical quotations suggest that, like Blake’s human, the divine is broken up into a number of hypostases in the earthly sphere. Blake’s Seven Eyes of God are ‘Lucifer, Molech, Elohim, Shaddai, Pahad, Jehovah, Jesus’ ( J 55:31–2), placing such beings as Lucifer the fallen angel and Molech the Ammonite deity (1 Kings 11:7) among the names of aspects of God. Damon comments that Blake is ‘anticipating the modern scholars’ in including Molech among the seven eyes of God. He explains that Molech is a god to whom child sacrifices are made, and lists episodes in the Hebrew Bible where the Lord accepts such sacrifices (such as Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11), showing himself to have Molech’s quality (Dictionary 283–4). Jack Miles, in God: a Biography, explains how a monotheism interwoven with polytheism has affected the Western conception of the personality. God is the Rock of Ages, integrity in person. And yet this same being combines several personalities. Either mere unity (character alone) or mere multiplicity (personality alone) would have been so much easier. But he is both, and so the image of the human that derives from him requires both. (6) The same is true of Blake’s human. Both integrity and multiplicity have limitations. On the human level, an overemphasis on unity results in a kind of separation; a cordoning-off of the impermeable individual, seen in the sleeping Albion. On the divine level, the omnipotence of the God of

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that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius . . . and we so loved our God. that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews. (MHH 12:19–13:9)

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monotheism becomes a flaw, for it implicates God in evil. On the level of language, integrity works against the ability of words to mean many things and thus link seemingly disparate notions; purity of language can mean isolation of concepts. A non-unified multiplicity, of language, deity or human being, can mean incoherence and weakness. A multiplicity coexistent with integrity defuses the difficulties which either on its own entails. The consolidation of God from many gods, and the attempt to save the omnipotent God from responsibility for evil, are both visible in the figure of Satan. Because of this, Satan is a useful parallel to the spectre which can help define his function. Blake also links the two figures: he casts Satan as a spectre in Milton (39:29). Clues to Satan’s initial existence as a son of God can be found in the Bible, for example in the book of Job, where ‘the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them’ (1:6). For Blake, sons can be manifestations of their father’s psyche. This seems likely in Job as well, according to the theory that ancient near eastern polytheism influences the Hebrew conception of God. Jeffrey Burton Russell, in his study The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity, sees Satan in the book of Job as representing two different varieties of God’s subordinate aspects. He remarks that the bene ha-elohim or sons of the Lord, among whom Satan appears in Job, are ‘comparable to the “sons of the God” in Canaanite religion. In Canaan these “sons” are gods, manifestations of the divine principle. Clearly the original idea in Hebrew religion was that Yahweh was surrounded by a pantheon comparable to that of Zeus or Wotan’ (184). This pantheon remains in heaven with God, but in Job, Satan is able to roam the earth. Thus he also functions as the mal’ak Yahweh, the messenger of God, sometimes known as the Angel of the Divine Presence. ‘The concept of the mal’ak was meant to represent the side of Yahweh turned toward men, or the aspect of Yahweh that men perceive, or the manifestation of Yahweh in his relationship with human beings’ (198). The ideas which Russell uses a historical view of Satan’s development to clarify are evident in the text of Job itself. The dialogues between Satan and God suggest that Satan acts both as a contrary voice within God’s personality (as though God is having a debate with himself ), and as an agent of God on earth. God inquires of Satan, ‘Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?’ Satan answers, ‘Doth Job fear God for nought?’, arguing that Job will abandon his faith in adversity. The unity of God and Satan is clear when Satan suggests, ‘put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face’, and God responds, ‘Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand’ ( Job 1:8–12). It is as though Satan’s hand is God’s hand, which will touch or have power over all of Job’s possessions; when God agrees to test Job, Satan is the one who does it. His presence among

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the sons of the Lord, and his obedience to God’s orders, show that Satan in Job is under the control of God, at least to an extent: he is not a completely independent figure. That Satan is not entirely subject to God’s power is hinted at in the second God-Satan dialogue, in which God protests Job still ‘holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause’ (2:3). How can an omnipotent God be moved by an outside force, especially the devil? Satan is able to influence God to actions he may regret (he says the destruction of Job was ‘without cause’). Satan is able to introduce doubt into the mind of God; perhaps Satan simply voices the doubt that is already there. Seeing Satan as an externalization and personification of God’s doubt would make sense, since part of Satan’s significance in the Hebrew Bible, from his very name, is that he is an opponent; ‘the Hebrew word satan derives from a root meaning “oppose”, “obstruct”, or “accuse” ’ (Russell 189). That Blake interpreted Satan and God as aspects of the same personality is evident in his illustrations to the book of Job. For instance, Illustration XI (in Damon, Job 33) is a variation on Elohim Creating Adam. While in that colour print Adam’s body is wound around by a serpent as he is in the process of being shaped from the earth by Elohim (the plural creator God), in the Job design it is God who is wrapped in a snake. This not only suggests that God and the satanic serpent are one; it also connects God with the material world, since in Elohim Creating Adam the snake arises from the earth, and Satan is the God of this world (as Blake hints in Illustration XI in the lowermost inscription, ‘Who opposeth & exalteth himself above all that is called God or is Worshipped’). To make the point absolutely clear, Blake also gives this God a cloven hoof. Blake’s purpose in associating God and Satan could be to show that this is a false God, the creating demiurge of the Gnostics who is really a lesser god but pretends to be the highest.4 However, the Job illustrations furnish many reminders that Blake is not portraying so much a divided God as a human being struggling with himself. For instance, the composition of Illustration XI has a reflecting effect, just as it does in Elohim Creating Adam: Job and his God are mirror images of each other. Damon comments on a design earlier in the Job sequence that Job’s God is Job’s ‘own ideal, and therefore bears Job’s likeness’ (Damon, Job 14). Additionally, Illustration XI is captioned, ‘With Dreams upon my bed thou scarest me & affrightest me with Visions’ (cf. Job 7:14). This God is a dream, a creation of the dreamer’s own mind. Joseph Wicksteed, in his study of the Job designs, argues that the illustrations portray a mental drama: the ‘inward life of Job is the real theme of the book’, which means that ‘Jehovah and Satan must be conceived as representing aspects of Job’s own soul contending for victory’ (51). Blake transfers God’s multiplicity to the human psyche. It seems that Job is one of those men who ‘forgot that All deities reside in the human breast’ (MHH 11:15–16); the status of Satan in Job as a member

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of the heavenly court and an agent of God suggests that the projected deity in turn forgot that Satan resides in his breast. Satan, according to his name, personifies the idea of an opponent, one who accuses and obstructs. For Blake, who claims that ‘opposition is true friendship’, and that an ‘Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense’ (MHH 20:20, 24:5–7), these qualities are not innately evil. The problem with people forgetting the origin of deities is that ‘at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such things’ (MHH 11:13–14). When the gods become seen as completely independent from the human breast, then they gain power, and here lies the potential for evil. The same is true of the relationship between God and Satan. In Job, since Satan is under the jurisdiction of God yet still able to oppose him – partway between being an aspect of God and an independent being – there are limitations on his power and he is not able to be completely evil. The corollary is that, since God is linked to Satan, then God must share Satan’s evil aspects; in terms of Job, God shares responsibility for the suffering visited on Job by Satan. From this it follows that only when God and Satan split completely does Satan become a force of pure evil and God a force of pure good. Russell summarizes how this split works in Hebrew tradition: ‘the more the banim [sons of God] and the mal’ak [messenger of God] were seen as distinct from the God, the more it was possible to thrust upon them the evil elements in the divine character that Yahweh had discarded’ (198–9). Transferring this logic to Blake’s spectre means that the spectre’s separation indicates a separation between good and evil in the human. The human, wanting to believe himself entirely ‘good’ or ‘righteous’, rejects from himself all ‘evil’ or ‘sinful’ elements which are externalized in the spectre. This effort to exonerate oneself from evil does not work for God or for the human, because the rejection denies the relationship between God and the devil, the human and the spectre, just like forgetting all deities reside in the human breast; the result is that the separated being can claim independence and power. God cannot make himself all good without infringing on his own omnipotence and losing control of evil; likewise, the human cannot, without falling into his spectre’s power. This power, though, like the power of the deities in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, is based on forgetfulness. Delusion on both sides perpetuates this mutual power struggle. God and the human are deluded in thinking that they can hold themselves separate from all that they call sinful: this is the sleep of Albion who declares, ‘My mountains are my own, and I will keep them to myself! . . . here will I build my Laws of Moral Virtue!’ ( J 4:28, 30). The spectre is deluded if he forgets he is a subordinate element of a greater personality, and claims ultimate power for himself: this is the megalomania of the spectre who calls himself God, as Milton’s spectre Satan does, ‘Saying I am God the judge of all, the living & the dead / Fall therefore down & worship me, submit thy supreme / Dictate, to my eternal Will & to my

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dictate bow’ (M 39:51–3). For Blake, many variations on this power struggle are possible, and these variations prevent any conclusive categorizing of the human as good and the spectre as evil (the very categorizing which causes the separation of human and spectre). It is possible for a spectre to have delusions of grandeur while the figure he split from is not totally lost to a belief in himself as separate and righteous. It is also possible for a human to be thus lost, without his spectre declaring himself to be God and forgetting his ideal position of subordination to the human. If the human is alienated from himself, and his actions are no longer in his best interest, then the function of the spectre as opposer can be benign: he opposes the human’s errors, and if successful, cancels them out, like a double negative. These multiple permutations of spectre-human relationships are best demonstrated through the Spectre of Urthona, Los, and Los’ spectre. There is confusion between these figures, such as in Jerusalem 30[44]:4 where Los’s spectre is called Urthona. Paley in The Continuing City also notices this confusion (273). He argues that Los is a fallen form of Urthona whose emanation and spectre have separated from him, and thus ‘there is only one Spectre’. However, in a footnote, he also says, ‘There is in Jerusalem no “Spectre of Urthona” other than Los’. It seems he wishes to clarify that there is no newly introduced spectre here, and also that Los is not really a spectre, though he is called one. Paley finds that Los says ‘I know I am Urthona’ ( J 82:81). He is, because he is an aspect of Urthona, not because he is not a spectre. I argue that Los is a spectre – Urthona’s – with a disposition different from his own (Los’s) spectre. This view causes a doubling effect, akin to the proliferation of the children of Albion in their generations. Los is a spectre with a spectre. Los is called the spectre of Urthona; he is also called the ‘vehicular form’ of Urthona ( J 53:1). This may suggest that the spectre is the material human body, the vehicle of the aspect of the human which appears on earth, as Satan is for God in his role as mal’ak Yahweh or messenger of God in Job. When the Lord asks Satan, ‘Whence comest thou?’ Satan replies, ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it’ (1:7). It is as though Satan is a scout for God, keeping watch over the inhabitants and the events of the earth, and acting as the material world agent or appendage of a transcendent God. This is the more beneficial, less independent version of Satan being the God of this world: this world is his realm in which he can move and act more effectively than God who, in Job, remains in the heavens. In Milton and Jerusalem, ‘Los in Six Thousand Years walks up & down continually / That not one Moment of Time be lost’ ( J 75:7–8; see also M 21[20]:18). As the vehicular form of Urthona, Los is his representative able to pace the span of creation, here measured by the amount of time traditionally allotted between its genesis and armageddon. The function of the spectre as the working agent of the human appears alongside the possibility of the spectre being less deluded than the human

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Compelling Urizen to his Furrow; & Tharmas to his Sheepfold; And Luvah to his Loom: Urthona he beheld mighty labouring at His anvil, in the Great Spectre Los unwearied labouring & weeping Therefore the Sons of Eden praise Urthonas Spectre in songs Because he kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble. (95:16–20) The zoas, as aspects of Albion, should be subordinate to him; he compels them to their proper stations. However, Urthona needs no compelling, because he has been acting in accord with Albion’s well being all along, in the vehicular form of his spectre, Los. This is praiseworthy; apparently Los’ work ‘kept the Divine Vision’. Through much of Jerusalem, Los has been using his spectrous role of opponent to try to rouse Albion; for instance, he ‘grew furious raging’ at the Friends of Albion and berated them, ‘Why stand we here trembling around / Calling on God for help; and not ourselves in whom God dwells / Stretching a hand to save the falling Man’ (43[38]:12–14). Evidently, Los is resisting the belief in an external God. He also resists the division of good and evil. Before his confrontation with the Friends, Los converses with the deluded Albion, who abuses him: Albion spoke in his dismal dreams; O thou deceitful friend Worshipping mercy & beholding thy friend in such affliction: Los! thou now discoverest thy turpitude to the heavens. I demand righteousness & justice. O thou ingratitude! (42:9–12) Albion, putting himself in the position of demanding righteousness, passes judgment on his children. ‘My daughters are harlots! my sons are accursed before me’, he says, not realizing that in condemning his children he really condemns aspects of himself (42:14). Los opposes him by satirizing his own obedience, in order to show the unreasonableness of Albion’s demands. Righteousness & justice I give thee in return For thy righteousness! but I add mercy also, and bind Thee from destroying these little ones: am I to be only Merciful to thee and cruel to all that thou hatest. (42:19–22) Los tells Albion, ‘Thou art in Error; trouble me not with thy righteousness’ and instructs him, ‘Consider me as thine enemy’; harsh words, but when he has finished speaking he ‘turn’d his face & wept for Albion’ (42:25, 40, 46).

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he separated from, in a crucial statement about Los. In Jerusalem, as Albion awakes and reunites his zoas,

In these examples, Los uses his spectrous characteristics for the spiritual benefit of Albion. It would seem that the spectre of Urthona, praised in songs by the sons of Eden for keeping the divine vision, is completely admirable. Why, then, does he himself divide into spectre and emanation, if that division occurs when individuals fall into error? One reason is that since Albion is the cosmic man and everything is a part of him, his disease infects everything. Albion’s separation is contagious, like the proliferating divisions of his sons and daughters, and like the embodiment of Urizen. In fact, at its first mention, Los’s division in Jerusalem is caused by pity as it is in The First Book of Urizen. ‘Jerusalem wanders with Vala upon the mountains’, in exile, and Los heard her lamentations in the deeps afar! his tears fall Incessant before the Furnaces, and his Emanation divided in pain, Eastward toward the Starry Wheels. But Westward, a black Horror. His spectre driv’n by the Starry Wheels of Albions sons, black and Opake divided from his back; he labours and he mourns! (5:60, 66–6:2) Again, pity divides the soul; Los’s emanation and spectre divide simultaneously in opposite directions once Los feels affected by Albion’s separation. It is not as though the division is entirely imposed on Los, though. In Urizen his motivations and actions are ambivalent, and his jealousy becomes externalized and personified in Orc. In Jerusalem, too, the spectre embodies Los’s negative emotions, revealing that Los does not feel only benevolence toward Albion: ‘the Spectre stood over Los’, dramatizing his insubordination, ‘Cursing the terrible Los: bitterly cursing him for his friendship / To Albion, suggesting murderous thoughts against Albion’ (6:4–7). Los is not simply a ‘good guy’, nor is he without question a praiseworthy version of the spectre. His efforts to control his spectre (and his emanation) confirm that though subordination can keep both Satan and the spectre from becoming excessively powerful, it also implicates in evil the person they separated from, and involves both sides in a power struggle. Los spends much of Jerusalem trying to subdue his spectre. Los labours ‘at the roarings of his Forge / With iron & brass Building Golgonooza in great contendings’, and he ‘compelld the invisible Spectre / To labours mighty’ (10:62–11:1). The spectre assists Los at the forge, in the metal work parallel to the metal (and mental) work involved in making Blake’s illuminated books. Los’s own spectre is like a vehicular form as well, in that the spectre can work for Los. As the book of Job shows, though, the relationship between a mal’ak and his God is not always harmonious, but can involve debates and rebukes. This opposition can be dynamic, aiding creativity, but it can also be frustrating. Sounding much like Albion and thus showing the spread of his disease, Los’s spectre argues with Los,

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Art thou not ashamd of those thy Sins That thou callest thy Children? lo the Law of God commands That they be offered upon his Altar: O cruelty & torment For thine are also mine!

Los’ children are also his creative works. Blake had similar misgivings about artistic creation: ‘I myself remember when I thought my pursuits of Art a kind of Criminal Dissipation . . . which I hid my face for not being able to abandon as a Passion which is forbidden by Law & Religion’ (E 706). Anxiety over sexual procreation is transferred to anxiety over artistic creation. The ‘spectrous fiend’ is, according to a letter of Blake’s, both ‘the ruin of my labours’ and ‘the enemy of conjugal love’ (E 756), and in Jerusalem, A sullen smile broke from the Spectre in mockery & scorn Knowing himself the author of their [Los and Enitharmon’s] divisions & shrinkings, gratified At their contentions. (88:34–6) As the rational power, the spectre is involved with ‘divisions and shrinkings’, analysing, breaking things up. On plate 91, the spectre is seen taking the Starry Heavens Like to a curtain & folding them according to his will Repeating the Smaragdine Table of Hermes to draw Los down Into the Indefinite, refusing to believe without demonstration Los reads the Stars of Albion! the Spectre reads the Voids Between the stars. (91:32–7) Earlier on this same plate, Los says, ‘he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect Whole / Must see it in its Minute Particulars’ (91:20–1). Folding the heavens into sections, and only seeing parts of them, might be a version of such instructive focus. However, there is a danger in attention to detail: ‘In ignorance to view a small portion & think that All, / And call it Demonstration’ (J 65:27–8). Such a view recalls the tendency of spectres to claim power, seeing themselves as all rather than portions of another. The emphasis on demonstration in both of these quotations calls attention to the spectrous presence of ‘demon’ in the word. Los’s solution to his spectre’s voidobsession and sectioning of the heavens involves breaking. Here is how ‘Los alterd his Spectre & every Ratio of his Reason’:

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(10:37–40)

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Then he sent forth the Spectre all his pyramids were grains Of sand & his pillars: dust on the flys wing: & his starry Heavens; a moth of gold & silver mocking his anxious grasp. (91:41–9) Los tries to widen the spectre’s narrow perception, literally, by hammering at the eye and ear, ‘unbinding’ them. Ironically, the widening results in minuteness: pyramids turn to grains of sand. Yet, for Blake, ‘a World’ can be seen ‘in a Grain of Sand’ (E 490); altering the spectre’s ratio alters all ratio. The dust of his pillars, and his starry heavens, become associated with insect life: tiny, colourful, energetic life as opposed to the black, sterile void. The spectre, the frustrator of work who should be the assistant of work, becomes worked on at Los’s anvil. The fly and moth are forms of life often seen inhabiting Blake’s text, particularly in humanized form on the title page of Jerusalem where they are embellished with gold leaf, itself minute and thin as an insect wing.5 The spectre is cathartically written into Blake’s work. On plate 41[37], a tiny figure sits on the roll of a scroll, next to a despairing giant who seems to be crying into the pages of a book. The text on the scroll, presumably written by the sprite with pen, or graver, in hand, reads (backwards): Each man is in his Spectre’s power Untill the arrival of that hour, When his Humanity awake And cast his Spectre into the Lake Paley, in his notes, observes that Blake normally inscribed his text in reverse on the plate, but such mirror writing had only to be indited in the normal way. One might think, then, that the passages that the reader must reverse contain some especially distilled form of wisdom, and Blake indeed gives that impression by inscribing them in or below design areas. (128)

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Los beheld undaunted furious His heavd Hammer; he swung it round & at one blow, In unpitying ruin driving down the pyramids of pride Smiting the Spectre on his Anvil & the integuments of his Eye And Ear unbinding in dire pain, with many blows, Of strict severity self-subduing, & with many tears labouring.

William Blake and the Body

Such aphorisms are thus perfectly clear to Blake but cryptic to the reader. Since they are distorted and in a design, they inhabit the mid-ground between word and picture. This particular aphorism also inhabits the midground between texts: it recalls the burning lake into which Satan and his cohorts were cast in Paradise Lost (Hilton, Literal 156). The associative move from backwards lake to burning lake clarifies the other intermediate position of this small poem: it refers to the process of making the very page where it appears. God threw Satan down into the burning lake, rejecting him as evil and effectively giving him a realm of his own and a certain degree of independence and power. In contrast, Blake’s casting the spectre into the lake is not a rejection at all. Instead, it makes use of the opposing force. Just as Los works his spectre on his anvil, Blake recommends his experience of casting his own devil into the burning lake of acid which gives material form to his words and pictures. The kind of inspiration at work here is less the province of a Judeo-Christian devil than a pagan one like Socrates’ daimvn. In one of Blake’s letters, from the time of his somewhat Socratic trial for treason, there is a similar ambivalent sprite: When this Soldierlike Danger is over I will do double the work I do now. for it will hang heavy on my Devil who terribly resents it. but I soothe him to peace & indeed he is a good naturd Devil after all & certainly does not lead me into scrapes. he is not in the least to be blamed for the present scrape as he was out of the way all the time on other employment seeking amusement in making Verses to which he constantly leads me very much to my hurt & sometimes to the annoyance of my friends. (E 737) If one treats one’s devil properly, soothing him rather than blaming him (since judgment and rejection could turn him into a separate force of evil), such distractions can be a help rather than a hindrance. In a letter describing Blake’s enlightenment on visiting the Truchsessian Gallery, he announces, ‘I have entirely reduced that spectrous Fiend to his station’, who had caused Blake to be ‘Incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what I had done well’. Blake declares, ‘he is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy’ (E 756–7). This subjugation and reconciliation was inspired by art, and shows its results in art. The demonic agency in Blake’s work is usually ‘turned around’. Blake writes satanically backwards to achieve a final product, readable in the proper direction.6 In backward aphorisms, Blake allows the role of his devil’s verse-making to become apparent. The emanation and spectre divide simultaneously from the human. In Jerusalem Enitharmon ‘divided away / In gnawing pain from Los’s bosom in the deadly Night; / First as a red Globe of blood trembling beneath his bosom’, just as she does in The First Book of Urizen. At the same time, ‘the

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Spectrous Darkness from his back divided in temptations’ ( J 17:49–51, 57). The emanation and spectre are parallel in their dividing, like mirror images of each other. Similarly, when the emanation appears as a rainbow, the spectre looms within the image. Nelson Hilton notices the similarity between ‘spectre’ and ‘spectrum’, especially since they are both ‘a thing seen’ (Literal 148). Biblically, the rainbow is ‘the token of the covenant’ made after the Flood (Gen. 9:17). It is a promise from a God who has just caused a disaster in which ‘every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground’ (Gen. 7:23). The rainbow, then, could easily be linked with the spectrous Satan who is, at least, the dark side of God who works evil on humans for mysterious divine purposes, or at most, a false God, particularly the demiurge who forms material creation and traps spiritual beings in it. For Blake, the flood is a disaster because he reads it as the uncontrollable deluge of flesh and its narrowing senses: in Europe, ‘the five senses whelm’d / In deluge o’er the earth-born man’ (11[13]:10–11) and in The Song of Los, ‘Noah shrunk beneath the waters’ (3:15). However, though shrunk and overwhelmed, the human is not entirely cut off from eternity by the flood. In A Vision of the Last Judgment, Noah is pictured ‘Canopied by a Rainbow. on his right hand Shem & on his Left Japhet these three Persons represent Poetry Painting & Music the three Powers ·in ManÒ of conversing with Paradise which the flood did not Sweep away’ (E 559). Following on this indication of the saving power of art, soon afterwards in the same work Blake gives the rainbow emanative qualities, as he does in his other references. He muses, If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into Noahs Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy. (VLJ E 560) This passage envisions a resurrection involving exchange of ideas through images, similar to the conversation in heaven through ‘Visionary forms dramatic’ Blake describes at the close of Jerusalem. Such exchange is enabled by the spectator entering, in this case, Noah’s rainbow, or his bosom. The rainbow is linked with the emanation not only because the emanation separates from the human’s bosom, but also because the emanation is a means of connection and communication between eternal human forms. As Los explains, ‘When in Eternity Man converses with Man they enter / Into each others Bosom’, and this ‘mutual interchange’ is enabled by ema-

