The Portable William Blake (64 page)

The Nature of Hatred & Envy & of All the Mischiefs in the World are here depicted. No one Envies or Hates one of his Own Party; even the devils love one another in their Way; they torment one another for other reasons than Hate or Envy; these are only employ’d against the Just. Neither can Seth Envy Noah, or Elijah Envy Abraham, but they may both of them Envy the Success of Satan or of Og or Molech. The Horse never Envies the Peacock, nor the Sheep the Coat, but they Envy a Rival in Life & Existence whose ways & means exceed their own, let him be of what Class of Animals he will; a dog will envy a Cat who is pamper’d at the expense of his comfort, as I have often seen. The Bible never tells us that devils torment one another thro’ Envy; it is thro’ this that they torment the Just—but for what do they torment one another? I answer: For the Coercive Laws of Hell, Moral Hypocrisy. They torment a Hypocrite when he is discover’d; they punish a Failure in the tormentor who has suffer’d the Subject of his torture to Escape. In Hell all is Self Righteousness; there is no such thing there as Forgiveness of Sin; he who does Forgive Sin is Crucified as an Abettor of Criminals, & he who performs Works of Mercy in Any shape whatever is punish’d &, if possible, destroy’d, not thro’ envy or Hatred or Malice, but thro’ Self Righteousness that thinks it does God service, which God is Satan. They do not Envy one another: They contemn & despise one another: Forgiveness of Sin is only at the Judgment Seat of Jesus the Saviour, where the Accuser is cast out, not because he Sins, but because he torments the Just & makes them do what he condemns as Sin & what he knows is opposite to their own Identity.

It is not because Angels are Holier than Men or Devils that makes them Angels, but because they do not Expect Holiness from one another, but from God only.

The Player is a liar when he says: “Angels are happier than Men because they are better.” Angels are happier than Men & Devils because they are not always Prying after Good & Evil in one another & eating the Tree of Knowledge for Satan’s Gratification.

Thinking as I do that the Creator of this World is a very Cruel Being, & being a Worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: “the Son, O how unlike the Father!” First God Almighty comes with a Thump on the Head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.

The Last Judgment is an Overwhelming of Bad Art & Science. Mental Things are alone Real; what is call’d Corporeal, Nobody Knows of its Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy, & its Existence an Imposture. Where is the Existence Out of Mind or Thought? Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool? Some People flatter themselves that there will be No Last Judgment & that Bad Art will be adopted & mixed with Good Art, That Error or Experiment will make a Part of Truth, & they Boast that it is its Foundation; these People flatter themselves: I will not Flatter them. Error is Created. Truth is Eternal. Error, or Creation, will be Burned up, & then, & not till Then, Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it. I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance & not Action; it is as the dirt upon my feet, No part of Me. “What,” it will be Question’d, “When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?” 0 no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.” I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’ it & not with it.

APPENDIX

It was at the latter end of the year 1825 that I put in writing my recollections of this most remarkable man. The larger portions are under the date of the 18th of December. He died in the year 1827. I have therefore now revised what I wrote on the 10th of December and afterwards, and without any attempt to reduce to order, or make consistent the wild and strange rhapsodies uttered by this insane man of genius, thinking it better to put down what I find as it occurs, though I am aware of the objection that may justly be made to the recording the ravings of insanity in which it may be said there can be found no principle, as there is no ascertainable law of mental association which is obeyed; and from which therefore nothing can be learned.

This would be perfectly true of
mere
madness—but does not apply to that form of insanity ordinarily called monomania, and may be disregarded in a case like the present in which the subject of the remark was unquestionably what a German would call a
Verunglückter Genie,
whose theosophic dreams bear a close resemblance to those of Swedenborg—whose genius as an artist was praised by no less men than Flaxman and Fuseli—and whose poems were thought worthy republication by the biographer of Swedenborg (Wilkinson), and of which Wordsworth said after reading a number —they were the “Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the two opposite sides of the human soul”—“There is no doubt this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott!” The German painter Götzenberger (a man indeed who ought not to be named
after the others
as an authority for my writing about Blake) said, on his returning to Germany about the time at which I am now arrived, “I saw in England many men of talents, but only three men of genius, Coleridge, Flaxman, and Blake, and of these Blake was the greatest.” I do not mean to intimate my assent to this opinion, nor to do more than supply such materials as my intercourse with him furnish to an uncritical narrative to which I shall confine myself. I have written a few sentences in these reminiscences already, those of the year 1810. I had not then begun the regular journal which I afterwards kept. I will therefore go over the ground again and introduce these recollections of 1825 by a reference to the slight knowledge I had of him before, and what occasioned my taking an interest in him, not caring to repeat what Cunningham has recorded of him in the volume of his
Lives of the British Painters,
etc. etc....

