William Blake Part 14

In 1793 was published a small book of engravings _For Children, The Gates of Paradise_. Blake re-issued this in 1810, changing the _For Children_ to _For the s.e.xes_. The changes do not throw fresh light on Blake. Rather, what is important to know, we see, in spite of the changes, that Blake's deepest thoughts were the same in 1795 and 1810. I will quote only the first two lines:

"Mutual Forgiveness of each vice, Such are the Gates of Paradise."

Forgiveness of sins, so impossible for the Pharisee, so easy for the artist, is the heart of Christ's gospel. Blake leaned to that form of Christianity which best understood forgiveness. At this time he was inclined to think that the Church of Rome came nearest to Christ.

Blake reprinted _The Prologue and Characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims_ in 1812. Then followed five years of indefatigable production, but the works are lost for this world, though Blake would probably say that they were published in the other, and read, and remembered.

About 1817 he engraved leaflets, _Laoc.o.o.n_, and _On Homer's Poetry_, and _On Virgil_.

The first is covered with small writing, fresh proverbs of h.e.l.l, which are the same in substance as the earlier proverbs, but less provocative. The _Laoc.o.o.n_ perfectly expressed his own experience during years of obscure struggle. He found the same mighty conflict described from cover to cover of the Bible. Christians have been accustomed to see there the history of their sin, conviction, struggle, and victory. Blake had nothing to say against all this, but he named that which was striving for the victory the spirit of art, and all the things that accompany the conflict--prayer, praise, fasting--he explained in terms of art. Protestantism had made necessary such a vehement vindication of the beautiful. To-day, I suppose, we accept naturally Blake's aphorisms, but need to rediscover some of those other things that protestantism and catholicism alike have insisted on so uncompromisingly in the past.

From _On Homer's Poetry_ I quote the following:

"Unity and Morality are secondary considerations and belong to Philosophy and not to Poetry, to Exception and not to Rule, to Accident and not to Substance. The Ancients called it eating of the Tree of Good and Evil."

In other words, poetry, like life and love and other instinctive things, goes deeper and before our fine-spun distinctions of number and morality.

Philosophers have sprung up since Blake's day who are wonderfully agreed with him.

This on the cause of European wars is striking: "The Cla.s.sics! it is the Cla.s.sics, and not Goths nor Monks, that desolate Europe with Wars."

From _On Virgil_ I gather this, which needs no comment: "A warlike State never can produce Art. It will rob and plunder and acc.u.mulate into one place, and translate and copy and buy and sell and criticize, but not make."

During Blake's last year in South Molton Street he executed seventeen woodcuts for Dr Thornton's _Pastorals of Virgil_. These are very simple and childlike or childish, according to our state when we look at Blake's work. They seem to me of very unequal merit; but the best of them are invaluable, for they show that Blake at the age of sixty-three had not lost that childlike innocence, the parody of which is all that most men attain to in their second childhood.

In 1821 Blake removed to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, where he had the plainest of neutral rooms, not without value as a background for his visions. Here relief was at hand, but he knew it not. Hara.s.sed by poverty, he must raise money somehow. His collection of engravings, which had steadily grown since the day that he had endowed his bride with it as his sole treasure, was marketable, and with as little fuss as need be he sold it to Messrs Colnaghi and Company. It was the final self-stripping.

Humbled and disciplined by the inexorable years, having surrendered himself and his last precious possession, he was ready to bring forth the rich fruit of his mature genius. His old friend and patron b.u.t.ts gave him a commission to paint twenty-one water-colour designs ill.u.s.trating the Book of Job. He was allowed to show them, and they drew forth from his friend Linnell a further commission to execute and engrave a duplicate set, with the written agreement that he should receive 100 for the designs and copyright and another 100 out of the profits. There were no profits forthcoming; but Linnell paid him in instalments 50 besides the first 100. We may note here that the Royal Academy in 1822 made him a grant of 25. And so, at last, Blake had sufficient means to enable him to devote himself to his joyous work without the gnawing distraction of poverty and want.