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nations who must first ‘embrace & comingle’ for ‘The Human Four-fold Forms’ to ‘mingle also in thunders of Intellect’. Los asserts, ‘Man cannot unite with Man but by their Emanations’ (J 88:3–10). A Vision of the Last Judgment depicts an eternal scene; entering Noah’s rainbow is equivalent to entering his bosom, suggesting that, if the rainbow is an emanation, it has not separated from his bosom. In other mentions which do not deal with eternity, Blake always connects the rainbow to the emanation or the feminine, and accents the illusory. For example, in Milton when Leutha, as she narrates, ‘sprang out of the breast of Satan. over the Harrow beaming / In all my beauty’, the rainbow or spectrum is indeed ‘a thing seen’. It is a manifestation of Leutha in a delusive form: ‘But me, the servants of the Harrow saw not; but as a bow / Of varying colours on the hills’ (10:10–11, 14–15). As an emanation, Leutha’s femininity is emphasized in this scene, and linked to the idea of delusion. She gives her explanation of her role in Satan’s actions toward Palamabron: entering the doors of Satans brain night after night Like sweet perfumes I stupified the masculine perceptions And kept only the feminine awake. hence rose, his soft Delusory love to Palamabron. (10:4–7) She does this for her own ulterior motives. She begins her version of the events with the declaration, ‘I loved Palamabron & I sought to approach his Tent, / But beautiful Elynittria with her silver arrows repelld me’ (9:37–8). Leutha is an emanation who gets out of her subordinate position. Like Satan does in Job, she influences a more powerful being, perhaps against his will. In passing her ‘Delusory love to Palamabron’ to Satan as if it were his own, she is no longer a lesser component of Satan, and so she springs out of his breast, taking form as a separate being. Her influences on him are denoted as particularly feminine, as well as delusory. Elsewhere, even before Blake explicitly uses the concept of the emanation, rainbows are consistently used to link the feminine with the illusory. One example is in The Book of Thel, where Thel asks ‘Why fade these children of the spring?’ The first item on her list of ephemeral things is a rainbow: ‘Ah. Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud. / Like a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the water’ (3:7–9). She compares her life as a woman to the ‘watry bow’ as insubstantial and inconsequential. Thel laments this delusion; Enitharmon, on the contrary, celebrates it as beauty. In her catalogue of children in Europe, she calls to her sons and daughters, including Leutha: ‘Where is my lureing bird of Eden! Leutha silent love! / Leutha. the many colourd bow delights upon thy wings’ (16[17]:9–10). Particularly as she calls her ‘Sweet smiling pestilence!’ and refers to ‘Thy daughters many changing’ (16[17]:12–13), it seems Leutha, in Enitharmon’s mind at least, is a deceptive woman who helps

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orchestrate that female dominion seen in Enitharmon’s dream. Above, the role of male spectres in that dominion was seen, as they lurked in the shadows of houses with ‘Thou shalt not’ written over the door. There is a female role as well, as Enitharmon declares: ‘from her childhood shall the little female / Spread nets in every secret path’ (7[8]:8–9). The significance of the rainbow, associated with both emanations and females, helps to clarify the role of gender in Blake’s concept of emanations and spectres. Spectres are always male, while the gender of emanations is arguable. Los asserts, in the passage on the function of emanations in eternal communication, that ‘Emanations / . . . stand both Male & Female at the Gates of each Humanity’ (J 88:10–11); however, emanations are most often seen in Blake’s works to be feminine. One male emanation is found, once in The Four Zoas and only sporadically in the dramatic action of Jerusalem: Shiloh. He is a token male. He is the only one, and his masculinity is particularly mentioned: ‘Shiloh the Masculine Emanation’ ( J 49:47). He shares his name with Joanna Southcott’s messianic child who was excitedly expected but never arrived, except perhaps invisibly (Paley, ‘Prince’ 288). Similarly, much can be made of Shiloh the male emanation as the herald of gender equality for emanations in Blake, but like Southcott’s imagined baby he is not substantial enough to bring all that was expected of him: they are both only names. Alan Richardson also finds that Los’ plate 88 speech shows ‘both Blake’s desire to escape conventional notions of gender and his inability to do so’ (20). Like other feminist critics, such as Anne Mellor (‘Portrayal’ 151) and Brenda Webster (‘Sexuality’ 203), Richardson finds the ‘supposed androgynous’ nature of emanations undermined by the fact that ‘they are clearly maternal and valued for their feminine capacities for sympathy and empathy’ (21). According to Los, sympathy is emanations’ raison d’être in eternity: making connections between like-minded men. Not only are the deluding actions of emanations in the fallen world associated with femininity; even their ideal function is a subordinate exercise of ‘feminine capacities’. When the emanation has not separated from the human, those capacities are within him, at his disposal; and, as with the spectre, when the emanation has separated from the human, there is still the possibility that she will work with rather than against him. Another function of the rainbow image is to show that, like the spectre, the emanation can be a subordinate who assists with work. Robert N. Essick in ‘The Biographical Context of Blake’s Female Will’ calls attention to the passage in Jerusalem where, while ‘Los hammers into shape the outline of being, his wife Enitharmon “like a faint rainbow waved before him” ’ ( J 83:67; ‘Female Will’ 620). Essick points out Blake’s gendering of artistic elements. Line is considered the province of the male, colour of the female. Line is of primary importance, and colour secondary. This distinction is partially based on the ‘gender divisions determining artistic activities in the Blake household’: Catherine assisted William

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in the colouring of his illuminated books (‘Female Will’ 620). As a rainbow, the emanation both provides, and is, colour. Essick uses the words ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ to indicate relative importance: ‘the subordination of colour to line’ (‘Female Will’ 620). These words are also used by Locke in his argument about substance, which considers the relationship of secondary qualities such as colour to primary qualities such as line, and the relationship of both to substance. Locke states that ‘colours’, along with ‘sounds, tastes, etc.’ are secondary qualities. Primary qualities include ‘solidity, extension, figure and mobility’ (II.viii.9–10), and Blake considers form in art to reside in outline (‘Female Will’ 620). Locke ranks primary and secondary qualities on a scale of reality; that is, whether they are like anything that actually inheres in the body that displays them. The ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves; but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves. They are, in the bodies we denominate from them, only a power to produce those sensations in us; and what is sweet, blue or warm in idea is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves, which we call so. (II.viii.15) Locke clarifies his point by explaining, ‘The particular bulk, number, figure and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether anyone’s senses perceive them or no; and therefore they may be called real qualities, because they really exist in those bodies’. As for secondary qualities, ‘Take away the sensation of them; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell; and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. bulk, figure, and motion of parts’ (II.viii.17). Emanations and spectres, both related to colour through the rainbow, show characteristics of secondary qualities. Seeing secondary qualities as a ‘power to produce’ sensations such as colour is like seeing them as vehicular forms or servant workers: they are the part of the human which can cause things to happen on earth, as Satan is for God in Job. For Locke, it is a delusion to think that colour is an idea inherent in a body when it is only an effect; for Blake, it is a delusion to think that an emanation or a spectre can exist in complete independence from the human when they are only subordinate elements. Both can seem to have their own being, but in reality they do not. In reality they both rely on the primary qualities of bulk, figure and motion in the body itself. They only exist when perceived. Since Locke is writing about the senses of the caverned man, it follows that the secondary qualities, emanation and spectre, can only have separate being

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when those senses are in action: in the fallen world of material embodiment and separation. They ‘vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes’ when not perceived by the five senses. Being reduced to their causes means being reintegrated with the human of whom they are qualities. Bulk, figure and motion are primary qualities; for Blake it seems that one only acquires these when one comes into a fallen body. In eternity, humans are transparent and interpenetrable rather than solid, and their life is ‘too exceeding unbounded’. So, Los is the vehicular form of Urthona: a version of Urthona with primary qualities such as shape and solidity. Los, the body of primary qualities, produces the secondary qualities of emanation and spectre. This is a painful separation, and a temporary one through which Los makes continual efforts to retain unity, suggesting that ideally they should not be seen as separate. Locke cannot find what holds the various qualities of a thing together. He writes, ‘not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist’ (II.xxiii.1). However, ‘if anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents’ (II.xxiii.2). Substance for Locke is necessary to imagine, but impossible to know. Blake, I would venture, sees the human form divine, the eternal body, as substance. This is similar to the traditional idea of the substantial soul as defining personal identity, holding the qualities of one person together, but Blake’s concept of the soul is non-traditional in many ways, not least of which is his view of the soul as multiple and/or divisible. Locke considers primary and secondary qualities to be the parts of things accessible to the senses; Blake writes, ‘that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age’ (MHH 4:14–16). The separation of qualities from substance which results from narrow perception will be ended, ‘the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged’, and the relationship of body to soul will be revealed by ‘melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid’ (14:11–16): by considering things, like soul, not discernible by the five senses. Morris Eaves, considering substance and accident in Blake’s art theory, finds that Blake argues against their separation: ‘An art that divides into substance and shadow, content and form, is an esthetic allegory of a natural world said to divide into subjects and objects, primary and secondary qualities, essence and accident’. In his annotations to Berkeley’s Siris, Blake, according to Eaves, is ‘trying to protect a human world in which the reality of “Every Thing” is “Its Imaginative Form” ’ (Theory 90). Earlier in those annotations, Blake identifies ‘Imagination’ with ‘the Human Eternal Body in Every Man’ and with ‘the Divine Body in Every Man’ (E 663). Imagination, or the human form divine, is what is behind all appearances, what causes all qualities: it

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is the substance within which all qualities, vehicular forms, bodies, emanations, spectres, reside. In Jerusalem, Locke and fellow empiricists Bacon and Newton, are among the identities claimed by the spectre. Albion’s spectre says, ‘I am God O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power! / Am I not Bacon & Newton & Locke who teach Humility to Man! / Who teach Doubt & Experiment’ (J 54:16–18). Locke gives a humble reason why we cannot penetrate to an understanding of substance, and ‘discern the minute particles of bodies and the real constitution on which their sensible qualities depend’, as we could if we had ‘senses acute enough’ (II.xxiii.11). He often asserts that ‘The infinite wise Contriver of us and all things about us hath fitted our senses, faculties, and organs to the conveniences of life, and the busines we have to do here’ (II.xxiii.12). Our senses, and our knowledge, are suited to this world of separation. The spectre’s property of separating, of breaking things up, is part of his role as ‘your Rational Power’, and this property is visible in the spectrum. Newton is linked with rainbows through his optical theories. As Marjorie Hope Nicolson writes, ‘in spite of Newton’s own careful statement about his predecessors, the rainbow was and remained Newton’s. To the eighteenth century poets’, she says, using a phrase of Keats’, ‘Newton alone had explained and unwoven it’ (30). The scenario for Newton’s experiments with light refraction are like a mock-up of the eye of the caverned man. To gain his ‘PROOF by Experiments’ Newton closes himself up: In a very dark Chamber, at a round Hole, about one third Part of an Inch broad, made in the Shut of a Window, I placed a Glass Prism, whereby the Beam of the Sun’s Light, which came in at that Hole, might be refracted upwards toward the opposite Wall of the Chamber, and there form a colour’d Image of the Sun. (26) Newton employs literally satanic methods. He obstructs light, allowing only a small ray through, disallowing all incidental light. Before this ray he places another obstruction, the prism, which refracts, or in a way distracts, the light from its course. The product is illusion: the real sun is shut out, and a ‘colour’d Image of the Sun’ is projected. As Satan and the spectre are parts of God and the human visible on this earth, here the image is a mediated reality of the sun, visible in a dark chamber with one small hole. Refraction can also break sunlight into its component parts, in the spectrum. Further experiments (for example, Proposition 2, Theory 2, experiment 10 [57–63]) attempt to separate the colours of the spectrum. Emanation and spectre, like Newton’s colours, break off from the individual human being who, like white light, is a compound. Also like Newton’s corpuscular light, they are material, even though psychic aspects, like light, seem to be the most immaterial of things. Northrop Frye argues that breaking things down into their

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component parts results, ironically, in generalization, and also in materialization. For Frye, this happens when ‘Locke attempts to distinguish the “secondary qualities” of perception from “primary qualities” which he assigns to a “substratum” of substance’, and ‘Newton’s corpuscular theory of light belongs to the same method of thought’ which ‘annihilate[s] the perceived differences in forms by the assertion that they have all been constructed out of units of “matter” ’, of ‘tiny particles all alike’ (17). In his study of Blake and Newton, Visionary Physics, Donald Ault emphasizes ephemerality in the connection between Newton, the rainbow, and the emanation: ‘because Newton had emphasized the delusive appearance of the rainbow and simultaneously reduced its delusiveness to mathematical laws, it seems that Blake uses the “wavy” and shadowy nature of the rainbow to connect Newton with the delusive and fluctuating nature of the Emanations’ (117). Blake’s link between the overly insubstantial and the overly substantial is discernible in a passage on the emanation as rainbow. And Enitharmon like a faint rainbow waved before him Filling with Fibres from his loins which reddend with desire Into a Globe of blood beneath his bosom trembling in darkness Of Albions clouds. he fed it, with his tears & bitter groans. (86:50–3) Enitharmon makes the transition quickly, and gruesomely, from ephemerality to fleshiness. The word ‘emanation’, coming from the Latin ‘emanare’, to flow out from, contains such a spectrum of meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the word is ‘especially applied to impalpable things, as light’. It may also denote ‘immaterial things, moral and spiritual powers, virtues, qualities . . . emitted from a source’. It is exactly such immaterial qualities which are personified by Blake. The leap to personification is further justified by the association of ‘emanation’ with blood, a fluid present at birth and necessary to life in a body. The word is used in connection with the blood of Venus in Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad. From Venus’s cut hand, a Stream immortal flow’d, Such Stream as issues from a wounded God; Pure Emanation! uncorrupted Flood; Unlike our gross, diseas’d, terrestrial Blood. (V:421–4) ‘Emanation’ is apparently chosen to contrast the bodily fluid with a more ethereal ichor. In a different context, but with similar effect, Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘The spring of sin is proud self-love’ applies the word to the blood of

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Christ. The hymn is based on Mark 5:29, ‘And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague’, a verse in the story of the woman with an issue of blood who believes she will be healed by touching Jesus’s cloak. The hymn extols the healing powers of Christ’s blood and concludes, ‘Cured by the virtue of His blood, / The emanation of His grace!’ (874). In Mark, that emanation is not at all fleshly: ‘Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?’ (5:30). This spiritual emanation stops a flow of blood. Wesley transfers the blood to Christ and renders the issue of blood a spiritual complaint. Christ’s later bleeding a god’s blood will ‘dry up corruption’s source’ (874). Blood, light and spiritual powers are all emanative because, material or intangible, they all flow. The ‘emanation’ entry in the Encyclopedia Perthensis (1816) provides the link between flowing blood and Blake’s globe of blood. It speaks of a form of ‘attraction’ which ‘is delivered by a tenuous emanation, or continued effluvium, which, after some distance, retraceth unto itself; as in syrups, oils, and viscosities, which spun, at length retire into their former dimensions’. These words capture the resilience of blood which would both cause it to shape itself into a round droplet, and, like Blake’s emanation, never truly gain independence from its source. Like viscous fluids in this description, an emanation spins out from its origin, becomes separate from the human, but retraces or retires to its former dimensions when the human is reunified; she is never able to break off completely and permanently. The threadlike, bloody fibres which are a part of Enitharmon’s birth from Los in Jerusalem 86 may be linked to the idea of viscosities being ‘spun’, stretching out from but still attached to their source. While the spectre is a component of the human personality comparable to Satan as an aspect of the Judeo-Christian deity, a female parallel to the feminine emanation is the figure of Wisdom personified. One reason for this parallel is that Catherine’s middle name was Sophia (Gilchrist 39), meaning wisdom, and Blake considers the emanation to be the equivalent of a wife (for instance, in Jerusalem, ‘Enitharmon is a vegetated mortal Wife of Los: / His Emanation, yet his Wife till the sleep of death is past’ [14:13–14]). Catherine’s assistance in Blake’s production of artworks is akin to the role of Wisdom as a power of God which aids in the creation of the material world. In Proverbs, Wisdom claims her role in the foundation of the world using words which are reflected in Blake’s most famous depiction of the creator, the frontispiece to Europe, otherwise known as The Ancient of Days: ‘When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth’ (8:27). She says that, in the beginning, ‘Then I was by him [God], as one brought up with him [or, as a master workman]: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him’ (8:30). Milton takes up Proverbs’ suggestion when he addresses his ‘heavenly born’ muse in Book Seven of Paradise Lost.

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Thou with eternal wisdom didst converse, Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play In presence of the almighty Father, pleased, With thy celestial song.

On Jerusalem plate 4, the emanation is referred to in similar language, when the Saviour speaks to Albion of ‘Thy Emanation that was wont to play before thy face’ (4:14). In the apocryphal book of Wisdom, Wisdom is described by the words atmi´V and apórroia, which ‘denote Wisdom as a kind of emanation from God’, according to Helmer Ringgren’s study of God’s hypostases. In the 1750 Doway Bible, Wisdom 7:25 is translated as, ‘For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God’. As God’s wisdom, she is a part of God, but not a mere quality. She reflects the characteristics of the emanation as at once immaterial and physical, because she is a mental faculty thoroughly personified: she has a strong personal presence in the scriptures. She lives in a house; she slaughters animals to eat and mixes wine to drink; she has maidens to serve her, and a voice to cry out with (Proverbs 9:1–3). She also uses her voice to speak for herself, claiming, ‘The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth’ (Proverbs 8:22–24). She is ‘pre-existent, the first creation of God’ as well as ‘the assistant of God at the creation’ (Ringgren 126–7). Similarly, the emanation in Blake is a pre-existent part of the individual ‘created’ by him in a motherly fashion, also assisting him in creation. In Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom ‘is said to have come forth from the mouth of God and is thus identified with the word’ (Ringgren 108). The emanation is also like the word of the individual, as in Los’s description of eternal communication in which the meeting, embracing and commingling of emanations enables man to converse with man and enter into each other’s bosom ( J 88:3–10). The emanative word, like God’s, also has a creative power. In Milton, Beulah is formed by their fiat: ‘So spoke the lovely Emanations: & there appeard a pleasant / Mild shadow above: beneath: & on all sides round’ (30:32–3). However, like Wisdom as God’s creating word, their role is not independent; the emanations had asked of their ‘Fathers & Brothers’ to ‘grant us a Temporal Habitation’ (30:28–9). Wisdom is sometimes likened to the Son because both are thought of as God’s word, with him at the beginning, and assisting at the creation. The word ‘emanation’ is ‘in Theology, used to denote the “generation” of the Son, and the “procession” of the Holy Ghost, as distinguished from the origination of merely created beings’ (OED). This common vocabulary indicates the similarity between Blake’s ideal human and the Trinity as beings which

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(VII:9–12)

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are simultaneously one and many, and the difficulty of defining the borders between these persons. The long and complex process of defining the doctrine of the Trinity was outlined in Blake’s time in such texts as Priestley’s History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The problem of the Trinity, like the problem of personal identity, is a struggle with the possibility that one person might be many. As a unified personal identity is traditionally found in a substantial soul, the oneness of the Trinity is for orthodoxy based upon the three persons being acknowledged as of the same substance, or homoousios (see Gibbon 787; Priestley 54, 80). Locke’s questioning of the concept of substance was seen as a threat to divine as well as human identity. Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, contended in a protracted exchange with Locke over the implications of transferring Locke’s ideas on substance to such theological issues. Stillingfleet argued, in his answer to Locke’s second letter, ‘if Nature and Person be abstract, and complex Ideas, as you say, and such are only Acts of the Mind, I do not see how it is possible for you to reconcile these Notions with the Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation’ (in Yolton 133). Part of the problem, as John Yolton supposes in his study of the reception of the Essay, is Locke’s belief that ‘human knowledge is limited, but its limitations are not such as to hamper action or hinder man in attaining happiness. The doctrine of substance, in other words, entails only a theoretical scepticism’ (139). Yolton considers Locke to be ‘concerned with solving epistemological problems for the sake of practical difficulties encountered in reflections upon moral and religious issues’. As a result, ‘Where the solutions of such difficulties carried the discussion into the intricacies of theoretical implications, Locke was always prone to drop the discussion and assert his own convictions’ (139–40). Locke’s belief that God has fitted us to know only what is useful to us in our earthly life recalls Blake’s concept of the caverned man. While Locke portrays a merciful, paternalistic God not confusing us with unnecessary knowledge, Blake imagines human beings with expanded senses, gaining knowledge beyond the restrictions of physical perception as we know it. While Locke shies away from applying to the divinity the philosophical ideas he has composed for use in the world, Blake without any humility applies divine ideas to humans. For Locke, substance is unknowable; for Blake, substance is human, and the human being takes on God’s mysterious ability to be at once one and many. However, though Blake borrows this mystery, it is made less mysterious through its humanization, as well as by ‘heretical’ elements: the fleshiness of Blake’s human hypostases, and the subordination of two persons of his human ‘trinity’. Through these alterations, Blake rejects the obscurantism of priestcraft associated with the doctrine of the Trinity by late seventeenthcentury Deists as well as late eighteenth-century radicals.7 If Locke’s practicalism is at the root of his reluctance to give Stillingfleet satisfaction on exactly how his ideas affect the Trinity, then that implies an

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From the consideration of ourselves and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth: that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being, which whether anyone will please to call God, it matters not. The thing is evident, and, from this idea duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes which we ought to ascribe to this eternal being. (IV.x.6) Since the doctrine of the Trinity is a difficult theological and philosophical problem, even a mystery, it would seem (though Locke does not name it) that it is not one of those attributes of God one could arrive at by the exercise of reason. Locke speaks in general terms about ‘the crying up of faith in opposition to reason’: to it we can in good measure ascribe those absurdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind. For men, having been principled with an opinion that they must not consult reason in the things of religion, however apparently contradictory to common sense and the very principles of all their knowledge, have let loose their fancies and natural superstition, and have been by them led into so strange opinions and extravagant practices in religion that a considerate man cannot but stand amazed at their follies. (IV.xviii.11) John Toland, in Christianity Not Mysterious, applies Locke’s principles to religion more decidedly than Locke himself did. In seeking to prove that there is nothing in the true Christian religion that is above reason, Toland traces the application of mystery to the originally rational teachings of the Gospels. He blames ‘the converted Jews, who continu’d mighty fond of their Levitical rites’, but places more calumny on the Gentiles who were ‘not a little scandaliz’d at the plain Dress of the Gospel, with the wonderful Facility of the Doctrines it contain’d, having been accustom’d all their Lives to the pompous Worship and secret Mysteries of Deities without number’ (158–9). What is above reason in Christian belief, then, is an addition reflective of debased religion, like the breaking of the one God into many false pagan gods. As Locke argues that ‘substance’ is just a word which means

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understanding of the Trinity is not practically necessary for Christians. This would hold with the assertion Locke makes in Book IV of the Essay on faith and reason, that ‘no proposition can be received for divine revelation or obtain the assent due to all such, if it be contradictory to our clear intuitive knowledge’ (IV.xviii.5, original italics). Locke believes that human beings, though without an innate idea of God, can come to that idea through reason.