 

Dr. Malkin, our Bury Grammar School Headmaster, published in the year 1806 a Memoir of a very precocious child who died ... years old, and he prefixed to the Memoir an account of Blake, and in the volume he gave an account of Blake as a painter and poet, and printed some specimens of his poems, viz. “The Tyger,” and ballads and mystical lyrical poems, all of a wild character, and M. gave an account of Visions which Blake related to his acquaintance. I knew that Flaxman thought highly of him, and though he did not venture to extol him as a genuine seer, yet he did not join in the ordinary derision of him as a madman. Without having seen him, yet I had already conceived a high opinion of him, and thought he would furnish matter for a paper interesting to Germans, and therefore when Fred. Perthes, the patriotic publisher at Hamburg, wrote to me in 1810 requesting me to give him an article for his
Patriotische Annalen,
I thought I could do no better than send him a paper on Blake, which was translated into German by Dr. Julius, filling, with a few small poems copied and translated, 24 pages....

In order to enable me to write this paper, which, by the bye, has nothing in it of the least value, I went to see an exhibition of Blake’s original paintings in Carnaby Market, at a hosier‘s, Blake’s brother. These paintings filled several rooms of an ordinary dwelling-house, and for the sight a half-crown was demanded of the visitor, for which he had a catalogue. This catalogue I possess, and it is a very curious exposure of the state of the artist’s mind. I wished to send it to Germany and to give a copy to Lamb and others, so I took four, and giving 10s., bargained that I should be at liberty to go again. “Freel as long as you live,” said the brother, astonished at such a liberality, which he, had never experienced before, nor I dare say did afterwards. Lamb was delighted with the catalogue, especially with the description of a painting afterwards engraved, and connected with which is an anecdote that, unexplained, would reflect discredit on a most amiable and excellent man, but which Flaxman considered to have been not the wilful act of Stodart. It was after the friends of Blake had circulated a subscription paper for an engraving of his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” that Stodart was made a party to an engraving of a painting of the same subject by himself. Stodart’s work is well known, Blake’s is known by very few. Lamb preferred it greatly to Stodart’s, and declared that Blake’s description was the finest criticism he had ever read of Chaucer’s poem.

In this catalogue Blake writes of himself in the most outrageous language—says, “This artist defies all competition in colouring”—that none can beat him, for none can beat the Holy Chost—that he and Raphael and Michael Angelo were under divine influence-wbile Corregio and Titian worshipped a lascivious and therefore cruel deity—Reubens a proud devil, etc. etc. He declared, speaking of colour, Titian’s men to be of leather and his women of chalk, and ascribed his own perfection in colouring to the advantage he enjoyed in seeing daily the primitive men walking in their native nakedness in the mountains of Wales. There were about thirty oil-paintings, the colouring excessively dark and high, the veins black, and the colour of the primitive men very like that of the Red Indians. In his estimation they would probably be the primitive men. Many of his designs were unconscious imitations. This appears also in his published works—the designs of “Blair’s Grave,” which Fuseli and Schiavonetti highly extolled—and in his designs to illustrate “Job,” published after his death for the benefit of his widow.

To this catalogue and in the printed poems, the small pamphlet which appeared in 1783, the edition put forth by Wilkinson of “The Songs of Innocence,” and other works already mentioned, to which I have to add the first four books of Young’s Night Thoughts, and Allan Cunningham’s Life of him, I now refer, and will confine myself to the memorandums I took of his conversation. I had heard of him from Flaxman, and for the first time dined in his company at the Aders’. Linnell the painter also was there—an artist of considerable talent, and who professed to take a deep interest in Blake and his work, whether of a perfectly disinterested character may be doubtful, as will appear hereafter. This was on the 10th of December.

