William Blake Part 7

But Blake believed that he had already seen the morning star that heralded the full blaze of the Sun. Already the invisible powers who control nations and men were stirring and preparing for their last fearful conflict, which should result in new heavens and a new earth. The angels were at war. Urizen and his many sons were tightening their sinews for the last life-and-death grip; against them was Orc, the horrent demon, "already a kindled and quenchless fire, Los, the spirit of inspiration far more nearly allied with fiery pa.s.sion (Orc) than with cold intellectual reason (Urizen), Los' wife Enitharmon and their many sons and daughters, Rintrah, Palamabron, Elynittria and Ocalythron. These Ossianic and Miltonic princ.i.p.alities and powers were waging huge and terrific war in the heavenly places, and already on earth was kindled in France the earthly counterpart and shadow of the invisible horrible conflict.

The work of regeneration, once begun, could not be arrested. Pa.s.sion, fire, energy, all the irresistible things pent up in h.e.l.l, were let loose; and they would involve Europe and the world in an ocean of blood. The whole cosmos, inward in the heavens, outward in the sun, moon, stars, and earth, was dyed in crimson, until the tribulation such as was not since the world began should work up to the grinding pains of labour, and in infinite pain there should come to the birth the new age of which the prophets and poets had dreamed in all ages.

"The Sun glow'd fiery red!

The furious Terrors flew around On golden chariots, raging with red wheels, dropping with blood!

The Lions lash their wrathful tails!

The Tigers couch upon the prey and suck the ruddy tide; And Enitharmon groans and cries in anguish and dismay.

Then Los arose: his head he reared, in snaky thunders clad; And with a cry that shook all Nature to the utmost pole, Called all his sons to the strife of blood."

Blake was very sanguine. He had endured the rude shock of the Reign of Terror, and though he had thrown aside the red cap, he was determined to see in these horrors nothing but the grim accompaniments of every regenerating process. Enitharmon, once awake after her long sleep, would call together the sweet ministers of melodious songs. Ethinthus, Queen of Waters, Manatha-Varcyon on her golden wings, Leutha, soft soul of flowers, Antamon, Prince of the Pearly Dew, "all were forth at sport beneath the solemn moon, waking the stars of Urizen with their immortal songs; that Nature felt thro' all her pores the enormous revelry, till Morning opened the eastern gates."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ANCIENT OF DAYS.

_Frontispiece to Europe._]

_Europe_ has for frontispiece one of Blake's most famous designs--_The Ancient of Days_. The vision was seen against the dark gloom of the upper story of his Lambeth house. Its real ground lay in the Book of Proverbs.

Wisdom says: "When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compa.s.s upon the face of the depth ... then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him."[3]

The author of the Proverbs looks back to the first creation, which G.o.d saw to be very good. Blake looks forward to the new. What if all around are dark clouds? Yet the Ancient of Days is in an orb of light, and He is stooping down and measuring the deep with His compa.s.ses. Nothing can stay His hand. The upheaval of Europe, involving the world, is the prelude to the new creation when the Almighty's vision for His universe shall be fulfilled.

_Europe_ touches the limit of Blake's rebellion. During the next thirty years history was to comment on the French Revolution in a way that was not his in his impetuous prophetic books. He was to learn that rebellion is a road to wisdom because it is a species of excess. Excess teaches a man to know what is enough, and when Blake knew the exact value of rebellion he was prepared to read the Past afresh, and find that its treasury contained priceless jewels that he never even suspected, while he was pa.s.sionately searching for some new thing.

CHAPTER VII

ACTION AND REACTION

In _Europe_ Blake reached the boundary of his rebellious mood. The impetus of his rebellion might by its own strength have carried him further down the stream; but the Reign of Terror was a rude check, and among other things it enabled him to climb on to the bank and view the course of events with some degree of detachment.

He found that he could no longer refuse to listen to another voice that had been sounding more or less loudly for some years--the voice of his own experience, and, that which inevitably follows, the voice of the experience of mankind. His thought flew backwards and forwards, backwards to Eden and innocent Adam, followed by the wilderness and the curse, forwards to some more years of travail, and then the crimson dawn glowing on the gathered fruits of experience.