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something which upholds or supports qualities, Toland finds that much of the mystery in Christianity resides merely in words: ‘they either signify nothing, or have been invented by some leading Men to make plain things obscure, and not seldom to cover their own Ignorance. What is unpardonable, the holy Scripture is put to the Torture to countenance this Scholastick Jargon, and all the metaphysical Chimeras of its Authors’ (xii). The doctrine of substance is a central example of that ‘scholastick jargon’. Priestley’s History of the Corruptions of Christianity takes a similar view. Priestley is a unitarian, and argues in his Introduction that the apostles saw Christ ‘simply as a man approved of God’ (2). In his narration of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, he continually interjects that the theologians argued over words instead of ideas and deflected the charge of polytheism with a smokescreen of mystery (114, 86, 104). The Church Fathers, in fine philosophizing (mocked as sophistry by Priestley), worked to prove that God was three in one, all equal and all present, at least potentially, from eternity. Heresies went to either extreme, demoting the Son and Holy Spirit, or promoting them so much that they became totally separate deities; orthodox thinkers had to navigate the narrow road between these opposite pitfalls. The origin of all things had to be singular; if multiple, a previous, originating unity would be implied. As Novatian argues, ‘If the Son had not been begotten, he and the Father being upon a level, they would both be unbegotten, and therefore there would be two Gods’ (in Priestley 63–4). The ideas of begetting and emanating are used to circumvent this philosophical necessity of unity at the beginning. At the beginning of all things, and perpetually ever since, the Father eternally begets the Son; the Holy Spirit is an emanation of the love between them. Irenaeus calls the production of the Son from the Father an ‘ineffable generation’ (in Priestley 36). Priestley offers Tatian’s explanation of the Son’s ‘emanation’: when he (that is, God) pleased, the word (Logos) flowed from his simple essence; and this Word not being produced in vain, became the first begotten work of his spirit. This we know to be the origin of the Word: but it was produced by division, not by separation, for that which is divided does not diminish from that which it derives its power. For as many torches may be lighted from one, and yet the light of the first is not diminished, so the Word (Logos) proceeding from the power of the Father, does not leave the Father void of Logos. Also, if I speak and you hear me, I am not void of speech (Logos) on account of my speech (Logos) going to you. (36, italics as original) The procession of the Holy Spirit, according to Priestley, was thus defined at the council of Ferrara: ‘The Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son and he proceeds from them both eternally, as from a single prin-

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ciple, and by one single procession’ (134). Augustine formulated the idea that the Holy Spirit arose from the mutual love of the father and the son, their rejoicing in each other: ‘Scripture teaches us that he is the Spirit neither of the Father alone nor of the Son alone, but of both; and so his being suggests to us the mutual charity whereby the Father and the Son love one another’ (Augustine 157). The Son, as the word of the Father, begotten by him, could be parallel with Blake’s emanation; the mutual link to Wisdom strengthens the connection. The spectre, then, as ‘enemy of conjugal love’ (E 756) could be a satanic parody of the spirit: reason instead of inspiration, doubter instead of comforter. The positive function of the spectre is also reflected in the Holy Spirit, sent by Christ to be a comfort to his followers after his own departure from the earth.8 In this way, the Spirit is a ‘vehicular form’ of Christ, an earthly manifestation doing his work while he is in a higher realm. Such parallels are possible, not final, meanings for the emanation and spectre. The confusion between Los, Los’s Spectre and the Spectre of Urthona, not to mention the myriad permutations of Blake’s characters and their relationships to each other (for example, in Jerusalem, England, Britannia, Jerusalem and Vala can all be seen as emanations of Albion) demonstrate that parallels in Blake are never absolute. The Elohim, the name of God by which Blake (after Genesis) designates the demiurgical creator, could also be God’s own spectre, a servant whose work is not always beneficial. For Blake, who names the Father ‘Nobodaddy’ (E 471, 500), the Son is the person to whom other elements are subordinate. Through subordination, Blake (like the heretical Gnostics) reduces the difficulties of imagining three (or more) beings in one. In fact, Blake’s scenario demonstrates how, when subordination is removed, the problems begin in the multiple human. Priestley argues, It is, indeed, no wonder that those who are called orthodox with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, should be embarrassed with two intelligent principles in one person, in what manner soever they may imagine them to be united. If there be but one intelligent principle, or nature, there can but be but one will, but if there be two intelligent principles, it is natural to expect two wills. But then what certainty can there be that these two wills will always coincide, and what inconvenience would there not arise from their difference. (132) This recalls ‘what inconvenience’ can be caused by separated emanations and spectres; it also recalls Blake’s challenging comment that ‘In Eternity Woman is the Emanation of Man she has No Will of her own’ (VLJ E 562). The one person, though multiple, should only have one will, or should have multiple wills in accord. When the subordinate beings start having, or assert-

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ing, their own wills, trouble begins. Between two eternal humans, disagreement is allowed – it is even sublime, accompanied by ‘storms & agitations / Of earthquakes and consuming fires’ ( J 88:8–9) – but within one human, dissent is a harrying and dangerous feature of the fallen state. Another difference between Blake’s triune human and the triune God is that Blake, while allowing subordination, seems to avoid sublimation. The separation of persons in Blake is not of ethereal fire, nor of a complex philosophical concept like the logos. It is graphic, visceral and bloody. Though the Church Fathers use the concept of birth by claiming the Son to be begotten not made, they feel they must use further images (immaterial ones) to emphasize separation without reduction. Similarly, the problem of birth is not a puzzle offered by Locke. In pregnancy, two persons inhabit one body, and in birth, one person becomes two without being diminished. The problem of personal identity, and the Trinity, dance around the central event which blurs the individuality of every human being: the relationship to the mother. Explanations of the Trinity attempt to move birth out of the female sphere into the male. God, who is genderless yet becomes a father, is credited with the ability to give being to another singlehandedly. This birth is made fantastical: not only is it incorporeal, it is also ongoing. Furthermore, the Father and the Son, two males together, manage to make ‘proceed’ from themselves the Holy Spirit, an embodiment of their mutual admiration. Mary Daly sums up ‘the dogma of the christian trinity’ as follows: ‘sublime’ (and therefore disguised) erotic male homosexual mythos, the perfect all-male marriage, the ideal all-male family, the best boys’ club, the model monastery, the supreme Men’s Association, the mold for all varieties of male monogender mating. (Wickedary 209) The disembodiment of birth, which partakes of the feminine power to give life yet distances itself from the body, nature and the female, is present in Christian theology not only in the Trinity but also in the Incarnation. Kristeva argues that ‘theology defines maternity only as an impossible elsewhere, a sacred beyond, a vessel of divinity, a spiritual tie with the ineffable godhead, and transcendence’s ultimate support – necessarily virginal and committed to assumption’ (Desire 237). Though Christ crosses over into fleshly existence, he was conceived miraculously, without intercourse, fathered by the Holy Spirit in the body of a virgin who was also specially conceived without sin, and pure and sublime enough to be assumed into heaven. Most remarkably, the birth of Christ happened without pain. Pain in childbirth is a punishment for original sin, as is female sexual desire: ‘in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband’ (Gen. 3:16). Blake scorned these exceptional claims for Jesus, con-

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tending that he was as fleshly as anyone, and even conceived in more sin and pain than usual because in an unlawful relationship ( J 61); conversely, through the human form divine, Blake arrogates to all (male) humans the privileges of godhead. The Trinity and the Incarnation show that male co-option of birth in theology is tied up with its disembodiment. When the emanation separates from Los, a part of him, present from the beginning, and always an individual being though part of the one, separates and takes on a physical body of its own. The pain is not removed from this birth. still she divided away In gnawing pain from Los’s bosom in the deadly Night; First as a red Globe of blood trembling beneath his bosom Suspended over her he hung: he infolded her in his garments Of wool: he hid her from the Spectre, in shame & confusion of Face; in terrors & pains of Hell & Eternal Death, the Trembling Globe shot forth Self-living & Los howld over it: Feeding it with his groans & tears day & night without ceasing. (17:49–56) He hides her from his spectre, perhaps to protect her from the ‘enemy of conjugal love’ (E 756), but definitely due to ‘shame & confusion of / Face’. Los is embarrassed by his own division. There is a strong element of uncontrollability in this description, akin to that of Urizen’s unstoppable ‘hurtling bones’ when Los binds the changes of his body. The desire Los has for Enitharmon in The First Book of Urizen, compared in Chapter 6 to Satan’s for Sin, his daughter by monogenesis in Paradise Lost, appears again in this narrative. This desire, like the birth, is an overwhelming compulsion described in frighteningly bodily terms: O lovely Enitharmon: I behold thy graceful forms Moving beside me till intoxicated with the woven labyrinth Of beauty & perfection my wild fibres shoot in veins Of blood thro all my nervous limbs. soon overgrown in roots I shall be closed from thy sight. ( J 87:3–7) Los loses control. He is intoxicated, and he is becoming obscured by the tumescence of his multiple roots: a part of him (Enitharmon, his penis, the fibres of his physical body) usurps control of the whole. Through the incestuous scenario of birth being followed by sexual desire, the emanation is both daughter and wife; while this results in the female being defined in relationship to the male, it also causes Los to be overly, and unwillingly,

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dependent on her. Brenda Webster finds in Blake a resentment of relying on the female for sexual satisfaction, which harks back to relying on the mother for nourishment. Webster connects this to the horrible violence perpetrated by women such as the Daughters of Albion in Jerusalem. Blake’s ‘demands on women as nurturers and lovers are so total – it wouldn’t be unfair to call them infantile – that he can’t help imagining them as being enraged and wanting revenge’ (‘Sexuality’ 194). Severe guilt is also involved: ‘Blake views essential needs as dangerous not only because they leave the individual vulnerable to painful deprivation, but also because they are too excessive and too mixed with aggression, thus damaging those chosen to satisfy them’ (‘Sexuality’ 200). Dependence on the mother runs counter to the image of the female as subservient and the male as independent, superior, whole, and even divine. S.H. Clark argues that the theme of ‘Woman triumph[ing] over the body that she has borne by ruthlessly exposing its frailty, relishing its pain . . . can be traced back through the peculiar ways in which Blake’s characters get born’ (181). Blake’s strange births explore possible escape routes from maternal debt, which transfer creative power to the male and lend him sovereignty. Fantastical births being formulaically associated with heroes, difference from ordinary men born of women is essential to exceptionality. James King, in his biography of Blake, finds a self-mythologization in the renunciation of the mother: Blake’s reticence (noted by friends and acquaintances) as an adult in speaking of his parents is prompted by a desire to present himself as a self-originating genius, a person whose mortal genesis is cloudy and unspecified. In so doing, Blake characterizes himself as a prodigy whose dazzling intellect and accomplishments are drawn directly from himself or some internal divinity. Like Christ, his miraculous attainments are due not to mortal parents but to inner strengths springing directly from a supernatural source. (11) Blake’s self-identification with Los, becoming one with him in Milton, and Los’s association with Christ in Jerusalem, are part of this agenda, as is his devaluing the maternal body in the Incarnation – ‘by his Maternal Birth he is that Evil-One / And his Maternal Humanity must be put off Eternally’ ( J 90:35–6) – despite his passion for contending that the human form is divine. Through Los ‘giving birth’ to Enitharmon, Blake makes the body of the Eternal Prophet into the maternal body. Blake’s ideals of creativity, and of a differentiation which does not exclude oneness, are indebted to the maternal body as the locus of birth and the ultimate example of one becoming two without diminishing or loss of self. Christian theology erases its debt

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to the mother through, as Daly contends, an all-male family in the Trinity as well as concerted efforts to dephysicalize birth in the Incarnation. Blake does not follow these routes. Rather than erasing the feminine, he subsumes it into the male human, and rather than totally dephysicalizing birth, he values other varieties of creativity and insists on the substantiality of the spiritual. Blake’s ‘perverse’ insistence that sexual activity need not produce actual babies, but rather can conceive other valid creations such as emotions, relationships and artworks, has the potential to be liberating. It would not chain females, or males for that matter, to reproductive sexuality and its concomitant pain, responsibility, and perpetuation of mortal life. Such a view could vindicate female sexuality as creative in manifold ways. However, it has the opposite effect. Females are made, as S.H. Clark puts it, ‘adjacen[t] to the male’, and the role of physical reproduction in this subjugation is hinted by Clark’s remark that ‘when the “Male” is defined in terms of “a breeder of Seed; a Son & Husband” ’ in Jerusalem (64:12–13), ‘the response is outrage’ (173). Though both male and female can be reduced to physical ‘breeders’, and both can be exalted as mental birthgivers, Blake devalues female in favour of male creativity. Blake’s contention that ‘In Eternity Woman is the Emanation of Man she has No Will of her own There is no such thing in Eternity as a Female Will’ is not just a metaphorical subsumption (VLJ E 562). It does not involve a merely abstract idea of the ‘female’, but ‘woman’. The quotation is best understood in its full context: it is added in at the end of this passage in A Vision of the Last Judgment: ‘Jesus is surrounded by Beams of Glory in which are seen all around him Infants emanating from him these represent the Eternal Births of Intellect from the divine Humanity A Rainbow surrounds the throne & the Glory in which youthful Nuptials recieve the infants in their hands’ (E 562). Thus, the female’s lack of independent existence follows directly on an allegory of male intellectual birth as anterior and superior to female physical birth. Blake’s vocabulary can also open up the significance of the statement. In Eternity, the female has no will of her own. She has no volition but rather acts as a subordinate aspect of the male: this is the obvious meaning. However, examples of the multiple meanings of ‘Will’ can be found in Shakespeare’s sonnets and applied to Blake’s statement. Shakespeare writes, in Sonnet 136, ‘Will will fulfill the treasure of thy love, / Ay fill it full with wills, and my will one’: the promiscuity of his beloved is expressed through a multiplication of wills, or penises (116). Blake, then, could mean that in Eternity the female has no will of her own, indicating that she has no reproductive power. If male sexual creativity is valued over female, then the male genitals will be considered the authentic organ of creative power. The phallic females Blake portrays in the fallen world, such as the Daughters of Albion who don the flesh of the male victim in Jerusalem, show that the delusion of female power is bound up with this delusion of possessing the generative power of the penis. Yet, Shakespeare’s

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sonnets also use ‘Will’ to connote the female genitalia, for instance in Sonnet 135: ‘Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, / Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?’ (116). Perhaps, for Blake, in Eternity the female has no genitalia of her own, and no potential to create, at all. This seems possible, since Blake’s eternal males are endowed with bosoms from which they can give birth and through which they can enter each other. Los argues, ‘Sexes must vanish & cease / To be. when Albion arises from his dread repose’ ( J 92:13–14). However, the eradication of sexual difference, which would be effectively produced by neither gender having any will or bodily genital organ of its own, is actually a subsumption of the female into the male. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 136 ends, ‘Make but my name thy love, and love that still / And then thou lov’st me for my name is Will’ (116). Shakespeare puns on his name, making his ‘Will’ himself, a pun which transfers to Will Blake (as he often signed himself, for instance on the title pages of Europe and The First Book of Urizen). In Eternity there is no female Will, no separate mirror image of himself of another gender: the female is not other and so there is no danger of his desiring her in vain nor of failing to control her. She is an emanation of man with no will of her own: she is Will’s, rather than Will being her own. In the quotation on vanishing sexes, Los responds to a frightened Enitharmon who forsees: ‘The Poets Song draws to its period & Enitharmon is no more’ ( J 92:8). She is justifiably afraid, because apparently she will lose independent existence in Eternity. For a character in a poem, she seems unusually perceptive in her knowledge that the poem is ending and that she will not exist beyond its close. Yet she is correct in this too, since the emanation can be seen as the assistant at male artistic creation, the colours used in that creation, and the artwork itself which emanates from, and takes separate being from, its male parent. Enitharmon fears that ‘My Looms will be no more & I annihilate vanish for ever / Then thou wilt Create another Female according to thy Will’ ( J 92:11–12). Her looms, a symbol for the womb, will be no more, and Los will be able to generate another female, or another emanative artwork, through his will or reproductive power. Though Blake uses birthlike imagery to lend power to his portrayals of male creation, there is, in the end, sublimation involved. Physical birth is devalued because it is the only form of creation that males cannot actually imitate, and the more valuable form of birth, intellectual creation, is claimed for the male. Gilbert and Gubar find that the ‘metaphor of literary paternity’ in which one needs a pen/penis to write, has a ‘corollary notion that the chief creature man has generated is woman’. This notion ‘has a long and complex history. From Eve, Minerva, Sophia, and Galatea onward, after all, patriarchal mythology defines women as created by, from, and for men, the children of male brains, ribs and ingenuity. For Blake, the eternal female was at her best an Emanation of the male creative principle’ (12). In his efforts to imagine a human being who can be at once one and many, Blake sub-

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sumes the female into the male, and the artwork into its creator. Personifying the artwork as an emanation, and considering the female as a psychic aspect of the male, endows both with independent life and yet allows for both to remain under the control of their maker.

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Blake’s various imaginings of the formation of the body are set in the context of a previous ideal body. When in The First Book of Urizen Los shapes Urizen, he does just that: he does not create Urizen, but takes a pre-existent form and binds its changes. In Jerusalem, Albion’s sons are exiled from his breast (19:1); beforehand, then, they must have been inside his manifold body. At Jerusalem’s close, his emanation reintegrates with him: ‘England who is Brittannia enterd Albions bosom rejoicing’ (95:22). Scattered in the interim, Albion’s component parts are one with him originally and ultimately. The bodies whose shapings, separations and conglomerations have preoccupied the preceding chapters of this study, and indeed preoccupy Blake’s prophecies, come from and return to an eternal body. Indeed, the limitations of the fallen body are seen as such in comparison to an alternative form. More often than we get an actual glimpse of the ideal body, we get an inkling of its characteristics from their lack. Blake’s recurring sense-catalogues, in showing what the body changes into, hint what it changed from. The passage from Europe which shed light on the significance of Urizen’s direful changes in Chapter 3 rewards another look from this different vantage point because it details the sense organs’ transformation. Blake narrates: when the five senses whelm’d In deluge o’er the earth-born man; then turn’d the fluxile eyes Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things. The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens Were bended downward; and the nostrils golden gates shut Turn’d outward, barr’d and petrify’d against the infinite. (11[13]:10–15) Associating this phenomenon with the biblical ‘deluge’ reinforces the idea that anterior to this state of existence there was a paradisiacal one, lost but one day to be restored. The once and future form is a body because Blake is not describing the sudden appearance of sense organs, but rather a contin192 10.1057/9780230597013 - William Blake and the Body, Tristanne Connolly

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The Eternal Body

uum of change; as in Urizen’s binding, organs which are already there are changing shape and becoming static. We get a glimpse of the previous body in this metamorphosis, because what the organs become is opposed to what they were before. The eyes were once fluxile and not stationary; they now concentrate all things, so presumably they did not before. The ears are now bended downward, which once were ever-varying spiral ascents. The nostrils, now shut, must have been open; now outward, must have either faced some other direction or not been limited by direction; now petrified, must have been malleable. The mortal and immortal forms rely on each other, because one changes into the other. The sense catalogues provide opportunities to extrapolate the anterior, ideal body from the imposed limitations of the present, mortal one. Putting together the suggestions of various such descriptions reveals fairly consistent characteristics for Blake’s eternal senses. For instance, in a passage which appears in both The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, Albion threatens Luvah with a binding like Urizen’s and Reuben’s:1 I will turn the volutions of your ears outward, and bend your nostrils Downward, and your fluxile eyes englob’d roll round in fear: Your writhing lips and tongue shrink up into a narrow circle, Till in narrow forms you creep. ( J 29[43]:67–70) The lips and tongue, although not mentioned in the Europe passage, undergo changes similar to those of the eyes which become stationary orbs: they are shrunk into a circular form. If, before, the tongue was not enclosed by lips and teeth, as with the nostrils, the orifices must have been huge and unrestrictedly open to sensation. If the lips were not circular, they could have been any shape. Since they, along with the tongue, were writhing, they may have been able to take any shape instead of being held by muscle in a circle with limited expansion and contraction. The changes of the eyes, from fluxile to englobed, remains the same in both passages, but concentration turns to fear. Fear is an attribute of Urizen’s eyes, connected to their smallness and their being not flexible but set in the head: On high in two little orbs And fixed in two little caves Hiding carefully from the wind His Eyes beheld the deep. (BU 10:13–16) The eyes become fearful because they are hidden, and they hide because they are afraid; this vicious cycle also applies to sense and sense object. The

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eyes concentrate all things because they are concentrated, stuck in narrow focus rather than fluxile and expansive. In their previous form, if not round, nor sunk into the head, they might resemble plantlike stalks (the opposite of englobed and sunken: sticking out, increasing the range of vision, eliminating the Newtonian dark chamber that is the eyeball). For ‘fluxile’ eyes, a flowerlike conception seems possible, given the responsiveness of flowers to light. Donald Ault discusses Blake’s ‘first Vision of Light’ as described in a poem for Thomas Butts. When ‘The Sun was Emitting / His Glorious beams’, Blake writes, ‘My Eyes did Expand’. Ault points out that ‘the eye, rather than expanding when it encounters bright light, contracts’ (E 712, Ault 142–4). Fallen eyes seem built to welcome the incursion of darkness and restrict the influx of light. They adjust themselves, irises dilating in darkness, but in Blake’s eternal body such movements are not uncontrollable, like the sunflower involuntarily, vegetatively following the sun. Though in ‘Ah! Sunflower’ the plant’s movement is automatic, Blake imputes some desire to its response: the sunflower is ‘seeking after that sweet golden clime’ where it ‘wishes to go’ (SIE 43). For his eternal sense organs, Blake increases the role of desire and decreases restrictions: he claims, in The First Book of Urizen, that ‘The will of the Immortal expanded / Or contracted his all flexible senses’ (3:37–8), lending visionary decision to the resulting perceptions, no longer accidents of reflex. The multiple meanings of the word ‘will’ accentuate the importance of desire: as it is for Oothoon, perception can become ‘happy copulation’ with the perceived, if the ‘will’ or sexual organs are involved (VDA 10:1). Rather than having a fixed, automatic response to sense data (for example, irises contracting to light), the eternal organs act in thorough accord with the will, which for Blake is also the self: the sense organs expand and contract at the will of Will Blake. The changes of the ear and nostril, in comparison to the Europe passage, are reversed. The volutions of the ear in Europe once formed a spiral staircase to the heavens, but became turned downward. Here, they are turned outward: if they were the opposite, inward, before, that would contradict Blake’s previous description. Likewise, in Europe, the nostrils were turned outward, and here are turned downward. What aligns the two accounts is the possibility that inward and upward might be the same direction. On plate 5 of Jerusalem, Blake defines his ‘great task’: To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination. (5:18–20) The ears and nostrils, like these eyes, may have inwardly perceived ‘the Worlds of Thought’. That spiral passage to the heavens could be inside the human brain. The nostrils’ golden cages could open inwards to infinity: their shutting bars and petrifies it, imprisoned within rather than closed out.

