The Portable Blake
Page 47
Against Religion & Government:
They by the Sword of Justice fell
And him their Cruel Murderer tell.
He left his Father’s trade to roam
A wand’ring Vagrant without Home;
And thus he others’ labour stole
That he might live above Controll.
The Publicans & Harlots he
Selected for his Company,
And from the Adulteress turn’d away
God’s righteous Law, that lost its Prey.”
A VISION OF THE BOOK OF JOB
EDITOR’S PREFATORY NOTE
The following twenty-one plates are not “illustrations” to The Book of Job, but Blake’s vision of its meaning to him. It is rival to the Bible lesson, though it occasionally seems to complement it. Were it not for the fact that Blake is so intent upon divulging its “real” theme, as he conceived it, his own work could be taken for a parody of the complacency with which the Bible story ends.
The Bible tells the story of a man “perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil.” His “substance” was very great, and his piety so preeminent among men that Satan was allowed to try it, to see whether his faith in Cod could withstand deprivation and bitter physical suffering. Job nearly reached the bottom of the pit of desolation; he lost everything. Indeed, he nearly failed the test. When his pious friends, shocked by his lamentations and reproaches against the Divine will, sought to convince him that his suffering was a punishment for sin, Job rebelled. Only when the voice of the Lord came to him out of the whirlwind and overwhelmed Job by His power and majesty, did he submit to God’s mysterious permission of evil. Yet it is the human cries with which Job struggles to believe in so inscrutable a violation of human happiness and good faith that give the story in the Bible its eloquence and its poetry.
Blake’s vision begins with an attack on Job himself for his own love of worldly goods and his consequent self-righteousness. The Bible portrays a man who was virtuous and who was made an example, despite his own goodness, of God’s eternal dominion. Blake portrays a man who went wrong from the beginning, for he sought prosperity rather than vision. The drama takes place all within his own soul. In the Bible Satan is an agent of God, albeit a jealous agent; and as an agent, has liberty to try men for the edification of God. The Biblical Satan, in short, is really a court jester to Majesty. Blake’s Satan is the God of this world, the God who tempts men to yield their real humanity by leading them after material goals. Satan is beaten only when Job recovers his spiritual sight, his true human understanding that his material “substance,” which in the Bible is the reward for goodness and the mark of human success, is sterile and corrupting.
We owe the elucidation of Blake’s symbolism in this work to the English scholar, Joseph Wicksteed. He discovered that the theme of Blake’s designs—the struggle between the “natural” and the spiritual, or visionary man—is plotted on the difference between right and left. The right hand or foot stands for the visionary, un-material, prophetic character; the left hand or foot for the worldly, the conformist and the material. Where Job is shown with his right hand or foot ahead of his left, it means that the spiritual side of his human nature is in the ascendancy. This scheme is followed in every design, and by all the characters. It is a key to Blake’s fundamental belief in the integral character of human nature, in which alone all of life’s struggles are waged, that the right and left should be part of the same body. In the Bible God, Satan and man are three different characters, on three different levels of power, knowledge and creativity. In Blake’s vision, the only character is man himself, in whom the right, which is spiritual, and the left, which is materialist, conflict for ultimate domination.
In the first illustration all is seemingly calm and prosperous before the storm. But the sun is setting on the left, in the West—evidence that Job is living in a world of approaching night and darkness. The musical instruments that hang on the tree are the symbols of art, creativity and joy that have been put away. We see here a Job prosperous, pious but in danger of losing his inner gift, his soul. For while the musical instruments have been put away, he is reading evening prayers to his family “from the books,” as Foster Damon said, “written by others.”
