A PROPHECY (1793)
But his speculations went past decorum and at least touched the idea of primary law. In some parts of the Prophetic Books (written in the period which may fairly be called a paroxysm) he really seems to be preaching the idea that sin is sometimes a good thing because it leads to forgiveness. I cannot think this idea does much credit to Blake’s power of logic, which was generally good. The very fact of forgiveness implies that what led up to it was evil. But though the position is hardly rational, it is quite unfair to say that it is insane. It is no sillier or more untenable than a hundred sophistries that one may hear at every tea-table or read in every magazine. A little while ago the family of a young lady attempted to shut her up in an asylum because she believed in Free Love. This atrocious injustice was stopped; but many people wrote to the papers to say that marriage was a very fine thing—as indeed it is. Of course the answer was simple: that if everyone with silly opinions were locked up in an asylum, the asylums of the twentieth century would have to be somewhat unduly enlarged. The same common-sense applies to the case of Blake. That he did maintain some monstrous propositions proves that he was not always right, that he had even a fine faculty for being exceedingly wrong. But it does not prove that he was a madman or anything remotely resembling one. Nor is there any reason to suppose that he was carried into any practice inconsistent with his strong domestic affections. Indeed, I think that much of Blake’s anarchy is connected with his innocence. I have noticed the combination more than once, especially in men of Irish blood like Blake. Heavy, full-blooded men feel the need of bonds and are glad to bind themselves. But the chaste are often lawless. They are theoretically reckless, because they are practically pure. Thus Ireland, while it is the island of rebels is also the island of saints, and might be called the island of virgins.
But when we have reached this point—that this ugly element in Blake was an intrusion of Blake’s mere theory of things—we have come, I think, very close to the true principle to be pursued in estimating his madness or his sanity. Blake the mere poet, would have been decent and respectable. It was Blake the logician who was forced to be almost blackguardly. In other words, Blake was not mad; for such part of him as was mad was not Blake. It was an alien influence, and in a sense even an accidental one; in an extreme sense it might even be called antagonist. Properly to appreciate what this influence was, we must see the man’s artistic character as a whole and notice what are its biggest forces and its biggest defects when taken in the bulk—in the whole mass of his poetry, his pictures, his criticism and his conversation. Blake’s position can be summed up as a sufficiently simple problem. Blake could do so many things. Why is it that he could do none of them quite right?
Blake was not a frail or fairy-like sort of person; he had not the light unity, the capering completeness of the entirely irresponsible man. He had not the independence, one might almost say the omnipotence, that comes from being hopelessly weak. There was nothing in him of Mr Skimpole; he was not a puff of silver thistledown. He was not a reed shaken in the wind in Jordan. He was rather an oak rooted in England, but an oak half killed by the ivy. The interesting question of spiritual botany is—What was the ivy that half killed him? Originally his intellect was not only strong but strongly rational—one might almost say strongly sceptical. There never was a man of whom it was less true to say (as has been said) that he was a light sensitive lyrist, a mere piper of pretty songs for children. His mind was like a ruined Roman arch; it has been broken by barbarians; but what there is of it is Roman. So it was with William Blake’s reason; it had been broken (or cracked) by something; but what there was of it was reasonable. In his art criticism he never said anything that was not strictly consistent with his first principles. In his controversies, in the many matters in which he argued angrily or venomously, he never lost the thread of the argument. Like every great mystic he was also a great rationalist. Read Blake’s attack upon Stothard’s picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims, and you will see that he could not only write a quite sensible piece of criticism, but even a quite slashing piece of journalism. By nature one almost feels that he might have done anything; have conducted campaigns like Napoleon or studied the stars like Newton. But something, when all is said and done, had eaten away whole parts of that powerful brain, leaving parts of it standing like great Greek pillars in a desert. What was this thing?
A FEMALE DREAM (1793)
Madness is not an anarchy. Madness is a bondage: a contraction. I will not call Blake mad because of anything he would say. But I will call him mad in so far as there was anything he must say. Now, there are notes of this tyranny in Blake. It was not like the actual disease of the mind that makes a man believe he is a cat or a dog; it was more like the disease of the nerves, which makes a man say “dog” when he means “cat.” One mental jump or jerk of this nature may be especially remarked in Blake. He had in his poetry one very peculiar habit, a habit which cannot be considered quite sane. It was the habit of being haunted, one may say hag-ridden by a fixed phrase, which gets itself written in ten separate poems on quite different subjects, when it had no apparent connection with any of them. The amusing thing is that the omnipresent piece of poetry is generally the one piece that is quite incomprehensible. The verse that Blake’s readers can understand least seems always to be the verse that Blake likes best. I give an ordinary instance, if anything connected with Blake can be called ordinary.