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The characteristics of ideal organs suggested by Blake’s sense catalogues are also found in his vision of eternity which ends Jerusalem. An important continuity between these representations of the ideal body is their physicality. The sense catalogues reveal that the eternal body is a body, since they depict not the creation of a physical body from nothing, but the metamorphosis of the eternal into the mortal form. Additionally, the descriptions of those changes help define the bodily nature of the ideal senses. Tirzah addresses the ‘poor Human Form’ on plate 67 of Jerusalem: ‘These fibres of thine eyes that used to beam in distant heavens / Away from me: I have bound down with a hot iron’ (67:47–8). Eye-beams, the line between the eye and the object seen, and the power of eye contact, are physicalized. Fibres of the eyes used to beam in distant heavens, as though the eyes reached out with communicating fibres to what they perceived (again recalling plantlike stalks). These fibres are so physical that they can be ‘bound down with a hot iron’, sodored like Urizen’s bound body, shaped like wire or fused like healing flesh. At the end of Jerusalem, the fibrous nature of the organs of sense is crucial to their ultimate form as ‘the Four Rivers of the Water of Life’: South stood the Nerves of the Eye. East in Rivers of bliss the Nerves of the Expansive Nostrils West. flowd the Parent Sense the Tongue. North stood The labyrinthine Ear. (98:15–18) Nelson Hilton observes, ‘The connection of nerves with the water of life harks back to the ancient belief that the cerebrospinal fluid was the “stuff of life” ’. Eighteenth-century medical thinkers, like George Cheyne whom Hilton quotes, conceived that ‘the operating principle of the nerves . . . might be “a subtile spirituous, and infinitely elastick Fluid, which is the Medium of the Intelligent Principle” ’ (Hilton, Literal 97). If the nerves are hollow and filled with coursing liquid,2 then they are already rivers. Their eternal transformation into rivers is an exaggeration of their present form, which expands them, and which connects them with their surroundings. The nerves of the mortal body are restricted, closed within a narrow form, and less exposed to sensation. In Jerusalem’s eternity, the senses are still described in terms of their physical organs, since they are still called nerves: they are not divorced from the human body. In A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg seems, like Blake, to insist on the preservation of the sense organs in the eternal body. Man would not be capable of thinking and volition, unless there were in him a substance to serve as the subject of these operations, and to suppose otherwise would be ascribing existence to non-entity, as may appear from

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It is difficult to pinpoint Swedenborg’s attitude to the earthly body because he insists that the spirit is in the form of a man (everything is in the form of a man: the whole heaven and the societies which compose it). At the same time there is a desire to shed the material body. ‘When any one enters into the spiritual world, or into the life after death, he is equally in the body as before, nor is there to all appearance the least difference: but his body then is a spiritual body, and separate from all the grossness and impurity of matter’ (n.461). Swedenborg converses with angels who are surprised to hear that, of Christians on earth, the generality were so grossly ignorant in respect to the nature of angels and spirits, as to take them for minds without form, mere invisible thinkers, and of which they had no other idea than as of vital aether; and that consequently, having nothing in them human but the power of thinking, they could neither see, hear, nor speak, as being without eyes, ears, and tongues. (n.74) The angels attribute this mistake to ‘the learned, who first broached this error, being mere natural men, and borrowing all their ideas of substance from their external senses, and not from any interior light’. Because of this narrow perception they ‘refined spiritual things and beings, as it were, into nothings; not seeing, from the grossness of their ideas, how any thing could exist spiritually in form and substance, that is not material and palpable to sense, as in this natural world’ (n.74). Swedenborg shares with Blake the idea that natural senses perceive only natural things. For Swedenborg, one must be ‘withdrawn inward from the bodily sense’ for the eye of the spirit to be opened (n.76). For Blake the natural senses are not overridden but transformed to enable spiritual perception. The organs of sense still include ‘nervous fibres’ in eternity, and the ability of nerves to be transparent or opaque, expanded or contracted, provides divine vision. The nerves, in becoming rivers, retain their fluid characteristics. Yet, is the retention of such properties, and of the name ‘nerves’, enough to constitute identity? With all of its transformations, it may seem as though Blake’s eternal body is hardly a body anymore. The huge orifices and (in comparison to the body we know) deformed organs suggested by the sense catalogues sound like the parts of a monster, a grotesque giant, more than an ideal human. How can this be the human form divine if it no longer looks like a human? Blake’s eternal body is like that of Christian tradition in that it is both continuous with the mortal body, and completely changed. In her

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man’s not being able to see without that organ, which is the subject of vision, or to hear without the organ of hearing. (n.434)

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to Paul, the image of the seed is an image of radical transformation: the wheat that sprouts is different from the bare seed; and that bare seed itself, while lying in the earth, undergoes decay. Second, the image asserts (perhaps without any intention on its author’s part) some kind of continuity, although it does not explicitly lodge identity in either a material or a formal principle. The sheaf of grain is not, in form, the same as the bare seed, nor is it clear that it is made of the same stuff. It acquires a new, a ‘spiritual’ body. But something accounts for identity. It is that which is sown that quickens. If we do not rise, Christian preaching is in vain, says Paul; something must guarantee that the subject of resurrection is ‘us’. But ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom’. Heaven is not merely a continuation of earth. Thus, when Paul says ‘the trumpet shall sound . . . and we shall be changed’, he means, with all the force of our everyday assumptions, both ‘we’ and ‘changed’. (6) Blake also strives to imagine an eternal body which is continuous with the mortal body: his metamorphic descriptions of the narrowed sense organs forming from previously expanded ones show that. In the design for ‘To Tirzah’ (which contains one such description, of Tirzah moulding the heart, binding the nostrils, eyes and ears, and closing the tongue in clay), Blake inscribes what Bynum calls ‘the Pauline oxymoron’: ‘It is Raised a Spiritual Body’ (Bynum 6, SIE 52:10–13). It is an oxymoron, to put together the two items of dualism’s grandest opposition, just as much as it is to assert that a body can be at once the same and different.3 Paul makes an attempt to ‘shew’ this ‘mystery’ through metaphors, one of which is the seed (1 Cor. 15:51). He asserts, ‘That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die’ (1 Cor. 15:36). After naming all of the different kinds of body in creation, such as those of birds and beasts, and celestial and terrestrial bodies, he returns to this metaphor saying, ‘So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’ (1 Cor. 15:42–44). There is confusion here as to just what the sowing is, as Daniel Whitby points out in his commentary (Patrick et al. Vol. 4:661). Is it birth, the beginning of the life of the natural body, or is it death, sowing the natural body in the ground to give rise to the spiritual body? Though it only communicates a fuzzy definition of the relationship between mortal and immortal, the image succeeds in expressing continuity in change. Paul’s emphasis is on different kinds of

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study of The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336, Caroline Walker Bynum begins with a discussion of ‘Seed Images, Ancient and Modern’ which goes back to Paul’s metaphor for the relationship between mortal and immortal. She argues that,

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bodies, but it is the same body in that one grows out of the other. The other major metaphor used in this passage is found in verse 53: ‘For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality’. As in ‘it is raised’, ‘this corruptible’ is missing a referent which we presume is the body (Patrick et al. Vol. 4:604). The metaphor must be deduced from the verb. If it is ‘put on’, then it is like a covering or a garment. This clashes with the metaphor of the seed because does not a seed shed its covering in order to grow? Comparison with clothing shares with the seed image the attempt to maintain difference and consistency at once, but even though they have the same purpose the images do not mix. Emergence and transformation are different from layering. In putting on immortality, mortality is still present, yet gains an outward layer. In 2 Corinthians 5, the clothing image becomes explicit. Yet as it becomes clearer it also becomes more obscure, as layers are added to layers. ‘For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. . . . For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life’ (2 Cor. 5:2, 4). A house is usually a greater layer added above and beyond clothing, but here they are elided. The mortal body in which we ‘groan’ is likened to a tabernacle, also a kind of house, and a kind of clothing with its woven veil (Exod. 35:25–26). Here the continued presence of the mortal body as a lower layer is more explicit than in 1 Corinthians 15. In the tabernacle the desire is not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. Adding more outer layers means that mortality is ‘swallowed’, taken into the inside. The passage in 1 Corinthians, too, culminates with that image: ‘So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor. 15:54). Paul layers his text with a quotation from Isaiah (Isa. 25:8 reads ‘He will swallow up death in victory’), and layers his metaphors as well, moving from clothing to eating. Paul’s metaphors are inadequate for Blake; he does not discard them, though, but combines and transforms them. The seed is an unsuitable image for the eternal body for Blake, because he has chosen to refer to the mortal body constantly as ‘vegetative’. Indeed, he uses a plant image to pinpoint the disadvantages of yearning heavenwards in ‘Ah! Sun-flower’, where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire. Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. (SIE 43:13–16) Rather than rising to a body which is their own yet changed, these people have renounced the access they already had to sensory perception beyond

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the limitations of mortal organs. According to the Fairy in Europe, a caverned man may through one of his senses ‘himself pass out what time he please, but he will not’ (Additional Plate 3:5). This is the sense of touch, and passing out of oneself through touch is sexual ecstasy, which the pining youth and pale virgin have denied. For Blake, vegetation is linked with one’s perceptive openings being overgrown and obscured from glimpses of eternal activities, yet the exuberant life of plant growth decorates his pages. Blake portrays the changes of Urizen’s body as similar to vegetable growth, for instance when his ears ‘shot spiring out’ like the shoot of a growing seed, in the twisting, spiring motion of a vine (BU 10:23). Though this describes the change into the mortal body, it still defines the relationship between that body and Urizen’s previous form in the metamorphic terms of the seed metaphor. As we have seen, the eternal sense organs have plantlike (even sunflower-like) attributes. In the recuperation seen in Jerusalem’s vision of eternity, trees (previously trees of mystery which spread roots under heels), along with all things vegetative, are humanized. This transformation allows plants to become human, rather than forcing humans to be paralleled to plant life for lack of a better metaphor. Clothing is also an inadequate metaphor for Blake’s eternal life. Blake uses garment imagery to imply obscuring of the true form, but garments can also serve to reveal the lineaments beneath. For example, Morton Paley finds that Milton’s ‘great speech’ at the close of the prophecy named after him ‘represents [the] redemptive function’ of his journey ‘as a bringing of new garments’: To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with Imagination. (Paley, ‘Garment’ 133, M 44[43]:4–6) Both opposing elements are kinds of clothing: the rags of memory, Albion’s covering, and Imagination as clothing. The mortal clothing to be discarded, later in the same passage, is said to hide ‘the Human Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains / Which Jesus rent’ (M 44[43]:26–7). Paley finds that for Blake, in eternity, garments ‘are not abolished but transformed’. He takes Jerusalem 95 (Figure 7.1) as confirmation of the ambiguity since the figure ‘at first . . . appears to be naked, but a sort of diaphanous train seems to be trailing from the rear part of his body’ (‘Garment’ 138). In his notes to Jerusalem, Paley finds that the ‘blood vessels and muscles’ of this figure show that ‘ “It is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44), not a bodiless spirit. He trails part of his fleshy garment to further emphasize this point’ (290). This eternal garment emphasizes rather than conceals the body. One problem with Paul’s clothing imagery is that, though it serves to maintain the mortal body in eternity, it preserves an opposition between mortal and eternal bodies. The mortal body is underneath, clothed over by

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Figure 7.1 William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 95.

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the eternal form. They are two things. In the seed image, there is one thing which metamorphoses. Blake, if he is to preserve his central tenet of the divinity of the human form, cannot afford too much discontinuity. The eternal body must be a human form. Yet Blake’s prophecies, preoccupied with suffering and limitation, show both pity and disgust for the mortal body: thus the body, to be ideal, must also change. Blake employs engraving imagery as an additional metaphor for the relationship between mortal and immortal bodies, to create a variation on Paul’s layering which does not necessitate opposition. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, as we have seen, Blake predicts the appearance, catalysed by etching chemicals, of a spiritual body: ‘the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid’ (14:11–16). In Jerusalem’s vision of eternity, engraving is also involved, for the ‘Rivers of the Water of Life’ are like the aqua fortis which corrodes the surface of the plate, revealing the design, or, in the resurrection, ‘revealing the lineaments of Man’ (98:15, 19). Milton, too, in his speech, declares that he means, ‘To bathe in the Waters of Life; to wash off the Not Human’; he had called ‘the Spectre’, which as the vehicular form can be the mortal body, ‘a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal / Spirit; a Selfhood, which must be put off & annihilated alway’ (42:35–6, 44[43]:1). The false, mortal body is an overlying layer to be ‘put off’, in Paul’s phrase. The method for this putting off is not undressing but bathing, like a plate in acid, in a bath which removes everything but the ‘Human’. What is revealed on the plate is a product of the human imagination, and most often a human form, which Anne Mellor finds to be the compositional centre of the majority of Blake’s plates (Divine 286–7). What is revealed is also poetry. A large part of Milton’s project in so bathing is to escape from bad poetry; indeed, it is as one action ‘To take off his filthy garment, & clothe him with Imagination / To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration’ (44[43]:6–7). Like clothing, the plate is layered; however, the layers are not different garments, but part of the same thing. The plane surface is a layer; it is corroded to reveal a deeper layer, while portions of the higher layer remain to show forth forms. When printed, though the paper is a different layer, the lineaments show on the page, as they show through an ideally transparent garment. The upper layers (the lines) and the lower layers (the spaces) are all apparent, and all necessary to the identity of the plate. Like Paul’s seed, Blake’s engraved plate changes, but unlike the seed it retains its form. It is still made of metal, still rectangular, but it is covered in images from the divine imagination, which will transfer truly on to paper and be receptive to the further illumination of ink and watercolour. It requires some philosophical gymnastics to posit an ideal body which is at once like and unlike the present, known body, just as it is difficult for theologians to explain how the three persons of the Trinity can be one God.

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Locke’s questioning of substance and personal identity threatened the doctrine of the resurrection of the body just as it did the Trinity. Locke asserts that, through his criterion of consciousness for personal identity, ‘we may be able, without any difficulty, to conceive the same person at the resurrection, though in a body not exactly in make or parts the same which he had here, the same consciousness going along with the soul that inhabits it’ (II.xxvii.15). Since Locke’s comment is surrounded by identity puzzles which claim that if a person ‘once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor’, meditate on a prince’s soul transmigrating into the body of a cobbler, and imagine an amputated little finger carrying with it the whole consciousness of a person, it does seem that Locke makes swapping bodies a simple matter (II.xxvii.14, 15, 17). John Edwards, one of Locke’s opponents, sees him as ‘ridiculing the Resurrection of the same Body’ (in Yolton 175). Locke’s questioning whether a person is a person from moment to moment, young and old, drunk and sober, sane and insane, makes even earthly identity problematic; how much more problematic, then, the theological requirement which Edwards refers to, that one be resurrected in the same body, as the same person. On resurrection, as on the Trinity, it could be said that Locke’s cogitations were simply practical. Rather than struggling with the mystery of a spiritual body, the nature of which, like substance, Locke does not pretend to know, he satisfies himself with consciousness providing a way to imagine continuity of identity in the resurrection ‘without any difficulty’.4 It is curious that on one occasion when Locke seeks to prove the practical point that ‘the infinite wise Contriver of us and all things about us hath fitted our senses, faculties, and organs to the conveniences of life, and the business we have to do here’, he is led to imagine senses with capabilities far beyond those of the mortal human body (II.xxiii.12). Locke observes, ‘Had we senses acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies and the real constitution on which their sensible qualities depend, I doubt not but they would produce quite different ideas in us’ (II.xxiii.11). Though he can conceive intensified senses, Locke finds problems with them. The increase in noise would be unendurable, as would be bright sunlight, and the perception of minutiae would render the acute perceiver unable to avoid obstacles obvious to those of duller sense (II.xxiii.12). He imagines that ‘if that most instructive of our senses, seeing, were in any man 1000 or 100,000 times more acute than it is now by the best microscope’, the person so gifted would be in a quite different world from other people: nothing would appear the same to him and others, the visible ideas of everything would be different. So that I doubt whether he and the rest of men could discourse concerning the objects of sight, or have any communication about colours, their appearances being so wholly different. (II.xxiii.12)

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Though Locke makes expanded perception sound more like an affliction than a blessing for human beings, he does ‘propose an extravagant conjecture’ in which the disadvantages of acute perceptions are remedied in those higher than humans on the great chain of being. Since it may well be that ‘spirits can assume to themselves bodies of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts’, Locke wonders ‘whether one great advantage some of them have over us may not lie in this: that they can so frame and shape to themselves organs of sensation or perception as to suit them to their present design and the circumstances of the object they would consider’ (II.xxiii.13). Flexible senses solve the problem of being able to perceive only the minute and intense, or only the vast and subtle. The problem of having ideas different from those of others is also solved, not only by framing sense organs to suit, but also by the simple fact of the plural ‘spirits’. Not just one alienated man, but all spiritual beings may have improved sense perception, and would thus be able to ‘discourse’ with each other ‘concerning the objects of sight’. Though Locke considers his own hypothetical description of the faculties of angels to be ‘extravagant’, he argues ‘we cannot but allow that the infinite power and wisdom of God may frame creatures with a thousand other faculties and ways of perceiving things without them than what we have, yet our thoughts can go no further than our own, so impossible it is for us to enlarge our very guesses beyond the ideas received from our own sensation and reflection’ (II.xxiii.13). An extrapolation of improved organs of sense from what we know of our own could be a limited or erroneous hypothesis on angels, or it could be an indication of linkage and consistency between humans and higher beings. Locke pictures an ideal body, going beyond the limitations of the mortal sense organs by conceiving of senses which are flexible. However, he imagines them in angels, not humans who seem, to Locke, doomed for their own good to narrow perception. When in his sense catalogues Blake suggests the appearance and capabilities of eternal sense organs by describing how they became solidified and narrowed, he is extrapolating ideal sense organs from those we know. Yet, those ideal organs belong not to angels but humans: humans are the higher beings. The extrapolation itself is physicalized, to dramatize the continuity: the same organs change from one form to another. Like Locke, Berkeley also, in The Principles of Human Knowledge, imagines the implications of acute senses. He concentrates on how, through variations in the magnitude of sense perception, an object can be perceived as one and many. Since ‘the infinite divisibility of matter is now universally allowed’ (I.47), objects which seem finite to perception really contain an infinite number of parts, which obtuse senses are not able to perceive. In proportion therefore as the sense is rendered more acute, it perceives a greater number of parts in the object, that is, the object appears greater, and its figure varies, those parts in its extremities which were before

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unperceivable, appearing now to bound it in very different lines and angles from those perceived by an obtuser sense. And at length, after various changes of size and shape, when the sense becomes infinitely acute, the body shall seem infinite. During all which there is no alteration in the body, but only in the sense. Each body therefore considered in itself, is infinitely extended, and consequently void of all shape or figure. (I.47) As Kathleen Raine observes (162), this passage recalls Blake’s assertion, ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinte’ (MHH 14:17–19). It also recalls the Divine Family explaining to Albion, We live as one man; for contracting our infinite senses We behold multitude; or expanding: we behold as one, As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man We call Jesus the Christ: and he in us, and we in him, Live in perfect harmony in Eden the land of life. ( J 38[34]:17–19) For Blake, changing perception reveals the true human lineaments of all things; the basic, atomic unit of infinitely divisible matter is Man. Mutuality marks the relationship between perceiver and perceived in Blake’s scheme. For Berkeley, without the organizing force of perception, a body ‘considered in itself’ is ‘void of all shape or figure’; indeed, its very existence relies on perception. He muses, ‘when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind’; it is the ‘eternal invisible Mind which produces and sustains all things’ (I.90, 94). Not only does Blake endow humans with the attributes of higher beings; he transfers divinity to the human form. The ‘One Man’ composed of many is a divine human, Jesus Christ, and the many component humans who form him are identified with him. For Berkeley, the divine perceiving mind upholds the existence of things when humans are not looking; for Blake, on the contrary, the Divine Family behold each other as multitudes or as one man, guaranteeing each other’s existence, and also enabling the simultaneous unity and diversity of Blake’s human. What is perceived is not helplessly reliant on the perceiver for its existence. The divinity of all creation is reflected in the fact that what is seen – even inanimate objects such as the humanized ‘Tree Metal Earth & Stone’ of Jerusalem (98:1) – can also see, giving the perceiver being as well as receiving being, if ‘esse is percipi’ is true (Berkeley I.3). In Blake’s eternity, even Chaos has eyes: ‘And the dim Chaos brightend beneath, above, around! Eyed as the Peacock / According to the Human Nerves of Sensation, the Four Rivers of the Water of Life’ ( J 98:14–15). Chaos

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gains its own perceptive organs ‘according to’ the human nerves of sensation, the transformed version of perceptive organs. It is through the action of human nerves of sensation that Chaos brightens, receiving light through eyes which are like, or which accord to, human eyes; yet, since Chaos is ‘Eyed as the Peacock’ those eyes are also different from human eyes. As in the resurrected body, there is at once continuity and change. The eyes of the peacock are a suitable image for senses in this world of proliferation. They are as colourful and beautiful as the eternal sights they will see, and though there are many of them they are all part of one creature. However, they are part of that creature’s tail, and thus not actually eyes. A shift seems to make the metaphor invalid, here as in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell passage about the doors of perception being cleansed. Unlike cleansing a window, cleansing a door will not help anyone to see; opening it will. Perhaps, in a special kind of cleansing, the door will become transparent, like Blake’s ideal body; in both cases, no opening is necessary, as opacity no longer presents an obstacle to vision. The slight disjunction in Blake’s metaphors indicates a massive expansion of perception. In familiar, material reality, peacocks’ feathery eyes cannot see, but in the humanization of all things, perhaps those eyes will be gifted with real perception, mutual with the eyes that perceive their beauty. In Jerusalem’s vision of eternity, Blake shows its inhabitants communicating the improved ideas they gain from improved perception: ‘And they conversed together in Visionary forms dramatic’ ( J 98:28). In making ‘conversation’ eternity’s central activity, Blake may have been inspired not only by Locke’s wild fancies on the abilities of higher beings, but also by a verse from Philippians. The King James version reads, ‘For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body’ (Phil. 3:20–21). As Matthew Henry explains in his commentary, a Greek word, woli´tenma, denoting citizenship, is translated as ‘conversation’. For Blake, conversation is citizenship in heaven: to belong there is to engage in visionary dialogue. The Bard’s song in Milton is another example of eternals indulging in conversation: ‘sitting at eternal tables, / Terrific among the Sons of Albion in chorus solemn & loud / A Bard broke forth! all sat attentive to the awful man’ (1[3]:22–4). When the poetic performance is over, they discuss it: ‘All consider’d and a loud resounding murmur / Continu’d round the Halls: and much they question’d the immortal / Loud voicd Bard. and many condemn’d the high tone’d Song’, and the Bard in turn defends himself, saying ‘I am Inspired! I know it is Truth!’ (11:45–7, 51). It is conversation in heaven, not monologue; multiple points of view are necessary for such exchange, which can include heated argument. Though the Bard’s song inspires Milton to ‘go to Eternal Death’ (12:14), effectively propelling him out of eternity, it is not inimical to eternity. One aspect of the possibility of disagreement Blake admits into his eternity is the possibility

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of departure. Milton’s journey is like the ‘living going forth & returning wearied / Into the Planetary lives of Years Months Days & Hours reposing / And then Awaking into his Bosom in the Life of Immortality’ described at Jerusalem’s close: an alternating movement between time and eternity, sleep and waking, weariness and energy, forgetfulness and epiphany. The Bard’s song causes Milton to realize that he will be better prepared for eternal conversation if he redeems his emanations: female portions which assist in eternal intercourse, and also his written works. The Bard’s song repeats the refrain, ‘Mark well my words! they are of your eternal salvation’ (1[3]:25): for Blake, eternal salvation is indeed of words. The verses from Philippians link the changing of the vile body to heavenly conversation. For Blake this is literally true: in eternity, ‘every Word & every Character / Was Human’ ( J 98:35–6). In Philippians, the change which comes over our vile bodies is ‘according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself’ (Phil. 3:21). Christ’s subduing everything to himself is Blake’s humanization of all things. In his Laocoön, one of the aphorisms Blake inscribes is, ‘The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself The Divine Body . . . Jesus we are his Members’ (L 41–3). Jean Hagstrum, in his article ‘Christ’s Body’, points out how the elements in that sentence are made equal and interchangeable (130–1). In eternal conversation, those who converse have a body like the Saviour’s,5 and so do their words and visions. Hence a proliferation occurs at the same time as unification: ‘they walked / To & fro in Eternity as One Man reflecting each in each & clearly seen / And seeing: according to fitness & order’ ( J 98:38–40). If ‘they’ are ‘as One Man’, how can they be ‘reflecting each in each’? They are neither singular nor plural, doing the action of a single being, yet able to reflect ‘each in each’, in a proliferation like mirrors facing mirrors. For those who participate in this numerous oneness there is no confusion. It is all ‘according to fitness & order’. Nothing is obscure, as they are ‘clearly seen / And seeing’; even their senses are mutual. All are like the Saviour, the imagination, the divine body: in Christian myth, the body of Christ which comprehends all the faithful, and in Blake’s myth the body of Albion the cosmic man. This eternal ideal in which bodily borders are freely and easily transgressed by vision recalls Blake’s primeval ideal of The Ancient Britons, with their transparent skin through which, Blake boasts, ‘the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs’ (DC E 545). The bodies of the Ancient Britons are a lost ideal; doubly lost because it is a lost painting. However, Blake is able to regenerate that ideal, in much the same way as he invites his readers to extrapolate the less limited faculties of the eternal body from his descriptions of its constricting changes. His description of the Britons is set in terms of the ‘modern Man’ they are not, and the figures of ‘Rubens, Titian, Corregio, and all of that class’, which they are not. They are something which cannot be found except by imagination, because ‘where will the copier of nature, as it