In the last illustration, the twenty-first, Job and his human flock stand before the tree, this time playing upon their instruments. It is the sunrise; the real life of man’s creative powers, of his joyous acceptance of his true nature, is just beginning. But between the first and twenty-first illustrations Job goes through hell, the hell that is in all men when they close their eyes to their own divinity. As Wicksteed pointed out, the Jehovah who appears at the crest of the second illustration, the “Poetic Genius” who is at the head of man, is the same image as Job himself. He is Job, when Job accepts his inner nature. In that light the true unity of the Creation appears everywhere in the picture, emphasized by the border designs. But with the third illustration Satan appears; and it is an introduction to the subtle inner drama that Blake introduces into every design to study the mocking contortions of the Demon’s figure.
In the greatest of these designs, “When The Morning Stars Sang Together,” XIV, Blake created what must remain forever one of the great testaments to man’s craving for spiritual fulfillment. Level upon level the whole creation rises out of the poetic genius of man, and the world sings in the joy of its beholding and in the wonder of man himself, who has so much greatness within him.
1. The Letter Killeth
The Spirit giveth Life
It is Spiritually Discerned
2.
When the Almighty was yet with me. When my Children were about me
3.
The Fire of God is fallen from Heaven
4.
And I only am escaped alone to tell thee
5.
Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord
6.
And smote Job with sore Boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head
7.
And when they lifted up their eyes afar off & knew him not they lifted up their voice & wept
8.
Let the Day perish wherein I was Born
9.
Then a Spirit passed before my face
10.
Have pity upon me! Have pity upon me! 0 ye my friends for the hand of God hath touched me
11.
With Dreams upon my bed thou scarest me & affrightest me with Visions
12.
I am Young & ye are very Old wherefore I was afraid
13.
Then the Lord answered Job out of the Whirlwind
14.
When the morning Stars sang together & all the Sons of God shouted for joy
15.
Behold now Behemoth which I made with thee
16.
Hell is naked before him & Destruction has no covering
17.
I have heard thee with the hearing of the Ear but now my Eye seeth thee
18.
Also the Lord accepted Job
19.
Every one also gave him a piece of Money
20.
There were not found Women fair as the Daughters of Job
21.
So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning
From A VISION OF THE LAST JUDGMENT
[From the Rossetti MS]
FOR THE YEAR 1810 ADDITIONS TO BLAKE’S CATALOGUE OF PICTURES & C
P. 70.
The Last Judgment [will be] when all those are Cast away who trouble Religion with Questions concerning Good & Evil or Eating of the Tree of those Knowledges or Reasonings which hinder the Vision of God, turning all into a Consuming Fire. When Imagination, Art & Science & all Intellectual Gifts, all the Gifts of the Holy Ghost, are look’d upon as of no use & only Contention remains to Man, then the Last Judgment begins, & its Vision is seen by the Imaginative Eye of Every one according to the situation he holds.
The Last Judgment is not Fable or Allegory, but Vision. Fable or Allegory are a totally distinct & inferior kind of Poetry. Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is Form’d by the daughters of Memory. Imagination is surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration, who in the aggregate are call’d Jerusalem. Fable is allegory, but what Critics call The Fable, is Vision itself. The Hebrew Bible & the Gospel of Jesus are not Allegory, but Eternal Vision or Imagination of All that Exists. Note here that Fable or Allegory is seldom without some Vision. Pilgrim’s Progress is full of it, the Greek Poets the same; but Allegory & Vision ought to be known as Two Distinct Things, & so call’d for the Sake of Eternal Life. Plato has made Socrates say that Poets & Prophets do not know or Understand what they write or Utter; this is a most Pernicious Falshood. If they do not, pray is an inferior kind to be call’d Knowing? Plato confutes himself.
Pp. 68-69.
The Last Judgment is one of these Stupendous Visions. I have represented it as I saw it; to different People it appears differently as every thing else does; for tho’ on Earth things seem Permanent, they are less permanent than a Shadow, as we all know too well.