Would experience eventually restore the innocence that was lost with Eden?

Were they even things of the same kind? No; Blake was sure that they were contraries, contrary as Swedenborg's heaven and h.e.l.l, contrary states of the human soul. But many contraries can be married. Innocence married to experience must vanish as innocence, but rise again in a new form in the more fruitful married relation. It appears that with most men innocence lost never returns. Blake never lost his. It is seen in all its infantine simplicity in _The Songs of Innocence_, and it could show itself at any time during his long life. But this divine element is sadly rare even in the poets, and it is its irresistible presence in Blake that makes him wellnigh unique. In ourselves we find from experience knowledge of good and evil, complicated views on philosophy and theology, puzzled brains, and a frightfully murky atmosphere, and it seems Utopian to imagine that it will ever be otherwise.

Blake maintained, and so had the Saints, that when experience had effected its work and disposed of its dirt, smoke, and mud, a glorious something would emerge which innocence could never know, but which will include the innocence that we see in lambs and babies and b.u.t.tercups and saints.

Between what we are and what we shall be is a sandy desert; and, since Eden is lost, all, even the Christ, have to pa.s.s through the desert to gain the promised land. The words of Christ are not the words of one who has lived only in Eden. They are crystalline clear, flaming, simple, deep, and infinitely wise, we should almost say innocent, but as to "create a flower is the labour of ages," so when we look behind the words of Christ, and seize their implications, we discover not only the sorrow and joy, labour and triumph of His own experience, but that of the past labouring ages; and until we know something of present living experience added to that of the past, we shall never have an inkling of even the simplest words that lie on the face of the gospel.

It was fitting that in 1794, when Blake uttered his prophecy of things to come in _Europe_, he should also gather together his _Songs of Experience_, and engrave them for the joy of posterity.

_The Little Girl Lost_ and _The Little Girl Found_ bring together better than any perhaps the two contrary states of innocence and experience.

Lyca, being innocent and only seven summers old, wandered, allured by the wild birds' song. She is lost but not dismayed. Falling asleep, the beasts of prey come around her and minister to her, and finally convey her tenderly to a cave.

Then her parents, experienced but not innocent, arise and seek her. They pa.s.s through all the sufferings, sorrows, sighings, of this waste howling wilderness, buying the experience that almost kills them, till in terror they find Lyca among the wild beasts. But beholding Lyca they learn her secret, and

"To this day they dwell In a lonely dell: Nor fear the wolfish howl Nor the lion's growl."

_The Clod and the Pebble_ give the two contrary states of love. The clod proclaims the love that forgets itself in ministering to others; the pebble the love that would bind and devour all others, making them contribute to its own delight.

_A Poison Tree_ shows how repressed things secrete poison.

"I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow."

The repressed anger ended in murder. Blake was sure that any pa.s.sion repressed was equally fatal.

_The Schoolboy_ gives the miserable experience that is thrust upon us all through the blind cruelty of those who would educate us. This experience is so contrary that nothing could be more calculated to crush native innocence, joy, and spring.

"O! father and mother, if buds are nipped And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripped Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care's dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear?

Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear?"

How indeed? The question is to parents, schoolmasters, professors, priests. The conditions for young lives are created by those who would strangle life. Yet when experience has been its most contrary, even nailing its victim to a cross, just there is deliverance.

"Whate'er is born of mortal birth Must be consumed with the earth, To rise from generation free."

It was Blake's supreme experience that he had been set free from generation. It was by a re-generation, and that had come to him through the death of Jesus.

"The death of Jesus set me free."

The same year 1794 saw Blake spinning fast the special mythological web with which he was to clothe or strangle his vision. He had separated from all his spiritual teachers; but Swedenborg lived on in him much more than he owned or even recognized, and Ossian and Milton still governed his imagination. Milton's huge figures were imitated in the mythological figures which were to stalk about his universe to the end; Ossian's fantastic names, which always fascinated him, provoked others still more fantastic. By means of these uncouth daemons he determined to set forth his own particular view of the cosmos, which, starting with eternity, was to fall into creation, and finally, after lightning, thunder, rolling clouds, and a sea of blood, accompanied by roarings, shrieks, and howlings, was to attain to salvation by a return to the divine order.