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now is, find a civilized man, who has been accustomed to go naked’? If ‘a modern Man stripped from his load of cloathing . . . is like a dead corpse’, then the ancient Britons are like the resurrected body. The distinction between the corpse and the ideal body is the degree of openness. The load of clothing renders the modern man dead because it cuts him off from his environment, and from others. The clothing might represent, as in Milton, ‘a false Body: an Incrustation over [the] Immortal / Spirit’ (42:35–6): wearing such clothing, or being in the mortal body, means being corpselike and impenetrable. The ancient Briton, on the contrary, is ‘exposed to the open air’. The state reached by the fibrous, veinlike ‘nerves of sensation’ in Jerusalem exaggerates this exposure to the extent that they are one with the landscape when they become ‘Rivers of the Water of Life’ ( J 98:15). The transparency of the ancient Britons, which makes their bodily interiors accessible to others, is evident in the Eternals of Jerusalem not only in that they are ‘reflecting each in each & clearly seen / And seeing’ (J 98:39–40); also, in their conversation, ‘they enter / Into each others Bosom’ and there find not just fibres but open expanses, ‘Universes of delight’ ( J 88:4). Swedenborg, too, imagines a heaven of personal transparency. On entering heaven, one maintains the features one had on earth, but soon a transformation occurs, so that the face will ‘correspond with the particular affection or love that possessed [one’s] spirit when in the body; for the face of a man’s spirit differs greatly from that of his body, the latter being derived from his parents, but the former a correspondent to his predominant affection’ (n.457). This is one way in which the body of generation obscures true human lineaments. Blake also seems to imagine an eternal body which reveals individual intellect instead of obscuring it beneath an accidental curtain of hereditary traits. However, Blake is more welcoming than Swedenborg to the possibility that true lineaments may shine through, or even be embodied in, inherited features. This is suggested by his interest in physiognomy,6 and his pride in his snub nose which he expects Jesus also had (E 695). In fact, he seems to wish at times that his face were not so transparent: ‘O why was I born with a different face / Why was I not born like the rest of my race? / When I look each one starts!’ (E 733). For Swedenborg, the ‘change respecting faces’ after arrival in heaven is founded on this law; that no dissimulation or counterfeiting is there allowed, but all must appear to be what they really are, and consequently express their thoughts in their words, and their affections and desires in their looks and actions, so that the faces of all there represent their minds respectively. (n.457) ‘The speech of the angels’ is not ‘learnt, but natural to everyone, flowing spontaneously from their affections and thoughts’; ‘it is also spiritual, and

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Angels know the disposition and qualities of another from his speech, his affection from the sound of his voice, and his intellectual quality from the articulations of that sound in his words; and such of the angels as are eminent in wisdom can tell from a sentence or two what is the ruling passion in another, which is a thing they principally attend to. (n.236) Rather than expressing themselves through the content of their speech, angels say, and understand, more from tone. Swedenborg says that angelic conversation is ‘more intellectual, as coming from a deeper ground’ than earthly conversation (n.234). Though everyone’s thoughts are written on their faces, and two sentences suffice to communicate a ruling passion, they still have faces and speak sentences. Though there is a high degree of clarity, it is not an entirely unmediated form of communication. Swedenborg and Blake both preserve the body as part of eternal existence; they do not strive for a completely disembodied spirituality. This could be caused by the restrictions of the human imagination, always having to approach the unknown by way of the known. However, Swedenborg argues the opposite. Angels find it strange that humans should conceive of beings without bodies: spiritual beings, like mortal ones, need form and substance to function. By approaching eternity on the principles of continuity and change, Blake and Swedenborg recognize the importance of the body as something worth preserving, all the while acknowledging the need for its improvement. Words are also worth preserving, for Swedenborg; they are not disposed of, but improved by the angelic ability to discern from sound. Similarly, Blake, who sees his artworks as human bodies, imagines not that they should drop away in favour of direct, telepathic communication, but rather conceives of an improved body of art, along with improved human faculties to appreciate it. Eternal communication in Jerusalem has its own special medium: the ‘Visionary forms dramatic which bright / Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous majesty’ (98:28–9). They are akin to Blake’s illuminated works, yet they go further. For one thing, they are dramatic. Blake’s graphic and poetic bodies come as close to movement as is possible in their static medium, through the energy of the figures. Anne Mellor argues that Blake’s figures are never still (Divine 144). Also, the rearrangements of the texts, and subtle changes such as colour from copy to copy, provide a kind of movement, parallel to the variations which accompany repeated, live dramatic performances. Visionary forms dramatic overcome the restrictions on movement imposed by two-dimensional prints. Surpassing the limitations of earthly media, they are ‘Visions / In new Expanses’ (J 98:29–30). In the mythologization of book production in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, one

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may be called a sounding affection, and a speaking thought’ (n.236). According to Swedenborg,

of the final stages involves being cast into the expanse (15:18). For Joseph Viscomi, this stage is equivalent to printing (112). Here in Jerusalem, the expanses are new, and plural. That they are perfectly formed to receive the conceptions cast into them is hinted by these qualities, and confirmed by the following lines: ‘creating exemplars of Memory and of Intellect / Creating Space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine / Of Human Imagination’ (J 98:30–3). Blake’s ideal of eternal communication takes the characteristics of his body of work and pushes them beyond their present capabilities, just as the eternal body is related to the mortal one by both continuity and change; the present sense organs are narrowed, solidified versions of eternal, flexible ones. Thomas Frosch links bodily restrictions to restricted creativity: ‘In Generation we have, through our fallen bodies, a limited capacity to transform our environment and our lives according to our desires: the “vegetative body” is the shrunken form of our constitutive power, our ability to literally make the world’ (158). Time and space themselves are created according to the wonders divine of human imagination. Frosch argues that eternity and infinity for Blake in Eden do not involve an emancipation from, or a vast extension of time and space, but ‘the liberty to invent space and time’ on human terms (151). This is one way Blake manages to conceive of a changeable eternity: eternals are able to disagree, alter their opinions, and even leave and return. By definition, eternity does not vary. This definition has been an obstacle to Christian ideas of eternity: for instance, how can it be reconciled with a rebellion in heaven culminating in the fall of Lucifer and his angels? Eternity’s unchangeableness is God’s unchangeableness; if heaven is human-centred rather than God-centred, then it can be created by humans rather than imposed on them, and therefore is not a state a human is placed in (or debarred from) forever, but one which can be entered, left and altered. If the human imagination is the true body of man and of Jesus, then time and space being created ‘according to’ imagination means that they are created as human bodies. Time and space, dimensions which restrict the movement, and even the existence, of humans are refabricated in human form, and become media for human expression. ‘The tremendous unfathomable Non Ens / Of Death was seen in regenerations terrific or complacent varying / According to the subject of discourse’ (98:34–5). ‘Death’ itself is ‘seen in regenerations’ or resurrections and is modified by the ‘discourse’ embodied in ‘Visionary forms dramatic’. It is not that the residents of eternity only discuss death’s regeneration, as in traditional accounts of heaven like Milton’s in Paradise Lost where the ‘elect’ spend all their energies glorifying God.7 Rather, it seems that the visionary forms are composed of ‘regenerations’, for that is what changes ‘according to the subject of discourse’, as an ideal artistic medium should change to suit the conception. Blake argues vehemently, against Reynolds, that conception and execution are inseparable (AR E 637). Blake’s vision of eternity is an apotheosis of that oneness, and a fantasy of its success: no more failure to embody ideas

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in the most conducive form, and no more failure of that self-expression to be communicated and appreciated. However, such a fantasy involves its own dangers. It suggests unmediated communication; perhaps only in a completely disembodied telepathy is a total lack of misunderstanding possible, because giving form means drawing borders, which necessarily excludes. As an artist Blake cannot idealize a form of communication which obviates the need for the art object. On the contrary, if conception and execution are supposed to be one, an artist could not conceive, could not have an idea, without immediately executing a work of art. Additionally, communication completely invulnerable to failure is, in a way, no longer communication. If one imagines a solipsistic world in which one’s expressions always reflect one’s mind exactly, and in which one’s audience responds exactly as prescribed, one is not conveying anything but simply re-echoing inside sameness. There is no dynamism, such as is provided by opposition, and is necessary to creativity (as in the positive role of the spectre, as well as in Blake’s debating eternals). As is evident in the manifold nature of Blake’s human, his ideal involves not a subsuming unity in which individuality is lost, nor a complete scattering of discrete pieces, but a coexistence of unity and diversity with the advantages of both. Eternal communication relies on the manifold quality of the personality, and the permeability of the individual, according to Los’s description of eternal communcation. ‘First their Emanations meet / Surrounded by their Children. if they embrace & comingle / The Human Four-fold Forms mingle also in thunders of Intellect’: it is necessary to be many to become one ( J 88:5–7). If understanding is impossible because of irreconcilable differences, the frustration of the failure of self-expression is avoided because the emanations eliminate union with anyone incompatible before it commences. ‘If the Emanations mingle not; with storms and agitations / Of earthquakes & consuming fires they roll apart in fear’ ( J 88:8–9). Dislikes are acknowledged in eternity and even contribute to the sublime atmosphere. Particularly because emanations can symbolize works of art, they are still necessary as go-betweens in Blake’s ideal communication. As the visionary forms dramatic are ideal, living artworks which perfectly embody the artist’s conception, to the point of overcoming all limitations of medium including space and time, the emanation is also an ideal artwork which does not allow any misunderstanding. Immune to blotting and blurring demons, these human illuminated media allow spectators to enter the bosom of the Man through entering the bosom of one of his images of wonder (VLJ E 560).8 All of this is achieved through subordination. In the comparison of Blake’s human to the Trinity, it became clear that Blake achieves the logical impossibility of simultaneous unity and multiplicity by considering that the components of the human are inferior to, and should be governed by, the human. The solution to the problem of artistic failure is similar. Los says, ‘Man cannot unite with Man but by their Emanations’ ( J 88:10): the things

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the emanation stands for, that is, the artistic medium, the work of art itself, the secondary element of colour, the assistant at creation, are all necessary for communicative self-expression. Los, exasperated, asks Enitharmon how he can achieve such communication ‘While thou my Emanation refusest my Fibres of dominion’ ( J 88:13). In order for eternal art to have the degree of power Blake expects, to reach his demanding ideals, the artist must have a certain amount of control over artwork and audience. The audience is controlled by the expulsion of the incompatible; the artwork and the elements involved in creating it are controlled by being brought under the authority of the artist’s personality. Indeed, they are made aspects of the artist himself, in a very physical way, considering that fibres reach out to dominate and incorporate them. It is ironic that Blake’s vision of eternal mutuality is supported by such command and appropriation. Alan Richardson comments on the irony of the role of gender in this domination: ‘the androgynous vision can be realized only if Enitharmon . . . submits to Los’ (21). However, the vision in question is not really androgynous. Though Los makes a token gesture of gender equality, claiming that emanations ‘stand both Male & Female at the Gates of each Humanity’, the gender-neutral word ‘Humanity’ disappears and the nominal character of this concession is revealed as Los goes on to bewail not being able to ‘be united as Man with Man’ and enjoy the mingling and joining of souls ‘thro all the Fibres of Brotherhood’ (J 88:11–14). Los may assert that emanations are both male and female, but the only male one is the rarely seen Shiloh, and the emanation being addressed here is the female Enitharmon. Those whose minglings are enabled by emanations are all male. The tributary female, then, facilitates a homoerotic intellectual union between men.9 This is not surprising, considering the phallic imagery of the flaming arrow which recurs in Jerusalem’s vision of eternity. When Albion awakes, in his burning hand He takes his Bow, then chooses out his arrows of flaming gold Murmuring the Bowstring breathes with ardor! clouds roll around the Horns of the wide Bow, loud sounding winds sport on the mountain brows. ( J 95:12–15) This is a bow in the heavens; the pun on (rain)bow and bow (and arrows) allows the thunders, storms and lightning-like fires in plate 88 to share in the complex of images, along with the brightness, the thunderous majesty, and the redounding (as of an arrow from a bow) of the visionary forms dramatic on plate 98. Bows-and-arrows and rain-bows are in turn linked with the emanation and the phallus. Two plates before Los’s argument on eternal

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male mingling, ‘Enitharmon like a faint rainbow waved before’ Los, while ‘his loins . . . reddend with desire’ (86:50–1). The burning, the ardor and the horns in the above description of Albion, as well as the flaming arrows, suggest male sexual arousal. As Albion takes his bow in his burning hand, he could be handling his own male member. Blake has used a bow to indicate the penis before: Hilton calls attention to the ‘lust form’d’ snake whose spine furnishes a bowstring in The Book of Ahania (4:7; Hilton, Literal 92). There is a proliferation of phallic arrows in Blake’s description of eternity. Albion and his four Zoas all reach for bows: And he Clothed himself in Bow & Arrows in awful state Fourfold In the midst of his Twenty-eight Cities each with his Bow breathing Then each an Arrow flaming from his Quiver fitted carefully They drew fourfold the unreprovable String. bending thro the wide Heavens The horned Bow Fourfold, loud sounding flew the flaming Arrow fourfold. ( J 97:16–98:3) The arrows contribute to the ability of Albion’s eternal body to be at once one and many. ‘Each’ could refer to each part of Albion’s fourfold form, or to the twenty-eight cities; Albion’s multiple constituents shoot many arrows in one volley, acting as one. Additionally, the string, the bow and the arrow are named as singular though, being fourfold, they are plural. The progression from ‘Arrows’ to ‘each an Arrow’ to ‘Arrow fourfold’ suggests a movement from simple plurality to plurality within unity, which is apparently sparked by Albion’s act of clothing himself. Bow and arrows make strange clothing; as well as demonstrating how unity and diversity come to coexist, they reflect the projectile and penetrative qualities of Blake’s eternal body. Furthermore, Blake draws here on Paul’s metaphors for the resurrected body, and again combines attributes of clothing and seed, Paul’s two main, incompatible images. Albion is fourfold in a layering like that suggested by putting on immortality, but to be clothed in bow and arrows is to be clothed in something not flat and covering, but piercing and projectile like a shoot. Blake attempts to give these bows and arrows an androgynous quality: ‘And the Bow is a Male & Female & the Quiver of the Arrows of Love. / Are the Children of this Bow’ ( J 97:12–13). This is a fascinatingly complicated image, suggesting many formulations which do not ultimately work. The phallic bowstring might be the ‘Male’ and the wood the ‘Female’; together they would shoot forth arrows/children, energetic like the baby pictured in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell plate 3. However, the hand of Man grasping between the male and female loves, then, would grasp the top and bottom of the bow where wood and string attach: not the way to shoot an arrow. The shape of a bow, seen from the side, is similar to the shape of the vagina,

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but children are born through this opening, while arrows are shot along the bow. Perhaps these perspective shifts, like the inconsistencies in the doors of perception and the eyes of the peacock, reveal the complete transformation eternity brings: here, an omniscient view from all directions, and a blurring interaction of genders. The image would seem to be an effort toward an inter-gender mutuality to parallel the mutuality between eternal male humans. However, the children, since symbolized by phallic arrows, are most likely sons who, in Freud’s scheme of penis envy, endow the mother with the organ she supposedly desires. Revealing a similar belief in the ultimate masculinization of woman, Blake writes, ‘And the Hand of Man grasps firm between the Male & Female Loves’ ( J 97:15). Paley notes that this is ‘because the risen fourfold humanity is androgynous’ (293); but the ‘Hand of Man grasps firm’ in a motion of male masturbation. Such a culmination for the male and female bow image, along with the fact that the image involves a sidestepping of normal reproduction, recalls Blake’s tortured relationship to the topic of birth. Considering that sexual activity could give birth in other ways, to other things than mortal children, allows Blake to value ‘perverse’, nonreproductive forms of sexuality. Yet, Blake’s efforts to imagine alternative reproduction, in the end, as we have seen, devalue feminine reproductive powers in favour of male creativity. That the service of emanations is essential to male mingling and communication in eternity is another example of the same thing: female creativity is subordinated so that it can be harnessed. Nelson Hilton finds that the polypus, with its multiple limbs and generative associations, renders those caught in its form a ‘polyphallos’ (Literal 93). Such a proliferation of organs of generation is seen in a positive light in the eternity of Jerusalem, since they are arrows of intellectual conception. The multiple arrows reflect the manifold yet unified male indulgers in discourse on plates 88 and 98. Since each renders his thoughts in ‘virtual reality’ visionary forms dramatic, each seems to have the authority to ‘impose’, in the manner of the angel in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell who showed Blake his ‘eternal lot’, the bizarre horror of which Blake was able to dissolve into a pastoral scene (17–19). Blake then shows the angel what he conceives to be the angel’s eternal lot: a vision involving such perversities as cannibalistic monkeys (19–20). ‘So the Angel said: thy phantasy has imposed upon me & thou oughtest to be ashamed. I answered!’ (with a phallic exclamation point giving force to Blake’s self-assertion) ‘we impose on one another’ (MHH 20:15–17). The angel would represent the monophallic perspective, and Blake the polyphallic. In both cases the individual’s vision imposes or takes over, but for Blake ‘it is but lost time to converse’ (20:18) with an angel who does not allow his partner in conversation a turn in the creative mental masturbation which makes one’s own thought and pleasure dominate the landscape for a time. Gilbert and Gubar find that ‘implicit in the metaphor of literary paternity is the idea that each man’, having a

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pen/penis, ‘has the ability, even perhaps the obligation, to talk back to other men by generating alternative fictions of his own’ (12). Though it can be called masturbation, it enjoys the presence of the brother in conversation, and (according to Jerusalem 88) requires the participation of emanations; according to Jerusalem 98 it requires visionary forms dramatic which can be equated with emanations, just as emanations can be equated with female artworks created by the male artist. The visionary forms dramatic redound from their tongues; emanations, aspects which enable communication, redound from the bosoms of the eternal humans (for example, Jerusalem says, ‘I redounded from Albions bosom in my virgin loveliness’ [J 20:38]). The male humans do the conversing; the female emanations, in the form of visionary forms dramatic, are the media of that self-expression and mutual reflection. Christopher Hobson argues that ‘casting both male comradeship and male homosexuality in a heroic light need not imply denigration of women’ (142). He is right. Blake’s vision of eternity has a great liberating potential, as does his broadening redefinition of the purpose of sexual intercourse. Unfortunately, one falls into the same difficulty as the other: in both cases, Blake is sympathetic to the experience of women as long as their sexual and creative powers are considered to be lesser than men’s. Blake makes room for female sexual satisfaction in Jerusalem’s eternity, and escapes the constraints of heterosexual preconceptions to consider that lesbian intercourse has a place in his ideal world. However, the place it has is significant. Hobson goes on to point out that ‘the assumption’ that male homosexuality implies denigration of women ‘is close to the classical Freudian idea that male homosexuality is based on unreadiness for mature sexual relations’ (142). Such a view casts male homosexuality in the light of something juvenile, anterior, preparatory, in comparison to the more mature culmination of heterosexual intercourse. ‘Homosexuals have had to learn to reject this charge’, writes Hobson, making clear how damaging such a view can be. Blake is able to reject this charge by making male homosexuality heroic, as Hobson finds, and I also find in its apotheosis in Jerusalem. Yet, he manages to reject this charge by deflecting it onto female homosexuality. In his interpretation of Jerusalem as the work in which ‘Blake’s concern with homosexuality broadens . . . to include and even emphasize lesbian relations’ as ‘an alternative to possessive sexuality’ (145), Hobson concentrates on the love triangle between Albion, Jerusalem and Vala, which begins on plate 19. He sees the lesbian relations between Vala and Jerusalem as positive, and Albion’s jealousy as negative as well as ‘the guilt, condemnation, and regret of nearly all participants after this scene’ as ‘a triumph of repressive moralism, exclusive possession, and hierarchy in sexual and social relations’ (155). Remarking on ‘the scene’s positive treatment of Vala’ as ‘its most striking aspect’ to readers familiar with Blake and used to the wicked Vala, he complains of this unique presentation being too easily written off.

