Dark Visions of Torment: William Blake

This is a strange title for me to give this post because I don't find Blake's work in the least tormenting. Clearly, this work speaks to me of what I already know; the fish that swims against the stream achieves a victory even if that victory comes in death. Browning's Childe Roland arriving at the Dark Tower comes to mind, for here is a trumpet blast of victory even if that victory is only the achievement of consciousness, in this case the consciousness of darkness, of what Coleridge calls "the dread watchtower of the absolute self." I like Blake because he writes about what I already know and care for. And his work is for me a splendid example of how literature works; that is, a work of literature works best when it both imagines that which we know and keeps us in uncertainty. In other words, Blake is one of those writers who is always ahead of his readers, at least those readers whose reading is an attempt to do what Urizen does: formulate a wide interpretation of solid obstruction or seek a solid without fluctuation. Urizen's torment derives from his inability to share eternity with the Eternals; he wants it for himself. To allegorize this as the reading process, I suggest that Urizen does not want to share the text with a community of readers; instead he wants to create a group of readers, all of whom read like him, accept his vision of things, which is to say his vision of himself. Selfhood brings torment.

I seem to have reached a paradox here: Blake writes about that which I already know. If this is so, then to accept Blake's vision of things is to accept my own vision of things, and in doing this I must perforce be locked in selfhood. It also presumes that I understand what Blake has to say, a rather large presumption. My only way out of this torment is through the door of uncertainty. My understanding is certainly not without fluctuation; I have not closed the book. In fact, I do not wish to close the book; to do so would be to shelve it, own it, consume it, swallow it the way the Abyss swallows Blake's creatures at the moment of creation. I prefer to play with possibilities.

Speaking of creation, I may say that THE BOOK OF URIZEN is about creation and miscreation. This much seems clear. Unlike AMERICA or EUROPE, THE BOOK OF URIZEN dispenses with historical material and moves us directly into mythic time and space; whereas those earlier works allude to Biblical and Miltonic types, and even assimilate them to political and social realities of the late eighteenth century, THE BOOK OF URIZEN rewrites Genesis. Blake said at the end of The MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL that he would give the world the Bible of Hell whether the world wanted it or not; here is part of that Bible, the part that chronicles creation. The key to this version of creation is that for Blake the Fall and Creation are coterminus. The story goes something like this: in the beginning was one huge Being, called the Eternals, the plural indicating a unity that has nothing to do with uniformity. In Genesis, of course, this is the time before God moved upon the face of the waters. One aspect of this great Being decided to separate himself from unity and in parody of Genesis he "arose on the waters"; this aspect, called Urizen, desired power. Rather than accept mutuality, Urizen projected himself as the only reality. He does so with a blast of trumpets in a parody of Revelation (see chapter ll). Paradoxically, Urizen's move of separation reveals him as nothing but a shadow, unknown and unprolific. Again, in Genesis this is Satan who refuses to play second fiddle in Heaven and who is a shape shifter, a thing of no clear form or identity.

Where God gives Moses, later in Genesis, the tablets of stone upon which are written the Ten Commandments, Urizen writes the Book of eternal brass. You can see how Blake conflates events. The Creation includes the Fall (after all Urizen falls from unity with the eternals), and the Fall brings with it the rise of law and governance. With the book of law comes those to enforce the law: the Priesthood, Kingship, and one God. Again Blake reverses a biblical typos: in Daniel the great book is sealed only to be opened at the end of time as represented in Revelation. Urizen unclasps his book of brass to begin social organization. The opening of the book separates Urizen from the Eternals; it leaves "ruinous fragments of life." Another metaphor familiar in Romantic poetry is "sleep." Remember Goya's "The Sleep of Reason." This is Urizen's sleep or that of Enitharmon in Europe. The world of sleep is the world we live in: the nightmare of history from which we are trying to awake. From the point of view of the Eternals, the earth is death, Urizen a clod of clay. That is, when we take nature as the only reality we live a life-in-death (see The Ancient Mariner).

Meanwhile, another of the Eternals, Los the great artist, looks on on this going on with dismay. Not being able to understand what is happening--how could he since Urizen is formless, shadowy?--Los sets out to make Urizen graspable by giving him form. This is a bit like Odysseus's need to hold Proteus down until he assumes a definite form. So: we see Los at work forging Urizen. Unfortunately, Los clarifies Urizen but negatively. Rather than giving him positive form, he gives him negative form, and in doing so he begets time and the cycles of generation. We have a parody of the seven days of creation in the seven Ages of dismal woe, the last five of which give us the formation of the five senses ending in touch. Once the seven Ages have passed, Los closes up (shrinks the way Urizen did; the Fall is a shrinking into selfhood) and separates into a male and female part. The female part is called Pity; she is Enitharmon. The two of them are akin to Adam and Eve, and they have a child called Orc. Sound familiar? In all this we have fallen love which must hide its lineaments in secresy and jealousy. The parents enchain their child, and Los even attempts to kill him.

Meanwhile, Urizen explores his dens, the image drawing on the rapaciousness of lions and the enclosedness of caves. The world--nature--surrounds us like a cavern. We are swallowed by nature. This is an important metaphor in Blake. The poem ends with Urizen forming Religion as a Net to hold all his subjects in thrall, and a final parody of Genesis in Blake's vision of Creation as a Fall. Urizen and his forms of repression--the scientific instruments he uses, religion, law, books--hold sway.

This is the story told in the written part of THE BOOK OF URIZEN, at least as far as I can follow it. But for me, the fun only now begins. The very fact of reversal in this story indicates to me the possibility of reversal everywhere and I look at this work for its chiasmic effect. In other words, I think we can play with aspects of the very words Blake uses to see him signaling the continual possibility for reversal. Urizen may separate, but his separation is not irreversible.