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 hell, 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 buttercups 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 pass 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 pass 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 passion 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 God 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 passion 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.

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 space, 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 (passion).

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 God.

_The Song of Los_ (engraved 1795) adds many interesting particulars of the process by which the world, with its philosophies and religions, has become what it is.

Los, the Eternal Prophet, is the father of all systems of thought, but it does not follow that all are equally true. For Los is out of the divine order, and therefore the systems inspired by him and his many sons, while containing streaks of the eternal truths, are all out of focus.

Thus Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brahma in the East, and it is defective because it is abstract. The same applies to all modern theosophical revivals of Hindoo religion. An abstraction for Blake was a falling away from concrete reality, and he found his deliverance in the Christian doctrine of God.

Palamabron, another son of Los, gave abstract Law to Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Abstract Law is also negative, and therefore Orc (passion) finds himself chained down with the chain of Jealousy, and howls in impotent rage.

Sotho teaches Odin a Code of War which at any time may become the philosophy of a nation.

All these, abstract philosophy, abstract law, the Mahometan Bible, Codes of War, with the Churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palaces, which they involve, while seeking to catch the joys of eternity, serve in reality to obliterate and erase eternity altogether, and the children of men schooled in these philosophies behold the vast of Nature shrunk before their shrunken eyes. After the shrinkage there can only arise a philosophy of the five senses, and then Newton and Locke, especially Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire, have it all their own way.

From all this Blake looked for deliverance to the thought-creating fires of Orc, which had flared up in France, and might be expected to spread over Europe, and set even Asia in a conflagration. The Kings of Asia, snug in their ancient woven dens, are startled into self-exertion, and emerging uneasily from their dens, call on kings, priests, counsellors and privy admonishers of men to use their immemorial rights to teach the Mortal Worms, and keep them in the paths of slavery. Happily, Orc's fires are insatiable. Raging in European darkness, he arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps, and, while "milk and blood and glandous wine in rivers rush," led the wild dance on mountain, dale, and plain, till the sullen earth shrunk away, and there dawned the eternal day.

_The Book of Los_ (engraved 1795) begins with the lament of Eno, aged Mother, as she recalls the "Times remote, when love and joy were adoration and none impure were deemed." For now, alas! Los, who alone could teach joy and liberty, is bound "in a chain and compelled to watch Urizen's shadow." Yet he cannot be bound for ever. Maddened by hard bondage, he rends asunder the vast Solid that has bound him, only to fall through the horrible void of error--"Truth has bounds, Error none"--till his contemplative thoughts arise and throw out some sort of standing-ground amidst the dire vacuity. Urizen by his contemplative thoughts, it will be remembered, had created "a wide World of solid obstruction." Now the two daemons become rivals, and the grim conflict of the ages is waged incessantly. Los with hammer and tongs organizes lungs (understanding, see Swedenborg), and some Light even appears; but the book closes with no sign of the ultimate triumph of Los, for Los and Urizen are here rivals: there can be no victory until they cease to be rivals, and re-enter into the union of the eternal order.

_The Book of Ahania_ (engraved 1795) gives the story of Fuzon, Urizen's most fiery son, and therefore the one most obnoxious to his curse. He is mortally wounded by a poisoned rock hurled at his bosom from his father's bow, and his corse is nailed to the topmost stem of the Tree of Mystery, which is religion. Then follows the sad and beautiful lament of Ahania--the wife and emanation of Urizen, and mother of the murdered Fuzon. She recalls, like Eno, the former days, when Urizen stood in the divine order, and she, his lover and wife, joyed in the transports of love, when her heart leaped at the lovely sound of his footsteps, and she kissed the place whereon his bright feet had trod; when she knew the thrilling joys of motherhood, and nursed her Babes of bliss on her full breasts. These things were now but a memory. Urizen with stern jealous cruelty had put her away, compelling her to walk weeping over rocks and dens, through valleys of death, a shadow upon the void, and on the verge of nonentity, a deep Abyss dividing her from her eternal love. Thus she weeps and laments, wearing a sorrow's crown of sorrows, the remembering happier things.

These short prophetic books, though entirely congenial to the author, were written in a tongue unknown to the public, general or particular. There was every sign that Blake would continue to produce more works, and even on a much larger scale, in this particular kind of composition, and the signs were equally clear that he must look to something else to procure the wherewithal that would enable him and his wife to live.

This something was, of course, engraving, but even the demand for _his_ engraving was growing less, and the grim spectre of poverty made his unwelcomed and uncalled-for appearance along with the spectres whom Blake could command. Over this oppressive and grinding spectre he had no command at all.

In 1796 he was asked by Miller, a publisher in Old Bond Street, to make three illustrations to be engraved by Perry for Stanley's English paraphrase of Buerger's _Lenore_. The elements of romance and weird horror in Buerger's work were quite in keeping with a side of Blake's nature that had shown itself in _Elinor_, and so the illustrations were accomplished with marked power and success.

The same year he was engaged on designs for Young's _Night Thoughts_, intended to illustrate a new and expensive edition of what was then considered one of England's great classics. The work was to be published by Edwards, of New Bond Street.

Blake was less free and happy illustrating Young than Buerger. Young has since been slain by George Eliot, but even if she had not killed him, his popularity must have waned in another generation or two. For there was very little healthy human blood in his veins. He was other-worldly, and so was Blake; but whereas Blake saw in the other world a world of transcendent beauty of which this world was the vegetable mirror, Young saw in it only a reflection of his own particular world. Hence Blake was a mystic, and Young an egotist. Blake forgot himself in the magnificence of eternity, Young's religion was "egotism turned heavenwards."

This is probably the reason why Blake's designs for Young were among the least powerful and interesting things that he did. Give him the Book of Job, or Dante, and he transcends himself, but with Young or Blair to work upon, though he does remarkable work, yet it somehow falls short of his best.

Mr Frederick Shields, who covered the walls of the Chapel of the Ascension with strange pinks and ten thousand hands, has analysed all the more important of Blake's designs, which amounted to five hundred and thirty-seven. Of these only forty-three were published. _The Night Thoughts_ was to appear in parts: only one part was published, and Young was handed over to Stothard in 1802 before he was to be, in an elaborate dress, a complete success.

The following year (1797) Blake was at work on _The Four Zoas, or The Death and Judgment of the Ancient Man_. He revised this work a few years later at the time he was planning the _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_. I shall have something to say about it when dealing with _Jerusalem_. I will only say just now that the minor prophetic books were preliminary trials to his big flights, and when here, as in _Jerusalem_, a big flight is made, it is found that Blake's mythology has received its completion, and that all the things fermenting in him and striving for utterance do, in these long poems, come to the surface. Anyone who would know him intimately must not be discouraged by their extraordinary appearance, but struggle with them, as with a foreign language, until they yield the last secrets of their mystic author.