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‘The knowledgeable reader will immediately find an explanation, firmly based in interpretive tradition: Vala’s seemingly sympathetic qualities are part of her deceptiveness, signaled in such phrases as “soft repos’d”, “assimilating”, and “moony” – Blakean shorthand for the limited paradise of Beulah, or human sexuality’ (154). These Beulah shorthand words may not indicate that Vala is deceptive as much as they show that Vala and Jerusalem are here in a lower, female state: the ‘limited paradise’ of ‘human sexuality’. Since Beulah was created for separate female emanations too weak to endure eternity except sheltered in a greater male human, one might think that Vala and Jerusalem here would be able to enjoy a lesbian relationship, if still considered inferior, at least free of male interference. But, as Jerusalem reveals, ‘Albion beheld thy [Vala’s] beauty / Beautiful thro’ our Love’s comeliness’ (20:32–3). Their loving each other serves to attract Albion, and inspires him to penetrate Vala: ‘Albion lov’d thee! he rent thy Veil! he embrac’d thee! he lov’d thee! / Astonish’d at his beauty & perfection, thou forgavest his furious love’ (20:36–7). Would Vala have to forgive Albion if she had been a willing, equal partner? It is at that point that, Jerusalem recounts, ‘I redounded from Albions bosom in my virgin loveliness’ (20:38): apparently, she was previously inside his bosom, so when Vala and Jerusalem were enjoying each other, Jerusalem was actually a part of Albion, not an independent female being. The fact that in eternity emanations must ‘embrace & comingle’ for the greater, overridingly male, personalities to ‘mingle also’, recalls the voyeuristic, orgiastic leanings discernible in the Visions of the Daughters of Albion episode in which Oothoon promises Theotormon she will catch girls for him and ‘lie beside thee on a bank & view their wanton play / In lovely copulation bliss on bliss with Theotormon’ (10:23–6). The multiple meanings of these lines, explored previously, include the possibilities that Oothoon will watch other women play with Theotormon without jealousy; that she, while ‘in lovely copulation bliss on bliss with Theotormon’ will watch with him the girls’ wanton play with each other; or, as Hobson suggests, that Oothoon will pleasure herself, enjoying the sight of the others’ play (35). This passage and Los’s speech parallel each other, particularly if the Visions episode is considered to involve Theotormon enjoying the sight of lesbian intercourse, or if Oothoon is pleasuring herself for Theotormon’s benefit – as seems likely since she is promising him this, perhaps bargaining with him – whether he will enjoy watching her, or later enjoy the excitement she first arouses alone. The sexual excitement generated by the embracing and commingling of emanations is harnessed by the males to whom they belong. Tim Hitchcock, in English Sexualities 1700–1800, finds that in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, ‘the role of lesbian sex . . . is as a foretaste of and precursor to penetrative heterosexual activity’ (81). Emma Donoghue, in Passions Between Women, sees a similar scenario in Juvenal’s Sixth Satire, Dryden’s translation of which was quite popular, running through six editions. There,

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‘Roman ladies and courtesans join in a competition (apparently of tribadic skill) before calling in the men finally to satisfy them’ (212). The implication in both cases is that lesbian sex culminates in, and is only frustrating without, the penetration only a male can provide. In Visions of the Daughters of Albion, whichever permutation of wanton play is considered, it is either already heterosexual, or likely to inspire heterosexual sex. Granted, this would be a ‘perverse’ variety, involving voyeurism and multiple partners. Again Blake can be seen as broadening the range of positive sexual relations, but not necessarily enough for female independence. When Los asks Enitharmon, ‘Can there be any secret joy on Earth greater than this?’ ( J 88:15), he may be naming female sexuality, and particularly homosexuality, a ‘secret joy’. Lesbianism, Donoghue writes, was known as the ‘silent sin’, and in England was not punishable by law because laws only covered sodomy (8). For the law, it is a ‘silent sin’, an indulgence behind closed doors of repressed evil desire which goes unprohibited by society because it does not violate males. For Blake it is a ‘secret joy’. If it is secret like the secret joys of the male and female masturbators in Visions of the Daughters of Albion (10:3–11), it is negative because private; if it is lesbian intercourse, secret would evidently mean unshared with males, since it is clearly shared between women. Los’s question to Enitharmon, whether it refers to the ‘secret joy’ of lesbianism, or any sexual activity which does not serve to bring males together, implies that male/male intercourse far surpasses female/female intercourse.10 Female sexuality not harnessed to the energies of the male, not available for male observation, is both ‘secret’ and pernicious, like the female genitals when compared to the concealing tabernacle. They are thus compared in scenes where the female is outrightly violent toward the male: in scenes of human sacrifice performed by the daughters of Albion, ‘In pride of beauty: in cruelty of holiness: in the brightness / Of her tabernacle. & her ark & secret place’ ( J 68:14–15). In Blake’s vision of eternal intercourse, the mental and physical mingling of emanations with each other is a necessary precursor to male homoerotic commingling; if the females do not please each other, the males will not. The males’ mingling in thunders of intellect is not only mental and imaginative; it is also physical. When the men converse, they penetrate each other, entering ‘into each others Bosom (which are Universes of delight)’ ( J 88:2–3). The men have bosoms (again a womb euphemism): like the birth of the female emanation through that male bosom, this is another way in which the female is subsumed as part of the male. At the start of Jerusalem we are told that Los ‘enterd the Door of Death for Albions sake’ (1); later we learn that Los ‘took his globe of fire to search the interiors of Albions / Bosom. in all the terrors of Friendship’ ( J 31[45]:3–4). Los enters in all the terrors of friendship; the ‘Souls’ on plate 88 ‘mingle & join thro all the Fibres of Brotherhood’. This sublimated union does not avoid physical imagery. Intellectual activity is not extricated from sex but is a transformation (or

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perversion) of sex, and spiritual activity is continually shown to rely on physical organs. Entering into another’s bosom stands in contrast to the orgiastic human sacrifices perpetrated by the daughters of Albion, who should be indulging in embraces which enable male mingling. ‘They cut asunder his inner garments: searching with / Their cruel fingers for his heart, & there they enter in pomp / In many tears; & there they erect a temple & an altar’ (J 66:27–9). The way man unites with man is a spiritual activity with physical overtones, unlike blood sacrifice which is a physical activity with spiritual pretensions (appeasement of an angry god, as well as a clumsy, flesh-bound attempt to transcend the borders of the individual). Why should the high goal of androgyny be self-defeating, requiring that the female be demoted or dissolved? Freud considers that ‘man’s’ highly developed sexual instinct places extraordinarily large amounts of force at the disposal of civilized activity, and it does this in virtue of its especially marked characteristic of being able to displace its aim without materially diminishing in intensity. This capacity to exchange its originally sexual aim for another one, which is no longer sexual but psychically related to the first aim, is called the capacity for sublimation. (‘Civilized’ 187) Examples of sublimation, according to Laplanche and Pontalis in The Language of Psycho-Analysis, are ‘artistic creation, intellectual pursuits and in a general way those activities to which a particular society assigns great value’ (432). The visionary forms dramatic created by the wielders of flaming arrows in Jerusalem’s eternity are artistic creations and intellectual pursuits to which the community of eternals assigns great value. In a patriarchal society, women are largely blocked from these activities, except as lesser ‘accomplishments’ for the delight of man.11 Of course, for Freud, men too are blocked from fulfillment, since civilization is built upon repression. Sublimation by definition entails sacrifice of complete, direct fulfillment since it deflects sexual desires onto other goals. However, Blake is not discussing civilization as we know it, but an idealized community, and as part of this he tries to unify sexual and intellectual pursuits. If the tradeoff becomes unnecessary, or the sacrifice at least reduced, one might expect that for women as well as men the discontent involved in civilization would diminish if not disappear. However, Freud’s description of the female attitude to civilization sounds much like Blake’s conception of the female attitude to eternity. Women soon come into opposition to civilization and display their retarding and restraining influence – those very women who, in the beginning, laid the foundations of civilization by the claims of their love.

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Women represent the interests of the family and of sexual life. The work of civilization has become increasingly the business of men, it confronts them with ever more difficult tasks and compels them to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women are little capable. Since a man does not have unlimited quantities of psychical energy at his disposal, he has to accomplish his tasks by making an expedient distribution of his libido. What he employs for cultural aims he to a great extent withdraws from women and sexual life. His constant association with men, and his dependence on his relations with them, even estrange him from his duties as a husband and father. Thus the woman finds herself forced into the background by the claims of civilization and she adopts a hostile attitude towards it. (Freud, Civilization 56) In Blake’s eternity, women’s love lays the foundation of civilization in that the minglings of emanations are necessary to the main activity of that civilization: conversation, which, like love, has the power to link people. Los’s argument with Enitharmon shows that women can also have a retarding and restraining influence on civilization: her uncooperativeness blocks his conversation man with man. Conversely, Los’s frustration with Enitharmon exemplifies his estrangement from husbandly duty, and preference for masculine company. Freud and Blake both consider women ‘little capable’ of civilization’s difficult tasks and the challenging sublimation they require: Blake has emanations ask their fathers and brothers to create a restful space for them – a realm of ‘sexual life’, Beulah – since they cannot withstand the ardors of eternity (M 30:21–9). Freud represents the male taking some of his own libidinal investment out of ‘women and sexual life’ in order to deposit it in civilization. A feminist reading might say the man does not withraw his libido from the woman, but rather takes the woman’s energy – something of her own, not something he had placed in her – and uses it to build male-centred culture. Blake makes the elision complete: not just the woman’s energy is claimed to be the man’s, but the woman herself is claimed to be a part of the man. When sublimation is seen from a male point of view, the female is the sexual object which must be replaced, to deflect energy to a more civilized purpose; in an androcentric civilization, the libidinal energy will be deflected onto goals considered to be masculine, and onto the fellow men with whom those goals are pursued. By introducing a sexual dimension into eternal male/male intercourse, Blake attempts to reduce the sexual sacrifice involved in sublimation. The tradition of erotic mysticism, seen in Christianity as well as in many other faiths, also brings sexual desire into the divine realm so that it does not have to be completely diverted for the sake of higher goals. This tradition shows that sublimation need not be seen exclusively from the male perspective; many of its greatest works are written by women. One example is not only

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I saw an Angel very near me, towards my left side, in a corporeal form (which is not usual with me: for though Angels be often represented to me, yet it is without my seeing them, but only according to [a] kind of intellectual vision . . .) . . . He was not great, but rather little; and very beautiful: his face was so inflamed, that he appeared to be one of those highest Angels, who seem to be all on fire (with divine love:) and he might well be one of them, whom they call seraphims: for they never tell me their names . . . I saw that he had a long golden dart in his hand; and at the end of the point, methought there was a little fire: and I conceived that he thrust it several times through my heart, after such a manner as that it passed my very bowels; and when he drew it forth, methought it pulled them out with it; and left me wholly inflamed with a great love of God. The pain of it was so great, that it forced great groans from me, and the delight, which that extremity of pain caused me was so excessive, that there was no desiring to be rid of it; nor is the soul then contented with any thing less than God himself. This is not a corporal, but a spiritual pain; though yet the body do not fail to participate some, yea a great, part there of. It is such a delightful intercourse between the soul and God, as I beseech him, of his infinite goodness, that he will give some touch, or taste of it, to whosoever shall imagine me to lie. (101–2) It is fitting for Blake to borrow Teresa’s flaming arrows for his eternity which is also a spiritual experience in which the body takes ‘a great part’. However, Blake’s eternity is homoerotic. Despite the clearly feminine heterosexual tenor of this vision, Blake is not the only one to have erased its femininity. For Richard Crashaw, in ‘A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Saint Teresa’ she is ‘for masculine courage of performance, more than a woman’ (‘Hymn’ epigraph). Crashaw imputes a spiritual penis-envy to Teresa, satisfied by ‘sons of thy vows’ (not daughters), ‘The virgin-births with which thy sovereign Spouse / Made fruitful thy fair soul’ (‘Hymn’ 167–9). The union between Teresa and Christ, virginal yet fruitful, produces disembodied sons: either individuals saved through Teresa’s good works, or those works themselves personified. The masculinization of Teresa’s vision is part of the gender difficulty entailed by Judeo-Christian erotic mysticism, which is built largely on the basis of allegorical readings of the Song of Songs. Both Jewish and Christian readers have interpreted the love relationship portrayed in this book as the relationship between God and believers: alternately the chosen people, the Church, and the individual soul. The challenge presented by this tradition is not only that the frank sexuality of the Song of Songs makes a completely

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a landmark in Western spirituality, but also has a central image in common with Blake’s eternity: St Teresa of Avila’s vision of an angel.12

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transcendent allegorization difficult, but also that it places male believers in a female position in relation to God. God is accorded the male position in these interpretations because there are indications in the Song of Songs that the man is a king who gives his love to a humble woman (see 1:4–6, 3:6–11); also, other, less egalitarian metaphors in the Prophets cast God as (punishing and forgiving) husband and Jerusalem or Israel as (sinful) wife (see Hosea and Jeremiah 2–4). In the Song of Songs, the female voice is unrestrained and the lovers enjoy a remarkably equal relationship: for instance, the woman often repeats, ‘My beloved is mine, and I am his’ (2:16, 6:3, 7:10), and they take turns describing the beauty of each other’s body. This text provides an opportunity to see both males and females, and humans and God, in a relationship which does not involve dominance and subordination. However, the categories of male/female and God/human are elsewhere so fraught with power – the Song of Songs is like an eight-chapter freak accident in the massive bible, and the massive cultures built upon it – that it is difficult to employ them for a relationship of equality without making major changes. The changes Blake makes undermine hierarchy, but in saving the male believer from the imputation of (traditionally powerless) femininity, they also undermine gender equality.13 Blake’s adaptation of the tradition of erotic mysticism inspired by the Song of Songs emphasizes its human basis. This solves the problem of the embarrassment involved in claiming erotic, innuendo-filled love poetry really depicts the spiritual relationship of church or soul with God. For Blake, God is human, so erotic union with God is erotic union with a fellow human being. Here already hierarchy is destroyed: this is mystical union on a level rather than with a higher being. Since Blake conceives of the human form divine as overridingly male, ecstatic intercourse between human divinities is male homosexual intercourse. For Blake’s eternal humans, heterosexual intercourse is unnecessary because the female emanation is a part of the self. The only other with whom to crave union, then, is male and human. Yet, while Blake’s idea of the emanation involves a subsumption of the female and the work of art to minimize the possibilities of rejection and failure, his idea of eternal commingling provides a dynamic interaction with the other – opposition is true friendship – which is yet safe from an opposition so great that it results in misunderstanding. Emanations ensure that mutual mingling is possible between humans by mingling first; when they do not mingle (possibly when they encounter a male/male dominant/subordinate relationship such as the Angel wished to ‘impose’ on Blake, rather than a mutual imposition of views, realities, pleasures) the humans do not mingle.14 It would be reductive to say that the intercourse in Blake’s eternity does not involve otherness at all since it is all male: just as reductive as it is to give a gender assignation, such as female, to otherness. Each eternal human is unique and individual, and even manifold – Blake makes a point of preserving individuality in eternity for each human as well as his

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component parts – so each individual is different, and each encounter will be an encounter with difference. However, this is a controlled otherness because Blake ensures unity simultaneously with diversity: the eternals are ‘as One Man reflecting each in each’. It is through emanations and their carefully controlled work that Blake is able to achieve his tremendous ideals of powerful artistic communication free from failure and unified human existence free from identity loss. The final lines of Jerusalem (99:1–6), the close of Blake’s fullest description of eternity, emphasize the supporting role of emanations in ‘the Life of Immortality’ into which ‘All Human Forms’ awake. Since it resonates with the name of this illuminated book and its main female character, the prophecy’s ending emphasizes both the femininity of emanations and their status as artworks: ‘And I heard the Name of their Emanations they are named Jerusalem’.

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Notes

1 The editors of the Blake Trust edition note that the wilderness in The Ghost of Abel, as well as recalling John the Baptist, could refer to Mount Sinai, because of the mention of Elijah, who fled there ‘after being threatened by Jezebel for slaying the false prophets of Baal’ (225, 255). They also consider that ‘ “Wilderness” may also represent the place one symbolically occupies when one (or one’s work) is overwhelmingly rejected by English society’ (225). 2 Robert Essick observes, ‘the only “Blake” actually existing in this world now is the various, recalcitrant, and material body of the manufactured objects he had a role in producing’ (‘Body’ 217). 3 The Annotations to Reynolds show the interdependent relationship Blake saw between conception and execution. ‘Invention depends Altogether upon Execution or Organization, as that is right or wrong so is the Invention perfect or imperfect’ (E 637); ‘I know that The Mans Execution is as his Conception & No better’ (E 649). 4 Visions was created earlier than Europe; this is not a historical lineage. It is a crazy family tree which cannot be charted because there is really no systematic myth, only the illusion of one. As De Luca argues, ‘there is no continuous cycle of myth in Blake’s work, no manifest total presence, but only the sum of the myth’s variants’ (141). 5 Morris Eaves, in The Counter-Arts Conspiracy, and Paul Mann, in ‘Apocalypse and Recuperation: Blake and the Maw of Commerce’ analyse the significance of copies and their inadequacy. Mann argues that Blake’s own emphasis on production ‘forces any technology that comes in contact with it to highlight its own labour as well, to signify itself whether or not it is ordinarily inclined to do so. The production-aesthetic makes it impossible for any reproduction to pose as a pure mediation’ (13). Eaves looks at pixels and finds they ‘exemplify principles of reproduction that we can trace through the history of picturemaking’; like halftone reproductions of photographs, a screen of pixels ‘translates all images, no matter what their constitution, into combinations of dark and light dots of varying density’. He comes to the conclusion that ‘this is . . . about as close as we can get to a technological model of Blake’s argument against generalization’ (191–4).

2 Graphic Bodies 1 Examples can be seen in Paul Joannides’ Michelangelo and his Influence: Drawings from Windsor Castle 57–8, 65–6, 72–5. On pages 65–6, one can compare a black chalk drawing by Michelangelo, of Tityus, to an engraved copy probably by Nicolas Beatrizet. The design recalls Visions of the Daughters of Albion 6: a widewinged, long-necked bird pushes its beak into the chest of the victim (feminized by Blake). Anne Mellor names Ghisi and Beatrizet among ‘the most widely known and prolific’ of engravers of Michelangelo (Divine 129–30).

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1 Textual Bodies

2 Heppner sees this influence particularly in The First Book of Urizen. This is appropriate, because that book depicts the origins of the human form in the indescribable setting of the world’s beginnings. 3 Before 1600, woodcut was the predominant medium (Roberts and Tomlinson 619). Interestingly, Blake combines the outmoded with the current method: he referred to relief engraving as ‘Woodcut on Copper’ (E 694). 4 F.B. Curtis finds that ‘During the period 1792 to 1803 Johnson published 60 works on surgery, physiology and anatomy; he shared the publication of the majority of medical works in London’ with two nearby publishers, John Murray and Charles Dilly (194). On Basire’s medical commissions from John and William Hunter, see Kreiter (113). 5 Robert N. Essick describes various engraving tools in William Blake: Printmaker (15–21). They were all cut at an angle at the end, though none were hollow like the tools pictured in Earle’s book. Though most gravers were straight (unlike modern ones), a stipple burin had a curved shaft, like the medical instruments in question. 6 An example from Flaxman’s Anatomical Studies of the Bones and Muscles for the Use of Artists can be seen in Irwin 119. Irwin claims that Flaxman practised anatomy drawing throughout his life, and kept a skeleton in his studio; he also mentions that Flaxman would have been taught anatomy at the Royal Academy by William Hunter (118–19). 7 Examples of Stubbs’ human anatomy drawings, from his Comparative Anatomical Exposition of the Structure of the Human Body with that of a Tiger and a Common Fowl can be seen in Egerton plates 139–51. They include, in positions of action and of rest, whole bodies, muscle-men (with layers of muscle of different depths), and skeletons. 8 Blake joined the Royal Academy as a student in 1779, exhibited there in 1780, 1784, 1785, 1799 and 1808, and returned as late as 1815 to sketch the Laocoön. See the chronology in Johnson and Grant’s edition of Blake’s Poetry and Designs (xxviii–xxxviii). 9 See for example a late eighteenth-century écorché trunk, in Petherbridge (95). 10 Hunter, Preface, no page numbers. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from William Hunter are from the preface to Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. 11 From F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Notes of an Anatomist, on the work of Milton Helpern, former chief medical examiner for New York (in Sawday 7). 12 Morris Eaves argues that Blake, in his Ancient Britons description and elsewhere, interiorizes appropriateness, which is external and public for Reynolds and other eighteenth-century thinkers. Blake’s ‘internal standard . . . is an extension of the personal imaginative standard of identity’ (Theory 82). Imagination is the method of seeing into the Ancient Britons’ bodies, and the imagination is the body (L 41–3): interiorization of appropriateness gains a physical dimension. As in the theory of sympathy where nerves physicalize thoughts and feelings, bodily interiority is closely related to mental and emotional interiority. 13 Presumably Blake wrote something to the effect of ‘the Naked Form’ or ‘Body’, but the last word was cut away in binding. 14 Anne Mellor agrees that ‘The human form divine ultimately is “A Man” (J 96:6); while the woman is only a garment that clothes, physically embodies – or more negatively, veils or imprisons – that spiritual form’ (‘Portrayal’ 150). She ties this to ‘Michelangelo’s hostility to the female body as well as his homosexual celebration of the male body’ (‘Portrayal’ 149).

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15 The newly discovered version is Supplementary Illustration 1 in the Blake Trust edition of Urizen. 16 Copy C is reproduced in the Blake Trust edition. The editors Essick and Viscomi note that Copy D also has added shorts, while in copy B, waistbands and cuffs are drawn in pen and ink (27). In contrast, the shorts on the central, male figure in Jerusalem plate 25 are part of the copperplate design. This is apparent in the unretouched posthumous printing at the Fitzwilliam Museum (Copy H, probably printed by Frederick Tatham [Bindman, Fitzwilliam 29]). 17 See Sawday for examples of Renaissance anatomical art. 18 See, for example, the drawings of the incubation of the chick and the gosling, done for John Hunter by two different artists, William Bell and Saint Aubin (in Petherbridge 103). 19 William Cowper the surgeon, 1666–1709, was not related to the poet of the same name who lived from 1731–1800. 20 Mitchell links Blake with Hogarth, and Turner, in that ‘these three artists regarded the spiral or vortex as a crucial element in the perception and representation of space’ (‘Vortex’ 125). 21 This is Blake’s only use of the word ‘anatomy’. These lines follow those quoted above on numbering fibres. The passage also appears in The Four Zoas (I:101–5; E 302), spoken by Tharmas, unchanged except for the words ‘number’ and ‘dark’; The Four Zoas reads ‘Examine’ and ‘Death’ respectively. 22 Cowper’s Myotomia Reformata furnishes an example of layer anatomy. On pages 117 and following, the same figure in a landscape is depicted with its ‘external Teguments removed’, then some external muscles lifted or removed, then ‘farther denuded’ of muscle, then as a skeleton. The same process is then repeated from the side and back views. 23 Thomas Frosch agrees that the vortex spirals the human into the cavern of mortal existence in which the body englobes and becomes an object (74). 24 Mitchell observes that ‘Hogarth is careful to keep these rather exuberant, one might almost say “Romantic”, values’ of variety, asymmetry and love of pursuit ‘framed in a strictly classical perspective’. Among other restrictions, ‘The Line of Beauty . . . must not be too fat or rotund, nor too lean or elongated, but must conform to a precise mean between these extremes’ (‘Vortex’ 131). 25 This is the case in copy G, reproduced in the Blake Trust edition. The arms are clearly differentiated in other copies, such as F and P (see Supplementary Illustrations 5 and 6). 26 In coloured copy E, Paley in his notes argues that ‘the russet or ochreous fibres that appear so frequently in Jerusalem have a more sinister connotation’ and create ‘a visual equation, scarcely possible in monochrome, between the “Stems of Vegetation” on which humanity is bound (68:9) and the “fibrous veins” of the human body itself’ (15).

3 Embodiment: Urizen 1 Worrall writes that ‘platemaker’s marks’ are ‘visible in some copies on plates 2, 17 and 26 (as numbered in copy D)’, but does not call attention to plate 10 of copy D (144). 2 Robert Essick, in William Blake and the Language of Adam, finds elements of oral poetry, such as ‘repetitions of phrases and verse paragraphs’, in Blake’s prophetic books (175).

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3 John Rogerson shows that ‘in the nineteenth century, Germany led the way in the development of critical scholarship. England lagged far behind, and only late in the nineteenth century was there anything like a widespread acceptance of the critical method in England’. However, ‘in the hundred years roughly from 1650 to 1750 the position was completely reversed’ (147). He outlines English critical Old Testament scholarship from this time, and the contributions of Geddes, whose were ‘by far the most remarkable results in critical scholarship in Britain, as the eighteenth century drew to its close’ (154), are treated on pages 154–7. 4 The theories about the composition of Genesis which posit three discernible sources (J, Yahwist; E, Elohist; and P, Priestly) and assign the first account to P have only been current over the past hundred years (Women’s Bible Commentary 11, 13). The fact that there are two accounts is noticeable without knowledge of this theory. Patrick, in his opening note on Genesis 2, explains the repetition with variations by saying that Moses ‘explains more largely in this chapter some things which were delivered briefly in the foregoing, because he would not too much interrupt the coherence of his discourse about the works of the six days’. 5 F.B. Curtis offers the ‘bonifying’ of the optic nerve in Milton 27:29–35, and of the Spectre of Urthona’s marrow in The Four Zoas (IV:63–9, E 333), as examples of ‘the process to rigidity’ explained by J. Aitken in Essays on several important subjects in surgery (London, 1771). ‘From the first moment of conception, to the utmost verge of life, by the gradual accumulation of earthy matter, – the process to rigidity is constantly advancing, not only in the body, but also in the softer parts of all animal bodies’ (Aitken, in Curtis 191). This is accompanied by a ‘diminution of irritability’ (Aitken, in Curtis 191). The more earthy and material the body becomes through time, the less sensitive and more solid. 6 Thomas Frosch recognizes Urizen’s universe as one of ‘awesome distances’ (20–1), and characterizes creation in Blake as the shrinking of the human being and the expansion of the environment (48). 7 Easson and Easson remark on the quick growth of the foetus reflected in Urizen’s changes which are so speedy they seem out of control. The foetus also shows an amazing expansion, from a small seed (72). 8 The first example of ‘nervous’ in this sense in the OED comes from 1740; in 1783 Johnson remarks that it is a current but not strictly correct use of the word (Letter to Mrs. Thrale quoted in OED).