There is no book in the world better suited for Blake's genius than the Book of Job. It has been in itself a complete Bible to the mystic in all ages. In it is given a marvellous description in dramatic form of that mysterious and awful self-stripping which the saint experiences after his conversion and not before. It is an expansion of the text that even here death is the gate of life. The same truth is insisted on by all the prophets, especially by the prophets to the nations like Ezekiel and Jonah; by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; by the personal experience of St Paul; and recently by Hegel, till it has become a commonplace both in religion and philosophy.

Blake was troubled by no modern criticism of the Book of Job, which by post-dating it several hundred years has robbed it of much of its literary interest. To him it was the porch of the Sanctuary, the oldest book in the Bible, at once the most ancient and most modern of books. Job, after his dark night of testing and judgment, emerged simple and guileless, a Patriarch who served G.o.d solely because that was the supremely right thing to do. Who was Job? The Book gives no hint of his parentage. Who wrote the wonderful prologue? Who could write it? Again the Book is silent.

Tradition says Moses; and if tradition speak truly, then several very interesting things follow. Job was probably the son of Issachar,[6] and as such went down with his father into Egypt when Joseph had been advanced in that land. He would then remove to Uz in Chaldaea, carrying within treasures of Egyptian learning. In later years, Moses, fleeing from Egypt into the desert of Midian, would become his neighbour. Moses is admittedly one of the world's greatest initiates. As such he could certainly have written the prologue and the epilogue. And how lofty a level the drama maintains throughout! Even Job's friends, who pour out pithy things in rich poetical language surpa.s.sing that attained by all laureates, are rebuked for uttering only what everybody knows. Yet so universal is the Book in its symbolism that it can afford, if need be, to dispense with picturesque details of its authorship and date, and stand simply on its merits as an inspired dramatic epic of Man's pa.s.sage from his consciousness of degradation as a worm, and his stubbornness as a wild a.s.s's colt, to the dignity and power of a son of G.o.d.

Blake had already traced the course of man's day of judgment in Night IX of _The Four Zoas_, and had painted a fresco of the subject in 1820. In the poem he had used his own peculiar mythology, and closed his poem to nearly all readers. The Book of Job obliged him to drop his own symbolism and use the simple and universal symbols that the drama itself supplies. A brief reference to each design in order will make his purpose clear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord]

_Design I._--Job and his wife and family, like true Israelites, are at prayer under a spreading fig-tree. The shepherd sons have for the time left their flocks at rest and hanged their musical instruments on the tree. At first sight the picture presents a scene of idyllic peace. But there are ominous signs. The sun is setting, night is fast coming, and the fig-tree suggests the immemorial symbol of Israel's wrestling during the dark night.

_Design II._--An ill.u.s.tration of the prologue of the Book. It is a marvellous representation of what an initiate only--a Moses, a Blake--could have imagined of the cosmos, with its heavenly portion peopled with the angelic sons of G.o.d in the middle, the earth and its inhabitants below, and above and beyond all G.o.d in His Heaven.

Satan, a magnificent figure, comes with the Sons of G.o.d to present himself before G.o.d. In his fiery aura are two shadowy figures making with him a trinity of evil.

_Design III._--The crash of Job's family. He has built his house, and prospered regardless of those who made it possible for him to build it; and in the sudden turn of events it has become a mere ruin.

_Design IV._--Job and his wife are under the fig-tree, the man bearing with n.o.ble and unbroken fort.i.tude the arrival of bad news.

_Design V._--Once more the cosmos. Satan is rushing headlong towards earth to wreak his full power on Job in the midst of his charities, yet forbidden to touch the one thing that Job would so gladly surrender, his life. Heaven cannot remain impa.s.sive at suffering on earth. Its sun is darkened and the Almighty on His Throne is grieved at His heart.

_Design VI._--Satan's last malice on Job. He is reduced to sheer nakedness and wretchedness. Nothing of his former life that gave him comfort remains to him. He is "wrecked on G.o.d." "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord." With such faith and resignation his sun has not quite set.

_Design VII._--The friends arrive. Once more Blake felt at home from his personal experience. He had never had beyond Catherine and Robert a perfect spiritual friend. He had never lacked corporeal ones. The remembrance of them gave zest and spirit to the portrayal of Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.