The "return" is treated of with great fullness in the _Jerusalem_: the "fall" is hardly more than sketched in the fragmentary Books of _Urizen_, _Los_, and _Ahania_. But as the process of return is the exact reverse to that of the fall, an understanding of the one enables one to fill in the gaps of the other. If there were other books dealing with the fall more in detail, I for one can contemplate the loss with equanimity.

_The Book of Urizen_ is supposed to be the account of the creation, and those who endorse this view proceed to identify Urizen with the Jehovah of the Old Testament, which is as false as to identify him with the Jesus of the New, although it is only too true that scores of Christians worship Urizen under the names of Jehovah and Jesus.

In strict truth, Blake gives no account of the creation at all. To create can only mean that which the Catholic Church affirms that it does mean, to make something out of nothing. To reject this leaves two alternatives--either that G.o.d made the universe out of something outside of Himself, which is dualism, or out of something inside of Himself, which is pantheism. Blake, like Swedenborg, adopted the last, but whereas Swedenborg tried to evade the pantheistic conclusion by his doctrine of discrete degrees, Blake swam in the pantheistic sea, and was saved from drowning by clinging to the rocks which he discerned standing out in bold outline, and a perception of the ultimate irreconcilable antinomy of good and evil, of sheep and goats, which is a direct contradiction of pantheism, and fits in only with the catholic doctrine. There are other such contradictions in Blake, which did not in the least trouble him. With his pa.s.sion for contraries he harboured them all, marrying them when he could, and just leaving them when they absolutely refused to unite. He had not the requisite talent for building a coherent system.

[Ill.u.s.tration: URIZEN IN CHAINS.

_From The First Book of Urizen._]

What is called, then, Blake's account of the creation is really his account of the fall of the universe out of eternity into time and s.p.a.ce, and the consequent appearance of man in his contracted and sense-bound condition. Urizen is the agent in the fall; but he must not be identified with Satan any more than with Jehovah. He, as nearly as possible, represents reason. When he stands in the eternal order working on those things supplied him by Los (imagination), he is a fountain of light, intellect, and joy; when he is rent from Los' side, he becomes self-closed, all repelling, shut up in an abominable void and soul-shuddering vacuum, and his intellect becomes dark and cold because his reason has nothing to work upon except what is supplied by the narrow inlet of the senses.

Thus shut in the deep, he broods until his thoughts take outward shape and form, and there arises "a wide World of solid obstruction." He then proceeds to write his books of wisdom. But his vision being quenched, he is confined to that which his still all-flexible senses provide. He knows much about the terrible monsters that inhabit the bosoms of all--the seven deadly sins of the soul. From his prolonged fightings and conflicts with them there is distilled a kind of wisdom, which he gathers into his books; but it is joyless wisdom, negative rather than positive, restrictive, retributive, censorious, jealous, cruel, penal, and is best solidified in the decalogue with its reiterated "Thou shalt not."

Eternity, which is present and within, rolled wide apart, "leaving ruinous fragments of life." Rent from eternity, Urizen becomes a clod of clay, and Los, beholding him, becomes like him, and is compelled to continue the work of creation in constricted forms. With his hammer he forges links of hours, days, and years. Man with his head, spine, heart, appears; then are formed his eyes, ears, nostrils, throat, tongue, feet--little members that hide from him eternity, and cause him to see the things that are within as though they were without, like the stars of night seen through a great telescope.

After the man the woman appears, whom the Eternal myriads named Pity. She is an emanation from Los, and is named by Blake Enitharmon. Los embraces her, and she begets a child in her own image--a Human Shadow, who is named Orc (pa.s.sion).

Thus grows up a world of men, women, children, with their various hungers and needs. The Eternals try to provide for these needs by science and religion; but as they can build their science and religion only from their experience and observation of the contracted universe, the science is sand, and religion a web, and earth's wretched children remain under the cruel rule and curse of Urizen and his sons, calling his laws of Prudence the Eternal Laws of G.o.d.