4 Embodiment: Reuben 1 If, because of this allusion, we see Mary as the mother of Jesus’ mortal part, this seems in line with theology: if Jesus was fathered by the Holy Spirit, then his ‘mortal part’ comes exclusively from Mary. Yet, Blake did not endorse this doctrine but believed Jesus to be conceived in an unlawful human relationship (see for instance his mockery of the claim to virgin birth as an excuse in ‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Johanna Southcott’, E 501). Despite Blake’s belief in the participation of a mortal father, he still says that Christ’s ‘Maternal Humanity must be put off Eternally’ ( J 90:36, my italics). 2 Among the Songs of Experience, along with ‘To Tirzah’, are found poems which extol the comforts of physical life and the joys of ‘the sexes’ (which elsewhere do not merely ‘work & weep’), deride those who deny such pleasures, and mock inattention to earthly life in expectation of eternal life. They include ‘Ah! Sun-

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3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14

15 16

17

William Blake and the Body flower’(43), ‘The Garden of Love’ (44), ‘The Little Vagabond’ (45) and ‘A Little Girl Lost’ (51). Paul Miner, in ‘William Blake’s “Divine Analogy” ’, draws attention to Tirzah as a daughter of Zelophehad. For him, the daughters ‘symbolize the feminine powers of the fallen world, as these characters were given the birthrights of the male’ (48). Doctrinally, the Virgin Mary’s hymen was not broken at Jesus’ conception nor at his birth, though Blake would disagree ( J 61:3–13). The New Jerusalem Bible translates this as ‘nocturnal emission’. Paley seems to see some value in this comment because he refers to it in his notes for the Blake Trust edition of Jerusalem (245). Personal communication, November 1998. Future references from Richardson refer to the same personal communication. Historians Simon Szreter, Jeremy Boulton and Ruth Richardson are all of this opinion (personal communications, November 1998). Here, I am indebted to Kate Squire, Assistant Librarian at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine Library. These records are held at the London Metropolitan Archives. It has not been possible to determine how many Catherine Blakes, married and of childbearing age, lived in London at the time because the most comprehensive source, the Mormon International Genealogical Index, does not permit a narrowed-down online search by married name. Geoff Pick, Manager of the Reader Services Division at the London Metropolitan Archives, endorses this hypothesis (personal communication, September 1999). Personal communication, March 2000. Though in his thorough knowledge of historical records relating to Blake, G.E. Bentley Jr. has found no evidence that the Blakes knew the tragedy of a miscarriage first-hand, he agrees that there is no reason why Blake would not have some understanding of miscarriage from medical friends (personal communication, February 1999). This controversy is documented in Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England 1660–1770. Blake uses the traditional symbolism of vales as female genitals more explicitly in Jerusalem 82 where, according to Damon, the valley of Dovedale is the womb (Dictionary 107). Oothoon also claims to be ‘a virgin fill’d with virgin fancies’ (in contrast to her earlier ‘virgin fears’) despite the tearing of her ‘virgin mantle’ (VDA 9:21, 3:3, 8). Additionally, given that the vales of Har where Thel lives are rather edenic, Thel being called a virgin could be compared to Milton referring to ‘the virgin majesty of Eve’ (Paradise Lost IX:270) though he does not consider sexual experience to be excluded from the innocence of Eden. For Thel (as for Eve), innocent, ideal, ‘virginal’ sex becomes tainted with pain and death.

5 Divisions and Comminglings: Sons and Daughters 1 Diana Hume George also finds that for Blake the Oedipal complex is ‘originally the problem of the parent, which the parent then communicates to the child’ (113); it defines Los’s identity perhaps more than Orc’s. 2 These quotations come from a description of the contents of William Hunter’s anatomical theatre (from the ‘Biography’ in John Hunter’s posthumous A Trea-

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tise on the Blood, Inflammation and Gun-Shot Wounds). Blake may have seen a polypus displayed there, as Hilton suggests, citing Kreiter’s article, ‘Evolution and William Blake’ (Hilton, Literal 272). Associating the polypus with William Hunter would reinforce its associations with reproduction, considering Hunter’s involvement in embryology and midwifery. 3 For Blake, it is possible that death does not affect the inner person. According to George Richmond, in a letter to Samuel Palmer, Blake described his own death in terms of going to another country which he very much wished to see (in Letters ed. Keynes 165). However, Blake does fear a kind of death which affects the nonphysical aspects of the human. One reference involves the Sons of Albion who are described as Three Immense Wheels, turning upon one-another Into Non-Entity, and their thunders hoarse appall the Dead To murder their own Souls, to build a Kingdom among the Dead. ( J 18) 4 This connection was perceived by Paul Miner in ‘William Blake: Two Notes on Sources’. 5 Stevenson indicates Clavigero as a probable source (768). 6 Paul Miner finds that Blake’s association of Druid with Judaic altars was influenced by Stukeley’s theory that Druidical sacrifices were ‘deriv’d from the Mosaic dispensation’ and followed the ‘Hebrew rite’ (Stukeley 34, in Miner, ‘Analogy’ 58). 7 At the same time, ‘Jesus calls him from his grave’, indicating continuity between mortal and eternal bodies. Perhaps the woven veil of the mortal body is rent like a garment to reveal the true human lineaments. Before its rending, the mortal body acts like other garments in Blake, which have the potential both to cover and accentuate what is beneath. 8 Blake’s knowledge of Oedipus Tyrannus is implied by his own use of the incestuous and patricidal Oedipal motif. The translation quoted here is by Thomas Francklin, published in 1766. The recently discovered ‘Sophocles notebook’, which includes attempts at translating Ajax, Electra, Trachiniai and Philoctetes, suggests Blake might have been able to read Oedipus, also, in Greek; however, the attribution of that manuscript to Blake is not certain (see Phillips, and Bentley, ‘Sophocles’). 9 Northrop Frye writes that Blake ‘asks ironically what would happen if the object took the point of view of the subject’ in these lines from Auguries of Innocence: He who Doubts from what he sees Will ne’er Believe, do what you Please. If the Sun & Moon should doubt, They’d immediately Go out. (E 492, Frye 18) 10 From Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (1632), quoted in ‘Human Sacrifice’ in The Encyclopaedia of Religion ed. Mircea Eliade. Castillo is mentioned in the English translation of Clavigero, in a preliminary overview of works on Mexican history (xiii); an English translation was published in 1800.

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11 There is no indication that this intercourse involves pain. The intensity of the sensory bombardment of the ‘Visionary forms dramatic’ ( J 98:28) which are the vehicle for this conversation, or the extremity of interpenetration, might be painful, but only according to Locke’s conception that improved sense perception would cause isolation and agony (II.xxiii.12). As we shall see in Chapter 7, Blake resolves Locke’s objections in his vision of the eternal body through the voluntary adjustments of flexible senses: organs which are involved in heavenly intercourse. 12 Hilton notes this pun of ‘tears’ as ‘rendings’, but rejects it (Literal 143).

6 Divisions and Comminglings: Emanations and Spectres 1 Jonathan Sawday sees the separation of Adam and Eve as a kind of anatomization: ‘God’s first intervention in the life of his human creature was the act of separation by which the body was opened, its integrity disturbed, in order to produce sexual difference’ (185). In Hesiod too, ‘the first anatomy was also a birth: Hermes split open the head of Zeus to release Athene’ (184). The lack of blood here may reflect Blake’s choice of imaginative over physical anatomization, along with his alienation of birth imagery. 2 S.H. Clark notes that Mary Wollstonecraft finds a conflation of the two Genesis creation narratives in Paradise Lost, which serves ‘to insist upon the necessary subordination between equal companions’ (143). 3 Paley, in The Continuing City, notes that Blake’s representation of ‘male and female as a composite being budding into two separate sexual identities’ derives from Plato’s Symposium, and also from a tradition of illustration found in the Biblia Pauperum and the Nuremberg Chronicle (105–6). Plates 6 and 7 in Paley’s book show examples from these works in which Eve emerges from the side of Adam. Paley concentrates, however, on the implications of the suggestion in these illustrations and in Blake that Eve is created by the Son rather than the Father. 4 Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical History, explains a number of Gnostic doctrines including the idea of a demiurge who is separate from the true God and who shapes the material world. The Gnostics, seeing matter as the source of all evil, wanted to separate that evil from the ‘perfectly good’ deity (Mosheim 86–7). 5 That real gold leaf was used on Jerusalem Copy E is attested by Paley in his introduction to the Blake Trust edition (15). 6 Blake shares the popular association of backward language with Satanism. In his Annotations to Thornton’s The Lord’s Prayer, Newly Translated, he comments, ‘This is Saying the Lords Prayer Backwards which they say Raises the Devil’ (E 669). 7 Jon Mee notes that a ‘fierce anti-Trinitarianism’, seeing the doctrine as a ‘corner stone’ of ‘cursed superstition’, was a common radical stance in the 1790s (175). 8 In John 15:26, Jesus refers to ‘the Comforter . . . whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father’. The Holy Spirit is Christ’s representative on earth like the mal’ak Yahweh. The Greek paraclete, rendered ‘comforter’ in the KJV, can also be translated as ‘advocate’, an alternative to the Satanic ‘accuser’.

7 The Eternal Body 1 The passage from The Four Zoas (III:86–9, E 328) is identical, except for changes in capitalization and punctuation, and substitution of ampersands for ‘and’s.

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2 Edwin Clarke’s essay, ‘The Doctrine of the Hollow Nerve in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, details the variations on the idea, current at the time, that a fluid secreted in the brain flowed through the nerves, as blood flows through the veins. 3 For Blake, in the context of eighteenth-century physiology, the spiritual and the bodily are not necessarily very different, given that sensory information, thought and impulse are carried by the nerves; that this theory helps enable his ‘spritual body’ is clear in the presence of the organs of sense in the shape of ‘the Human Nerves of Sensation’ in his description of the eternal body (J 98:15–18). 4 Locke’s practicality on this issue, and his stopping at the point where it becomes impractical, is particularly clear when he discusses the ‘forensic’ implications of personal identity: the Apostle tells us, that at the Great Day, when everyone shall receive according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open. The sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all persons shall have that they themselves, in what bodies soever they appear, or what substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those actions and deserve that punishment for them. (II.xxvii.26) 5 Matthew Henry emphasizes that the resurrected body ‘will be made like the glorious body of our Saviour’ in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:43. 6 Anne Mellor documents Blake’s interest in, and use of, Lavater’s physiognomy and Spurzheim’s phrenology in ‘Physiognomy, Phrenology and Blake’s Visionary Heads’. 7 In Paradise Lost, many demons say their piece at the Pandaemonium debate, while only the greater angels, such as Raphael, have large speaking parts in the poem. The lesser angels ‘in heaven, above the starry sphere / Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent’ (III: 416–17). In this instance, they sing the praises of God and the Son after their discussion of the fall of humanity (in which God and the Son were the only debaters). When God looks to find a saviour for humankind, ‘all the heavenly choir stood mute, / And silence was in heaven’ (III:217–18); if Blake had been there, he would have had something to say to God about his inflexible demand for atonement. 8 Stephen Behrendt finds in Blake’s hope of the viewer entering the bosom of his images, expressed in A Vision of the Last Judgment, to be of ‘the sort of telepathic communication that is everywhere the aim of Romantic art, be it visual or verbal’, and considers that ‘the figure entering the doorway on the frontispiece illustrates the point’ (170). However, in both cases the substantiality of the entered artwork is emphasized; the intimate and subjective understanding is not disembodied. 9 Hobson has a different view. Though he admits that ‘Man and Man’ is a ‘gendered formulation’ on Blake’s part, he sees Los’s speech as promising gender equality and sexual freedom. ‘Each “Humanity” may unite with another through male and female, or male and male, or female and female emanations’. Hobson is able to interpret it this way because he places more faith in the assertion that emanations are ‘both Male & Female’, and in the rare appearances of Shiloh (170–2). For Hobson, these gestures are enough. I argue that they are token gestures which reveal Blake’s good intention to increase gender equality in his eternity, yet also reveal (as metaphors for the unknown often do, such as

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11

12

13

14

William Blake and the Body descriptions of the supposedly genderless Christian God) an underlying assumption of maleness. S.H. Clark finds the homosexual suggestions of the end of Jerusalem to inhere also in its beginning. ‘To be “mutual in love divine” [J 4:7] is a homosocial, if not homoerotic, condition, against which the “secret joy” pales into insignificance’. He also finds that ‘fibres of love from man to man’ ( J 4:8) is ‘sentimentalist vocabulary here with a bodily dimension’ which later becomes ‘explicitly spermatic’ on plate 86. Alicia Ostriker pinpoints the paradox that these lines from plate 4 depict ‘a love that transcends sexuality because it is a mingling of male with male’ (162). That Blake’s gendering of art elements and styles casts those considered feminine as inferior, and that Blake considered art produced by females to be inferior also, is demonstrated in Robert N. Essick’s article, ‘William Blake’s “Female Will” and its Biographical Context’. Blake mentions Teresa in Jerusalem: she is one of the guardians of the gate of Beulah, along with other Christian figures and ‘all the gentle Souls / Who guide the great Wine-press of love’: apparently Blake associates her with the coincidence of religion and sexuality (72:50–2). As Paley mentions in his notes, Gilchrist records that ‘according to Samuel Palmer, Blake often quoted her works’ (251). Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs are an example of the Christian tradition of erotic mysticism written from a male point of view. They show the characteristics of the eroticism being retained although allegorized, the male being placed in a female position, and a hierarchical relationship presented despite the equality of the Song of Songs. For instance, Sermon 8 casts John, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, as being ‘worthy both of the dowry and the name of a Bride; deserving the Bridegroom’s embraces and worthy to recline on the Bridegroom’s breast’, referring to John 13:23 and 25 but adding the Bride and Bridegroom terminology (240–1). There are male homosexual suggestions here, but they are cast in male/female language. The first non-introductory line of the Song of Songs, ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth’ (1:2) is applied to the relationship between Paul and God in which Paul is lower. ‘Paul was great. But however high he lifted up his mouth, even to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2), he could only remain at a distance from the mouth of the Most High. He must be content to stay within the limits of his nature, and since he could not reach the face of glory, he humbly asked for the kiss to be given him from above’ (241). The only relationship which is equal is that between Jesus and God. According to Bernard, Jesus can say ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30), ‘because he was united to him as an equal and embraced him as an equal. He does not beg a kiss from below, but his mouth meets the Father’s mouth directly and by a unique privilege he kisses him on the mouth’ (241). Their love for one another in this scheme is similar to that love supposed to produce the third person of the Trinity. Perhaps an example of such a male/male dominant/subordinate relationship can be found in Blake’s relationship with Hayley. Since it is dominant/subordinate, it can be seen as placing one of the males in a feminine position. Essick’s article on ‘Female Will’ argues that Blake considered having to subordinate himself to another man, such as Hayley in the patron/artist relationship, as being feminized. Blake was asked to engrave Maria Flaxman’s designs for The Triumphs of Temper (when conception for Blake is masculine and execution is feminine); he was also pressured ‘to feminize his own graphic techniques’ to soften Cowper’s portrait, and in addition was ‘replaced by a woman as Hayley’s principal engraver’ and

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then wrote to Hayley ‘submissively accepting this “exchange” ’. In this collection of events Essick sees an anxiety producing ‘compound of feminization and rejection’ (620, 625–6). Blake imagines in eternity a scheme for the production and reception of art which erases the artist/patron power relationship, and replaces criticism with responsive creation.

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abominations, 3, 9, 103, 118, 129, 148 abortion, 107, 110, 111–12, 115–17; see also miscarriage Ackroyd, Peter, 106 Acts (Bible), 93 Aers, David, x Aglionby, William, 27 ‘Ah! Sunflower’, 194, 198–9, 225–6 Aitken, J., 225 Albion, 14, 21–2, 39, 47, 48, 71, 100, 125, 130–1, 135, 142, 144, 145, 149, 154, 158, 163, 166, 168–9, 185, 192–3, 199, 204, 206, 211–12, 214–15, 216 daughters of, xi, xiv, 101, 107, 132, 133–4, 147–54, 155, 159, 162, 167, 168, 169, 188, 189, 216, 217 sons of, xiv, 101, 104, 130–3, 136, 141–7, 152, 155, 159, 167, 168, 169, 192, 227 allegory, vii, ix–x, 84, 120, 142, 148–9, 153–4, 177, 189, 219–20, 230; see also personification All Religions are One, 13 altar, 102–3, 153–4 America: A Prophecy, 29, 47, 59, 70, 124, 155–6 anaesthetic, 90–1 Analytical Review, 31 anatomical art, xiii, 32–9, 41, 45–58, 65, 80–1, 224 anatomization, xiii, 21–2, 33–6, 38–9, 46–58, 71, 80–1, 152, 223, 224, 228 Ancient Britons, The, 41–5, 71, 122, 206–7, 223 androgyny, ix, xv, 43–4, 175, 211–13, 217 Annotations to Reynolds, 28–31, 37, 39–41, 43, 62, 209, 222 Annotations to Thornton’s The Lord’s Prayer, Newly Translated, 228 Annotations to Watson’s An Apology for the Bible, 13

Antijacobin Review, 66–7 arrows, 22, 90, 211–13, 217, 219 Auguries of Innocence, 227 Ault, Donald, 179, 194 Aztecs, 135–6, 137, 149, 151, 153 Bacon, Francis, 62, 178 Barry, James, 34 Basire, James, 34, 35, 223 Beatrizet, Nicolas, 222 ‘become what they beheld’, 119–20, 126, 143–7, 152–3 Beer, John, 64 Behrendt, Stephen, 15, 115, 229 Bentley, G.E., Jr., 108, 226, 227 Berkeley, George, xv, 177, 203–4 Beulah, ix, 7, 105, 152, 157–8, 181, 215, 218, 230 Bidloo, Govard, 46–7 Bindman, David, 34, 58, 148 Birch, John, 107, 109 birth, xii, xiii–xiv, 16, 46, 66, 76–7, 78–9, 81, 87–90, 95, 97, 98, 108–9, 111, 114, 117–19, 121–2, 125–31, 133, 154, 174, 179, 186–9, 190, 197, 212–13, 226–7, 228 of artworks, xiv, 16, 114, 120–4, 189–190 of intellectual productions, xiv, 127, 189, 190, 213 by male, xiv, 95, 119, 127, 129, 131, 155, 184, 186–90, 216 see also embryology, foetus, miscarriage Blair’s Grave, 16, 66–7 Blake, Catherine, xiv, 16, 105–9, 175–6, 180, 226 Blake, Robert, 33, 45, 61, 68 Blake, William, see individual works blood, vii, 2–3, 9, 32–3, 41–3, 67, 75, 100, 118, 128, 141, 146, 147, 153, 155, 179–80, 228, 229; see also globe of blood Bloom, Harold, 95, 119 Blunt, Antony, 28

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Index

Index

bodily borders, xiii, xiv, 2–5, 8–11, 19–24, 42–3, 103, 117–18, 129–30, 133, 142, 146, 147, 148, 151–2, 154, 217, 228 bodily fluids, 3, 9, 90, 103, 111, 118–19, 130, 148, 154, 179–80, 226 Bogan, Nancy, 115 bones, vii, 59, 75, 82, 91, 110–11, 148 Book of Ahania, The, 75–6, 84, 110, 212 Book of Thel, The, xi, 7, 22–3, 73, 107, 111–17, 119–20, 174, 226 Book of Urizen, The, see First Book of Urizen, The bosom, vii, 21, 125, 129, 130, 133, 142, 152, 153–4, 160, 173–4, 181, 190, 207, 210, 214, 215, 216–17, 229; see also womb Boulton, Jeremy, 226 broken back, 60, 61, 65 Brown, John, 34, 109, 112, 116, 117 Bruder, Helen, xi–xii, 23, 111, 114, 115 Bruhm, Stephen, 63, 91 Bryant, Jacob, 135 Bürger’s Leonora, 31–2 burial records, 107 Burke, Edmund, xiii, 62–3, 67–8, 70 Butlin, Martin, 44 Butts, Thomas, 11, 194 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 197 Caesar, Julius, 136 Carlini, Agostino, 35–6 ‘caverned man’, 42, 47, 87–90, 92–3, 121, 143, 145, 154, 156, 176, 178, 182, 224 Cheyne, George, 195 children, xiv, 5, 7, 16–17, 24, 48, 53, 58, 77, 80–2, 90, 99, 104–7, 111, 115, 122–4, 125–33, 138–40, 155, 157, 164, 170, 210, 212–13, 226; see also Albion, daughters of; Albion, sons of; Enitharmon, children of; Los, children of ‘Chimney Sweeper’ poems, 138–41 Christ, 11, 14, 43, 67, 97–8, 102, 137, 140–2, 148–9, 151, 154, 180, 181, 184–7, 188, 189, 205–6, 207, 209, 219, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230 body of, 39, 69, 125, 149, 204, 206

Clark, S.H., 46, 119, 125, 133, 188, 189, 228, 230 Clarke, Edwin, 229 Clavigero, Francesco Saverio, 135–6, 138, 149, 151, 227 Cleland, John, 215 clouds, 48, 53, 58, 65, 126 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, vii, 20, 45 colour, 16, 29, 35, 41, 175–6, 190, 211, 224 conception and execution, 15, 33, 121–4, 209–11, 222, 230–1 concubinage, xi, 105, 113, 123 contortion, 25–30, 31–2, 37, 47, 60–2, 65–6, 147; see also pain in art; passion in art contrapposto, 60–1 conversation (verbal and sexual), xv, 23–4, 152, 173–4, 181, 203, 205–21, 229–30 copying (in art), 30–1, 36–8, 40–3, 70 Corinthians (Bible), 125, 197–8, 229 Cowper, William (poet), 224, 230 Cowper, William (surgeon), xiii, 46–58, 70, 71, 224 Cox, Stephen D., 30–1, 71 Crashaw, Richard, 219 Curtis, F.B., 223, 225 Daly, Mary, 186, 189 Damon, S. Foster, 10, 84, 87–8, 95, 100, 106–7, 111, 145, 152, 163, 165, 226 Damrosch, Leopold, 131 Dante, 21 Darwin, Erasmus, 156 de Almeida, Hermione, 64 Defoe, Daniel, 116 deformity, see contortion; pain in art; passion in art delight, xiii, 67–8, 70, 105–6, 139, 145 De Luca, Vincent Arthur, 17, 62, 89, 222 demons, 70, 170, 172, 229; see also Satan Descartes, René, 63 Descriptive Catalogue, 18, 40–5, 53, 122; see also Ancient Britons, The Deuteronomy (Bible), 9, 102–3 devil, see demons; Satan Diaz del Castillo, Bernal, 227