_Design VIII._--Job's corporeal friends have done their worst. They and his wife have quenched his last hope. His sun has gone down. Naked and covered with boils from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he lifts up both hands and curses the day that saw his birth.

_Design IX._--The vision of Eliphaz, and his terror, for which Blake recalled his own terror on the threshold.

_Design X._--The corporeal friends stripped of their wordy disguise. They are spiritual enemies that point the finger of scorn at the just, upright man. There is a glimmer of light on the horizon, for Job can still say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

_Design XI._--A worse stage of misery. Hitherto Job had held fast his faith in G.o.d. Now he no longer sees G.o.d as He is. In the terrors of his dreams and visions he cannot discern between G.o.d and Satan. Satan stretches over him with a face reminiscent of G.o.d's. As Job turns away his head in horror, it becomes impossible for him to detect the cloven hoof; and so he touches that horror of great darkness, worse than all physical suffering, where not only man but G.o.d has turned His face, and in Its place loom the commandments of stone, which recall the darkness and thunders of Sinai.

[Ill.u.s.tration: When the morning Stars sang together, & all the Sons of G.o.d shouted for joy]

_Design XII._--The horror of darkness has pa.s.sed. The stars are shining, and the youthful Elihu essays to utter the wisdom that the old men have lacked. Blake could recall the ministry of his young friends, who had come so recently into his life, and by their love had caused the stars to appear. Elihu does not utter perfect wisdom, for that cannot be reached from human experience.

_Design XIII._--The source of perfect wisdom. "The Lord answered Job out of the Whirlwind." Job sees Him as He is in His true lineaments, and listens as the Almighty speaks. Blake, too, reads breathlessly the marvellous description of creation till his spirit flames up, and the creative fire gives birth to his next most glorious design.

_Design XIV._--The creation and the immense joy of it. There is the creation of the whole cosmos, when the morning Stars sang together, and all the Sons of G.o.d shouted for joy. Never was such joy again till the beginning of the New Creation, when the Son of G.o.d was born in Bethlehem, as Luke, artist and saint, narrates with such artless simplicity and beauty. The Scriptures a.s.sure us of a time when that joy shall be eternal.

Meanwhile it is the artists who in true creation have a foretaste of the joy. It is Blake who has presented it in its most spiritual and universal aspect.

_Design XV._--A grotesque. I presume that Blake, like Leonardo da Vinci, discovered something grotesque as he explored the universe.

_Design XVI._--The universe once more. It is the consummation of the judgment. Satan and his shadowy companions who dwell in man have taken definite form and substance. The man who has walked the way of excess has brought all his latent evil out, and has given it substance, so that he can arise in his strength and cast it out for ever.

_Design XVII._--Job's beatific vision. He is blessed and his house, now only his wife, but through her and G.o.d's blessing he may be fruitful and multiply, and build his house in the divine order. His sun has risen and will no more set.

_Design XVIII._--Job stands before an altar of burnt-offering. Like Jacob he has prevailed, and G.o.d accepts him and his prayers for his friends.

_Design XIX._--Job and his wife once more under the fig-tree, whose fruit has ripened. He is the recipient of friendly gifts and offerings from his neighbours.

_Design XX._--Job, with memories engraven on the chambers of his imagery, stretching forth his hands over his new family of beautiful daughters.

_Design XXI._--A return to the first scene. But the sun is rising, and Job and his family, taking their instruments of art, are worshipping G.o.d in the beauty of holiness.

Blake completed his engravings for Job in March 1825, and they were published March 1826.

They might well have been the crowning work of his life, and followed by his _Nunc dimittis_, but there was boundless mental energy in the old man, though his body was failing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM THE DANTE SERIES.]

It was in 1825 that Blake met Crabb Robinson at the house of Mr Aders, where Mrs Aders, daughter of Raphael Smith, was in the habit of entertaining many interesting people.

Crabb Robinson was a most excellent man--well accoutred, steady on his legs, with well-set head, without superst.i.tion, and just enough prejudice to starch his mind.