I was aware of his idiosyncracies and therefore to a great degree prepared for the sort of conversation which took place at and after dinner, an altogether unmethodical rhapsody on art, poetry, and religion—he saying the most strange things in the most unemphatic manner, speaking of his Visions as any man would of the most ordinary occurrence. He was then 68 years of age. He had a broad, pale face, a large full eye with a benignant expression—at the same time a look of languor, except when excited, and then he had an air of inspiration. But not such as without a previous acquaintance with him, or attending to what he said, would suggest the notion that he was insane. There was nothing wild about his look, and though very ready to be drawn out to the assertion of his favourite ideas, yet with no warmth as if he wanted to make proselytes. Indeed one of the peculiar features of his scheme, as far as it was consistent, was indifference and a very extraordinary degree of tolerance and satisfaction with what had taken place. A sort of pious and humble optimism, not the scornful optimism of Candide. But at the same time that he was very ready to praise he seemed incapable of envy, as he was of discontent. He warmly praised some composition of Mrs. Aders, and having brought for Aders an engraving of his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” he remarked that one of the figures resembled a figure in one of the works then in Aders’s room, so that he had been accused of having stolen from it. But he added that he had drawn the figure in question 20 years before he had seen the
original
picture. However, there is “no wonder in the resemblance, as in my youth I was always studying that class of painting.” I have forgotten what it was, but his taste was in close conformity with the old German school.

This was somewhat at variance with what he said both this day and afterwards—implying that he copies his Visions. And it was on this first day that, in answer to a question from me, he said,
“The Spirits told me.”
This lead me to say: Socrates used pretty much the same language. He spoke of his Genius. Now, what affinity or resemblance do you suppose was there between the Genius which inspired Socrates and your
Spirits?
He smiled, and for once it seemed to me as if he had a feeling of vanity gratified. “The same as in our countenances.” He paused and said, “I was Socrates”—and then as if he had gone too far in that—“or a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them.” As I had for. many years been familiar with the idea that an eternity a parte post was inconceivable without an eternity a parte ante, I was naturally led to express that thought on this occasion. His eye brightened on my saying this. He eagerly assented: “To be sure. We are all coexistent with God; members of the Divine body, and partakers of the Divine nature.” Blake’s having adopted this Platonic idea led me on our
tête-à-tête
walk home at night to put the popular question to him, concerning the imputed Divinity of Jesus Christ. He answered: “He is the only God”—but then he added—“And so am I and so are you.” He had before said—and that led me to put the question—that Christ ought not to have suffered himself to be crucified. “He should not have attacked the Government. He had no business with such matters.” On my representing this to be inconsistent with the sanctity of divine qualities, he said Christ was not yet become the Father. It is hard on bringing together these fragmentary recollections to fix Blake’s position in relation to Christianity, Platonism, and Spinozism.

It is one of the subtle remarks of Hume on the tendency of certain religious notions to reconcile us to whatever occurs, as God’s will. And applying this to something Blake said, and drawing the inference that there is no use in education, he hastily rejoined: “There is no use in education. I hold it wrong. It is the great Sin. It is eating of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. That was the fault of Plato: he knew of nothing but the Virtues and Vices. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God’s eyes.” On my asking whether there is nothing absolutely evil in what man does, he answered: “I am no judge of that—perhaps not in Cod’s eyes.” Notwithstanding this, he, however, at the same time spoke of error as being in heaven; for on my asking whether Dante was pure in writing his Vision, “Pure,” said Blake. “Is there any purity in God’s eyes? No. ‘He chargeth his angels with folly.’” He even extended this liability to error to the Supreme Being. “Did he not repent him that he had made Nineveh?” My journal here has the remark that it is easier to retail his personal remarks than to reconcile those which seemed to be in conformity with the most opposed abstract systems. He spoke with seeming complacency of his own life in connection with Art. In becoming an artist he “acted by command.” The Spirits said to him, “Blake, be an artist.” His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself to
divine art
alone. “Art is inspiration. When Mich. Angelo or Raphael, in their day, or Mr. Flaxman, does any of his fine things, he does them in the Spirit.” Of fame he said: “I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I want nothing—I am quite happy.” This was confirmed to me on my subsequent interviews with him. His distinction between the Natural and Spiritual worlds was very confused. Incidentally, Swedenborg was mentioned—he declared him to be a Divine Teacher. He had done, and would do, much good. Yet he did wrong in endeavouring to explain to the
reason
what it could not comprehend. He seemed to consider, but that was not clear, the visions of Swedenborg and Dante as of the same kind. Dante was the greater poet. He too was wrong in occupying his mind about political objects. Yet this did not appear to affect his estimation of Dante’s genius, or his opinion of the truth of Dante’s visions. Indeed, when he even declared Dante to be an Atheist, it was accompanied by expression of the highest admiration; though, said he, Dante saw Devils where I saw none.