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dislocation, see broken back; contortion divination, 135–6 Donoghue, Emma, 215–16 Dörrbecker, D.W., 12, 23, 156 Douglas, Mary, viii, xiii, 3–5, 6, 9, 42–3, 103, 117, 133, 148 druids, 101–2, 135–6, 140–2, 143, 148, 149, 227 Dryden, John, 20, 215 dualism (physical/spiritual), vii, x, xv, 15, 16, 33, 48, 53, 58, 63, 66–7, 72, 77–8, 97–8, 105, 119–23, 126, 140, 141, 142, 146, 152, 153–4, 176–7, 178–9, 186–7, 195–8, 199, 201, 208, 217, 225–6, 228, 229 Duverger, Christian, 137–8 Earle, James, 34, 223 Easson, Kay Parkhurst and Roger Easson, 15–16, 80–1, 88, 225 Eaves, Morris, 16, 17–18, 22, 70, 105, 121, 123, 177, 222, 223 Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha), 181 écorchés, 35–6, 41, 223 Edwards, John, 202 Ellis, Edwin J., 106–7, 114 Elohim Creating Adam, xiii, 25–7, 120, 165 emanations, ix, xiv–xv, 16, 24, 45, 111, 125, 127, 141–2, 147, 149, 155–9, 167, 169, 172–81, 184–5, 187, 189–91, 192, 206, 210–11, 214–18, 220, 229 embryology, xiii, 79–83, 87, 94, 95, 104–5, 114, 122, 125, 226–7; see also foetus empiricism, xiii, 30–2, 40, 42, 46–8, 53, 62, 80, 117 engraving, 2, 8, 10–12, 14–17, 18–19, 22–4, 28–9, 30, 32–4, 59–60, 66, 83–4, 86, 120–1, 122, 124, 169, 171–2, 201, 208–9, 222, 224, 230–1 Enitharmon, xi, 16–17, 90, 100, 104, 111, 113, 127–30, 152, 155–6, 158, 160, 170, 172, 174–5, 179, 180, 187, 188, 190, 211, 216, 218 children of, 16–17, 174 Erdman, David V., 10–11, 14, 15, 16, 35

erotic mysticism, 218–20, 230 Essick, Robert N., ix–x, 16, 17–18, 22, 60, 105, 175–6, 222, 223, 224, 230–1 eternity, ix, xiv–xv, 20–1, 24, 73–4, 76, 78, 88, 90, 97, 121–2, 152–4, 157–8, 162, 173–4, 175, 177, 189, 192–221, 225–6, 228, 229–31 etching, see engraving Europe: A Prophecy, 12, 16–17, 19, 23, 65, 73–4, 145, 155–6, 173, 174, 180, 190, 192–4, 199, 222 execution, see conception and execution Exodus (Bible), 9, 102, 198 Ezekiel (Bible), 1, 13, 66 Blake’s dinner guest, 162–3 failure, artistic, xiv, 4, 7, 22–3, 29–30, 32, 37, 40–1, 70, 121–4, 172, 209–11, 220–1 Feldman, Burton and Robert D. Richardson, 135 female, ix–xii, 16, 43–5, 95, 97–101, 113, 118, 122, 138, 149–51, 153, 174–6, 186–91, 211–21, 223, 226, 228, 230–1 ‘Female Will’, ix–xi, 89–90, 101, 153, 185 feminism, viii–xii; see also gender Ferber, Michael, 115 fibres, vii, 20, 32–3, 48, 53, 58–9, 64–5, 67, 68–72, 89, 91, 118, 128, 154, 179, 180, 187, 195, 207, 211, 216, 224, 230 First Book of Urizen, The, xi, 15–16, 32, 35, 44, 45, 48, 65–6, 71, 73, 76–94, 104, 105, 111, 114, 126–30, 152, 155–7, 160, 169, 172, 187, 190, 192, 194, 199, 222, 224, 225 Flaxman, John, 34, 121–2, 223 foetus, xiv, 66–7, 80–2, 83, 87–8, 94, 105, 111, 115–16, 118, 122, 131, 225; see also embryology Four Zoas, The, 43, 66, 70, 73, 84–5, 89, 95–6, 100, 122, 128–9, 145, 155, 175, 193, 224, 225, 228 Fox, Christopher, 158–9 Fox, Susan, x French Revolution, The, 155

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Freud, Sigmund, 143, 145, 213, 214, 217–18; see also Oedipus complex Frosch, Thomas, xi, 94, 154, 209, 224, 225 Frye, Northrop, 61, 95–6, 118, 119, 178–9, 227 Fuseli, Henry, 34, 41, 58 Galatians (Bible), 14 ‘Garden of Love, The’, 225–6 garments, 15, 41–5, 66–7, 70, 122, 148–51, 154, 198–201, 207, 212, 223, 227 Geddes, Alexander, 86, 160, 162–3, 225 gender criticism of Blake, viii–xii, 175 in Blake’s works, viii–xii, 44–5, 65, 114–15, 119, 149, 153, 156, 160, 175, 186, 188–9, 211–21, 222, 228, 229–31 see also feminism; female; homosexuality; human as male generalization, 37–40, 47, 62, 69, 122–3, 153, 179, 222 generation, 69, 84, 96, 98, 100, 104, 112–13, 123, 125, 129, 132–3, 167, 181, 184, 189, 190, 207, 209 Genesis (Bible), 81, 85–6, 95, 101, 103–6, 118–19, 125, 160, 173, 186, 225, 228 genitals, 48–53, 132–3, 142, 145, 189–90, 212–13; see also bosom; orifices; penis; perception as sexual; womb genital sexuality, 19, 100–3, 105, 112, 152 George, Diana Hume, x, 226 Ghisi, Giorgio, 28, 222 Ghost of Abel, The, 13, 85, 222 Gibbon, Edward, 182 Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, 190, 213–14 Gilchrist, Alexander, 105–6, 180, 230 Girard, René, xiv, 143–7 Gleckner, Robert F., 115 Glen, Heather, 138–9 globe of blood, vii, 90, 92, 127, 155, 172, 180 Gnosticism, 12, 165, 173, 185, 228

God, x, 11, 16, 33, 39, 68, 69, 70, 98, 102–4, 106, 115–16, 136–7, 138, 141, 148, 153, 160–7, 169, 172, 173, 180–6, 201–4, 206, 209, 220, 228, 229–30 Godwin, William, 23–4 gravity, 31, 59, 61, 90, 92, 99, 120, 146 Gray, Thomas, 133–5 Guy, William, 107, 109 Hagstrum, Jean, ix, 34 Haller, Albert de (Albrecht von), 34, 81, 109 Harvey, John, 29–30, 32 Hayley, William, 68–9, 71, 107, 230–1 Hazlitt, William, 20 Hebrews (Bible), 102, 141–2 hell, 4, 21–4 Henderson, Andrea K., 80–2 Henry, Matthew, 205, 229 Henry, Thomas, 34, 81, 109 Heppner, Christopher, 25–8, 29–30, 31, 58, 222 Herz, Elisabeth K., 115 Hesiod, 228 Hey, Valerie, 109, 112, 115–18 Hilton, Nelson, 20, 64, 82, 97–8, 110, 131–2, 153–4, 172, 173, 195, 212, 213, 226–7, 228 Hitchcock, Tim, 215 Hobson, Christopher, xi–xii, 84, 113, 214–15, 229–30 Hogarth, William, xiii, 34, 35, 43–5, 47, 58–61, 69, 71, 224 Holy Spirit, xiv, 93, 181, 184–6, 225, 228, 230 homosexuality, xi–xii, xv, 229–30 female, xv, 113, 152, 214–17, 218 male, xv, 20–2, 142, 152, 186, 211–17, 218–19, 220, 223, 230 Hosea (Bible), 220 Hubert, Henri and Marcel Mauss, 139–40, 148 human, vii, xiv, 26–7, 69, 120, 141, 149, 177, 178, 182, 196, 201, 204, 209, 220, 227 as male, ix–x, 44, 101, 125, 151, 152, 156, 174, 189, 212–13, 215, 220, 223, 229–30

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Index 245

‘Infant Joy’, 7, 125–6 ‘Infant Sorrow’, 94, 125–6, 128 inarticulacy, 77, 94, 126, 136–7, 146 intercourse (verbal and sexual), see conversation intestines, 48, 53, 58, 65 Irwin, David, 223 Isaiah (Bible), 198 Blake’s dinner guest, 162–3 Island in the Moon, An, 34 Jeremiah (Bible), 220 Jerusalem, xi, 48, 71, 103, 169, 185, 214–15, 221 Jerusalem, ix, xiv, 2, 10–12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21–3, 26, 32, 44, 45, 48, 53, 58, 60, 65–6, 69, 70, 71, 73, 95–107, 114, 117–20, 124, 125, 130–7, 141–54, 155, 157–8, 159, 160, 167–75, 178–81, 185–90, 192–5, 199, 201, 204–17, 221, 224, 228, 230 Jesus, see Christ Joannides, Paul, 222 Job (Bible), 11, 164–7, 169, 174, 176 John (Bible), 97–8, 137, 141, 148–9, 228, 230 Johnson, Joseph, 34, 223 Johnson, Mary Lynn and John E. Grant, 223 Jordan, 95–6, 102, 117–20 Jordanova, L.J., 37–8, 41, 80–1, 87 Joshua (Bible), 96, 102 Juvenal, 215–16 Kemp, Martin, 34–7 King, James, 106, 188 Kings (Bible), 120, 163 Kluger-Bell, Kim, 107 Knox, Robert, 34

Kreiter, Carmen, 34, 79–80, 223, 226–7 Kristeva, Julia, xiii, 3, 5–10, 186 La Belle, Jenijoy, 30 Lacan, Jacques, 5 Lachelin, Gillian C., 32 Lairesse, Gerard de, 46, 48, 70 ‘The Lamb’, 69, 70 Laocoön Blake’s engraving, 39, 60, 206, 223 original statue, 60, 223 Laplanche, J. and J.-B. Pontalis, 217 ‘Laughing Song’, 45 Leah, 95, 103–6, 113 lesbianism, see homosexuality, female Leutha, 174 Leviticus (Bible), 3, 147–8 line, 20, 58–61, 69, 70, 175–6, 201, 224 lineaments, 20, 66–7, 69, 105, 121, 199, 204, 207, 227 ‘Little Girl Lost, The’, 45, 225–6 ‘Little Vagabond, The’, 225–6 Locke, John, xi, xiv–xv, 42–3, 62, 158–9, 176–9, 182–3, 186, 202–3, 205, 228, 229 Los, 16–17, 21–2, 69, 71–2, 73, 76, 78, 83–4, 86, 90, 95–6, 99–101, 110, 114, 117, 119–21, 124, 126–31, 152, 155–6, 158, 159, 160, 167–73, 175, 177, 180, 181, 185, 187, 188, 190, 192, 210–11, 215, 216, 218, 226, 229–30 children of, 16–17, 95, 98, 114, 120, 133 Lowth, Robert, 13 Lucifer, see Satan Luke (Bible), 126, 137 Luvah, 43, 136, 141–54, 193 lying-in hospitals, 108–9 Mallet, Paul Henri, 135–6, 147, 148 Mander, Rosemary, 107 mandrakes, 100, 104, 118 Mann, Paul, 82, 84, 222 Mark (Bible), 180 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The, x, 15–16, 33, 42, 70–1, 83, 105, 110, 127, 162–3, 165–6, 177, 201, 204, 205, 208–9, 212, 213 ‘Mary’, 106

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humanization, 158, 199, 204–5, 206, 209 Hume, David, xiv, 159 Hunt, Robert, 41 Hunter, John, 34–5, 46, 47, 64, 79–81, 108, 109, 223, 224, 226–7 Hunter, William, xiii, 34–8, 40, 45, 46, 47, 61, 80–1, 87, 108, 109, 116, 223, 226–7

Index

Mary, xi, 97–8, 113, 225, 226 Mason, Eudo, 34 masturbation, 83–4, 112–13, 145, 212–14, 215, 216 Matthew (Bible), 14, 137, 142 McGann, Jerome, 10, 84, 86 McLaren, Angus, 114, 116 Mee, Jon, xii, 13–14, 140, 160, 228 Mellor, Anne, xi, 25–7, 67, 115, 175, 201, 208, 222, 223, 229 metamorphosis, xiv, 4, 73–81, 83, 86, 89, 94, 144, 192–7, 199, 201, 212 Michelangelo, 27–31, 41, 58, 60, 222, 223 Miles, Jack, 163 Milton, ix, xi, 7, 29, 45, 47, 48, 61, 73, 84–5, 87–8, 90, 95–6, 100, 121, 157, 164, 166–7, 174, 181, 188, 199, 201, 205–6, 207, 218, 224, 225 Milton, John, xiv, 98, 136, 180–1, 209, 226 Miner, Paul, 226, 227 ‘minute particulars’, 29–31, 37, 62, 69, 170, 202 miscarriage, xiv, 95, 106–24, 126, 146, 226; see also abortion; failure, artistic misogyny, vii–xii, 98, 122, 214, 223, 230–1; see also ‘Female Will’ Mitchell, W.J.T., xii, 18, 59, 61, 92, 224 moles, 114 Mosheim, Johann Lorenz, 182, 228 Murray, Penelope, 77–8 musculature, 28–30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 41–5, 47, 59–61, 65–7, 199, 224; see also écorchés nature, representation of in art, 30–2, 36–43, 46, 70 nerves, 20, 48, 62–5, 68, 71, 82, 89, 92, 110, 195, 196, 204–5, 207, 223, 229 nervous, 91, 225 Newton, Isaac, 47, 178–9, 194 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope, 178 Novatian, 184 ‘Nurse’s Song’, 45

Oedipus, 144–7, 227 Oedipus complex, xiv, 100–1, 118–19, 128–32, 139, 142, 143, 226 ‘On Another’s Sorrow’, 69 On Virgil, 36 Oothoon, see Visions of the Daughters of Albion oral poetry, 84–6, 120, 224 Orc, xiv, 17, 90, 104, 126, 128–31, 155, 169, 226 orifices, xiii, 3, 11–12, 19–20, 23–4, 32, 125, 133, 145, 152, 196; see also penetrability; perception as sexual; sense organs; text as body Ostriker, Alicia, ix, 97, 230 Otto, Peter, 96, 119 Ovid, xiv, 74–8, 81, 86, 87, 92 pain, xiii, xiv, 8–9, 25–7, 35–6, 47–8, 53, 62–4, 67–9, 74, 76, 78, 90–3, 98–9, 103, 111, 113, 116–17, 120, 126, 129–31, 136–8, 141–3, 145–7, 152–3, 155, 187–9, 226, 228 in art, xiii, 25, 32, 37–8, 60–2, 63–6; see also contortion; passion in art Paley, Morton D., 43, 66, 95–6, 99, 118, 149, 167, 175, 199, 213, 224, 226, 228, 230 Palmer, Samuel, 227, 230 Paradise Lost, xiv, 98, 127, 129–30, 137, 172, 180–1, 187, 209, 226, 228, 229 parents, xii–xiv, 17, 82, 98–9, 105, 122, 125–31, 138–9, 142, 188, 226 father, 77, 113, 128, 132, 133, 138, 143, 144, 155, 164 mother, 5, 81, 99–101, 104–5, 111–12, 113, 114–15, 117, 129–30, 133, 142, 144, 186, 188–9, 225 see also Oedipus complex passion, in art, 27–30, 31, 36–7, 42, 60–2, 63–6; see also contortion; pain in art Patrick, Symon, 160, 225 penetrability, xv, 19, 22–4, 32, 42, 53, 58–9, 65, 135, 152–3, 154, 177, 210, 212, 215, 216, 228 penis, 20, 100, 101, 110, 111–12, 114, 142, 149–50, 187, 189, 211–14, 219

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perception, 30–2, 37–43, 47, 58, 62–3, 64, 70–1, 81–2, 88–9, 91, 117, 119–20, 126, 129, 134, 137, 144–7, 153, 159, 162, 171, 176–7, 182, 198–9, 202–5, 213, 227 as sexual, 17–22, 31, 32, 65, 145, 194, 199 personification, x, xiv, 16–18, 22, 33, 53–4, 61, 71, 74, 111, 118, 123, 126–31, 141, 147, 155, 159–60, 164–5, 181, 191, 210, 219; see also allegory; text as body Persyn, Mary-Kelly, 153 perversity, xiv, 68, 71, 76, 83–4, 98–9, 113, 123, 136, 142, 145, 149, 152–3, 189, 213, 216–17 Petherbridge, Deanna, 33, 36, 223, 224 Philippians (Bible), 205–6 Phillips, Michael, 227 physiognomy, 42, 207, 229 pity, xiii, 69–72, 95, 103–4, 106, 126–7, 143, 155, 169, 201 Plato, Symposium, 228 Poetical Sketches, 18 ‘Poison Tree, A’, 48 polygamy, see concubinage polymorphous perversity, 19–20, 101–3, 152 polypus, 130–2, 226–7 Pope, Alexander, 179 Porter, Roy, 108 Preston, Kerrison, 106 Priestley, Joseph, 91, 182, 184–5 prophecy, 1–2, 4–5, 7, 11–15, 22, 93, 129, 137, 148 Proverbs (Bible), 114, 180–1 Psalms (Bible), 137, 149 Public Address, 33, 40, 60, 123 Punter, David, xi, 119 Rachel, 103–6, 113 rainbow, 173–6, 178–9, 211–12 Raine, Kathleen, 204 Raphael, 41, 46 Rembrandt, 40 Rephaim, 118 reproduction of artworks, 19, 82–3, 122–3, 222

resurrection, xv, 31–2, 44, 66–7, 138, 142, 173, 196–8, 199–202, 205, 207, 209, 227, 229 Reuben, xii, xiii–xiv, 95–106, 114, 117–20, 122, 143, 146, 193 Revelation (Bible), 163 Reynolds, Joshua, xiii, 27–31, 34, 35, 37–40, 43, 45, 60, 62, 69, 122–3, 209, 223 Richardson, Alan, 175, 211 Richardson, Ruth, 107, 109, 111, 226 Richmond, George, 227 Riemsdyck, Jan van, 38 Ringgren, Helmer, 181 rivers, 96, 100, 117–18, 120, 195, 196, 201, 207 Roberts, K.B. and J.D.W. Tomlinson, 32, 46–8, 222 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 20, 105 Rogerson, John, 225 Romans (Bible), 92 roots, 48, 75–7, 100–1, 132, 187, 199 Rousseau, G.S., 105 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 143 Royal Academy of Arts, xiii, 34–7, 223 Rubens, 41, 43–4, 46, 121 Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 164–6 sacrifice, xi, xiv, 102, 134–54, 163, 216, 217, 227 St Augustine, 185 St Bernard of Clairvaux, 230 St Paul, xv, 125, 197–201, 212, 229, 230 St Teresa of Avila, xv, 219, 230 Satan, xiv, 21, 96, 127, 137, 163–7, 169, 172, 173, 174, 176, 178, 180, 185, 187, 209, 228; see also demons Sawday, Jonathan, 39, 223, 224, 228 Scarry, Elaine, 136–7, 146–7 seeds, 84, 114, 90, 92, 197–9, 212, 225 sense organs, xv, 19, 22–3, 31, 47, 70–1, 73–4, 78, 88–94, 95, 97, 99, 111, 117, 119, 145–6, 153–4, 171, 173, 178, 182, 192–7, 199, 202–5, 209, 228, 229 sensibility, 22–3, 37, 71, 109, 230 serpent, 59, 101, 110, 111, 137, 165, 212

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Seven Eyes of God, 163 Shakespeare, William, 189–90 Shiloh, 113, 175, 211, 229 shooting, 81, 90–2, 94, 212 Short, Thomas, 116 Simpson, David, 83–4 skeleton, 59, 66, 224 skin, 19–20, 29, 32–3, 41, 43–5, 47, 67, 89, 147, 149–51, 152 skull, 17, 87–9, 93 Smellie, William, 109–11, 114, 115 Smith, Adam, xiii, 67, 70 Smith, Mark, 160 Smugglerius, 35–6, 37 solidification, 8, 9, 74–6, 78, 82–8, 91–2, 99–100, 153–4, 177, 193, 203, 209, 225 solipsism, 30, 65, 67, 82, 88, 89–90, 123, 146–7, 210 Solodow, Joseph, 74, 77 Son of God, see Christ Song of Songs, 219–20, 230 Song of Los, The, 173 Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 20, 45, 71, 97–8, 125–6, 225–6; see also individual titles Southcott, Joanna, 113, 116, 175, 225 spectres, xiv, 98, 111, 118, 124, 125, 136, 141, 147, 149, 155–9, 164, 166–73, 175, 176–8, 180, 185, 187, 201, 210 spiring, 92, 93, 199 Stafford, Barbara, 32–3, 59, 64 stereotype, 85–6 Stevenson, W.H., 95, 102, 104, 227 Stillingfleet, Edward, 182 Stubbs, George, 34, 223 Stukeley, William, 135, 140, 227 sublimation, 186, 190, 217–18 sublime, 24, 29, 62–3, 89, 186, 210 subordination, ix, xv, 166–8, 170–2, 174–6, 182, 184, 185, 187–9, 191, 210–11, 213–18, 220–1, 228, 230–1; see also emanation; human; human as male; spectre subsumption of the female, ix, 189–91, 211, 216, 218, 220 Summers, David, 60–1 Swedenborg, Emanuel, xv, 105, 195–6, 207–8

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 7, 10, 14 sympathy benevolence, compassion, 95, 98, 120, 122, 126, 214–15 involving nerves, organs, xiii, 20, 63–5, 67–72, 74, 130, 142–3, 175, 223 Szreter, Simon, 226 Tacitus, 136 Tatian, 184 text as body, xii–xiii, xiv, 1–24, 32–3, 43–53, 64–5, 67, 69, 82–6, 92, 105, 120–4, 137, 170–1, 208–11, 214, 221, 222, 229 Thel, see Book of Thel, The There Is No Natural Religion, 31, 88 Tirzah, 97–100, 114, 119–20, 122, 195, 226 Titian, 41 Toland, John, 140–49, 183–4 Tolley, Michael J., 16 torture, 99, 136–7, 146, 149, 152–3 ‘To Tirzah’, 97, 197, 225–6 transparency, xv, 15, 32, 41–3, 45, 53, 64, 66–7, 71, 121–2, 142, 151, 177, 196, 205, 206–8 Trinity, 162, 163, 181–9, 201–2, 210, 228, 230 Trusler, Dr, 13 Turner, J.M.W., 224 Ulro, 14, 158 umbilical cord, 38, 53, 129, 130 Urizen, xii, xiii–xiv, 34, 71–2, 73, 75–94, 95, 99–100, 105, 110, 111, 114, 120, 156–7, 158, 169, 187, 192–5, 199, 225 Urthona, 159, 167–9, 177 Vala, 101, 130, 142–5, 169, 214–15 Vasari, Giorgio, 27 vegetation, 48, 65, 69, 74–8, 90–2, 100–1, 104, 129, 132, 158, 194–5, 198–9, 209, 224; see also roots; shooting; spiring ‘vehicular form’, 167, 169, 176–7, 185, 201 veil, 66, 101–2, 141–2, 154, 198, 199, 215, 223, 227

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veins, 32–3, 48, 59, 64–5, 67, 89, 91, 199, 207, 224, 229 virgin birth, 112–13, 123, 186, 219, 225, 226 virginity, 20, 23, 76, 112, 186, 198–9, 226 Viscomi, Joseph, 11, 16, 17–18, 20, 22, 60, 83, 96, 105, 120, 209, 222 vision, 30–1, 39–41, 53, 62, 65, 67, 121, 205, 206 Vision of the Last Judgment, A, ix–x, 30–1, 153, 173–4, 185, 189, 210, 229 ‘Visionary forms dramatic’, 20–1, 24, 173, 205, 208–10, 211, 213–14, 217, 227; see also conversation; text as body Visions of the Daughters of Albion, xi, 17–18, 31, 32, 53, 61, 98, 105, 112–13, 145, 194, 215–16, 222, 224, 226 Vogler, Thomas, 7 vortex, 59, 92, 224 war, 134–6 Warner, Janet, 27 Webster, Brenda, ix, 93, 175, 188 Wesley, Charles, 179–80 Whitby, Daniel, 197 Whittaker, Jason, viii, 134–6, 143, 162 Whytt, Robert, xiii, 63–4

Wicksteed, Joseph, 105–6, 149, 165 Wilkinson, Garth, 7–8 will, ix, 44, 58, 73, 174, 185–6, 189–90, 194; see also ‘Female Will’ ‘William Bond’, 106 Wilson, Adrian, 226 Winckelmann, Johann, xiii, 41–2, 45, 61 Wisdom, xiv, 15, 114, 180–1, 185, 190 Wisdom (Apocrypha), 181 ‘Woe cried the muse’, 68 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 116–17, 228 womb, xiv, 21, 76, 78–9, 87–9, 93, 94, 100, 103, 104, 111, 112, 114, 117–19, 125, 126, 127, 129–31, 133, 190, 216, 226; see also bosom worms, 48, 111–12, 115–17, 130, 131 Worrall, David, xii, 44, 224 woven body, 59, 65, 90, 98–101, 107, 118, 133, 154, 227 Wright, John, 10 writing, 77, 136–7 backwards, 14, 171–2, 228 Yeats, William Butler, vii Yolton, John, 182, 202 Youngquist, Peter, 17 Zechariah (Bible), 163 Zoffany, Johann, 35

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