The Nature of Visionary Fancy, or Imagination, is very little known, & the Eternal nature & permanence of its ever Existent Images is consider’d as less permanent than the things of Vegetative & Generative Nature; yet the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce, but Its Eternal Image & Individuality never dies, but renews by its seed; just so the Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought; the Writings of the Prophets illustrate these conceptions of the Visionary Fancy by their various sublime & Divine Images as seen in the Worlds of Vision.
Pp. 71-72.
The Learned m ... or Heroes; this is an ... & not Spiritual ... while the Bible ... of Virtue & Vice ... as they are Ex ... is the Real Di ... Things. The ... when they Assert that Jupiter usurped the Throne of his Father, Saturn, & brought on an Iron Age & Begat on Mnemosyne, or Memory, The Greek Muses, which are not Inspiration as the Bible is. Reality was Forgot, & the Vanities of Time & Space only Remember’d & call’d Reality. Such is the Mighty difference between Allegoric Fable & Spiritual Mystery. Let it here be Noted that the Greek Fables originated in Spiritual Mystery & Real Visions, which are lost & clouded in Fable & Allegory, while the Hebrew Bible & the Greek Gospel are Genuine, Preserv’d by the Saviour’s Mercy. The Nature of my Work is Visionary or Imaginative; it is an Endeavour to Restore what the Ancients call’d the Golden Age.
Pp. 69-70.
This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite & Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite & Temporal. There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, The Human Imagination, who appear’d to Me as Coming to Judgment among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal might be Establish’d; around him were seen the Images of Existences according to a certain order Suited to my Imaginative Eye as follows.
P. 76.
Jesus seated between the Two Pillars, Jachin & Boaz, with the Word of divine Revelation on his knees, & on each side the four & twenty Elders sitting in judgment; the Heavens opening around him by unfolding the clouds around his throne. The Old H[eave]n & O[1d] Earth are passing away & the N[ew] H[eaven] & N[ew] Earth descending. The Just arise on his right & the wicked on his Left hand. A sea of fire issues from before the throne. Adam & Eve appear first, before the Judgment seat in humiliation. Abel surrounded by Innocents, & Cain, with the flint in his hand with which he slew his brother, falling with the head downward. From the Cloud on which Eve stands, Satan is seen falling headlong wound round by the tail of the serpent whose bulk, nail’d to the Cross round which he wreathes, is falling into the Abyss. Sin is also represented as a female bound in one of the Serpent’s folds, surrounded by her fiends. Death is Chain’d to the Cross, & Time falls together with death, dragged down by a demon crown’d with Laurel; another demon with a Key has the charge of Sin & is dragging her down by the hair; beside them a figure is seen, scaled with iron scales from head to feet, precipitating himself into the Abyss with the Sword & Balances: he is Og, King of Bashan.
On the Right, Beneath the Cloud on which Abel Kneels, is Abraham with Sarah & Isaac, also Hagar & Ishmael. Abel kneels on a bloody Cloud &c. (to come in here as two leaves forward).
P. 80.
Abel kneels on a bloody cloud descriptive of those Churches before the flood, that they were fill’d with blood & fire & vapour,of smoke; even till Abraham’s time the vapor & heat was not extinguished; these States Exist now. Man Passes on, but States remain for Ever; he passes thro’ them like a traveller who may as well suppose that the places he has passed thro’ exist no more, as a Man may suppose that the States he has pass’d thro’ Exist no more. Every thing is Eternal.
P. 79.
In Eternity one Thing never Changes into another Thing. Each Identity is Eternal: consequently Apuleius’s Golden Ass & Ovid’s Metamorphosis & others of the like kind are Fable; yet they contain Vision in a sublime degree, being derived from real Vision in More ancient Writings. Lot’s Wife being Changed into [a] Pillar of Salt alludes to the Mortal Body being render’d a Permanent Statue, but not Changed or Transformed into Another Identity while it retains its own Individuality. A Man can never become Ass nor Horse; some are born with shapes of Men, who may be both, but Eternal Identity is one thing & Corporeal Vegetation is another thing. Changing Water into Wine by Jesus & into Blood by Moses relates to Vegetable Nature also.
Pp. 76-77.
Ishmael is Mahomed, & on the left, beneath the falling figure of Cain, is Moses casting his tables of stone into the deeps. It ought to be understood that the Persons, Moses & Abraham, are not here meant, but the States Signified by those Names, the Individuals being representatives or Visions of those States as they were reveal’d to Mortal Man in the Series of Divine Revelations as they are written in the Bible; these various States I have seen in my Imagination; when distant they appear as One Man, but as you approach they appear Multitudes of Nations. Abraham hovers above his posterity, which appear as Multitudes of Children ascending from the Earth, surrounded by Stars, as it was said: “As the Stars of Heaven for Multitude.” Jacob & his Twelve Sons hover beneath the feet of Abraham & receive their children from the Earth. I have seen, when at a distance, Multitudes of Men in Harmony appear like a single Infant, sometimes in the Arms of a Female; this represented the Church.
But to proceed with the description of those on the Left hand—beneath the Cloud on which Moses kneels is two figures, a Male & Female, chain’d together by the feet; they represent those who perish’d by the flood; beneath them a multitude of their associates are seen falling headlong; by the side of them is a Mighty fiend with a Book in his hand, which is Shut; he represents the person nam’d in Isaiah, xxii c. & 20 v., Eliakim, the Son of Hilkiah: he drags Satan down headlong: he is crown’d with oak; by the side of the Scaled figure representing Og, King of Bashan, is a Figure with a Basket, emptying out the vanities of Riches & Worldly Honours: he is Araunah, the Jebusite, master of the threshing floor; above him are two figures, elevated on a Cloud, representing the Pharisees who plead their own Righteousness before the throne; they are weighed down by two fiends. Beneath the Man with the Basket are three fiery fiends with grey beards & scourges of fire: they represent Cruel Laws; they scourge a groupe of figures down into the deeps; beneath them are various figures in attitudes of contention representing various States of Misery, which, alas, every one on Earth is liable to enter into, & against which we should all watch. The Ladies will be pleas’d to see that I have represented the Furies by Three Men & not by three Women. It is not because I think the
Ancients wrong, but they will be pleas’d to remember that mine is Vision & not Fable. The Spectator may suppose them Clergymen in the Pulpit, scourging Sin instead of Forgiving it.
The Earth beneath these falling Groupes of figures is rocky & burning, and seems as if convuls’d by Earthquakes; a Great City on fire is seen in the distance; the armies are fleeing upon the Mountains. On the foreground, hell is opened & many figures are descending into it down stone steps & beside a Gate beneath a rock where sin & death are to be closed Eternally by that Fiend who carries the key in one hand & drags them down with the other. On the rock & above the Gate a fiend with wings urges the wicked onwards with fiery darts; he is Hazael, the Syrian, who drives abroad all those who rebell against their Saviour; beneath the steps [is] Babylon, represented by a King crowned, Grasping his Sword and his Sceptre: he is just awaken’d out of his Grave; around him are other Kingdoms arising to Judgment, represented in this Picture as Single Personages according to the descriptions in the Prophets. The Figure dragging up a Woman by her hair represents the Inquisition, as do those contending on the sides of the Pit, & in Particular the Man strangling two women represents a Cruel Church.
P. 78.
Two persons, one in Purple, the other in Scarlet, are descending down the steps into the Pit; these are Caiaphas & Pilate—Two States where all those reside who Calumniate & Murder under Pretence of Holiness & Justice. Caiaphas has a Blue Flame like a Miter on his head. Pilate has bloody hands that never can be cleansed; the Females behind them represent the Females belonging to such States, who are under perpetual terrors & vain dreams, plots & secret deceit. Those figures that descend into the Flames before Caiaphas & Pilate are Judas & those of his Class. Achitophel is also here with the cord in his hand.