William Blake, Painter and Poet

by Richard Garnett

The general effect of these strange works upon the average mind is correctly expressed by Gilchrist, when he says, speaking of Europe: “It is hard to trace out any distinct subject, any plan or purpose, or to determine whether it mainly relates to the past, the present, or things to come. And yet its incoherence has a grandeur about it as of the utterance of a man whose eyes are fixed on strange and awful sights, invisible to bystanders.” What, then, did Blake suppose himself to behold? Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have devoted an entire volume of their three-volume work on Blake to the exposition of his visions. Their comment is often highly suggestive, but it is seldom convincing. When the right interpretation of a symbol has been found, it is usually self-evident. Not so with their explanations, which appear neither demonstrably wrong nor demonstrably right. Not that Blake talked aimless nonsense; we are conscious of a general drift of thought in some particular direction which seems to us to offer a general affinity to the thought of the ancient Gnostics. It would be interesting if some competent person would endeavour to determine whether the resemblance goes any deeper than externals. Blake certainly knew nothing of the Gnostics at first hand, nor is it probable that he could have gained any knowledge of them from the mystical writers he did study, Behmen and Swedenborg. But similar tendencies will frequently incarnate themselves in individuals at widely remote periods of the world’s history without evidence of direct filiation. Even so exceptional a personage as Blake cannot be considered apart from his age, and his age, among its other aspects, was one of mesmerism and illuminism. The superficial resemblance of his writings to those of the Gnostics is certainly remarkable. Both embody their imaginations in concrete forms; both construct elaborate cosmogonies and obscure myths; both create hierarchies of principalities and powers, and equip their spiritual potentates with sonorous appellations; both disparage matter and its Demiurgus. “I fear,” said Blake to Robinson, “that Wordsworth loves nature, and nature is the work of the devil. The devil is in us as far as we are nature.” The chief visible difference, that the Gnostics’ philosophy tends to asceticism, and Blake’s to enjoyment, may perhaps be explained by the consideration that he was a poet, and that they were philosophers and divines. Perhaps the best preparation for any student of Blake who might wish to investigate this subject further would be to read the article in the Dictionary of Christian Biography upon the Pistis Sophia, the only Gnostic book that has come down to us, and one which Blake would have delighted in illustrating. The Gnostic belief in the all-importance of the transcendent knowledge which comes of immediate perception (γνῶσις) reappears in him with singular intensity. “Men are admitted into heaven,” he says, “not because they have curbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy.” Nothing in Blake, perhaps, is so Gnostic as the strange poem, The Everlasting Gospel, first published by Mr. Rossetti, though many things in it would have shocked the Gnostics.

TITLE PAGE FROM THE BOOK OF THEL.

The strictly literary criticism of Blake’s mystical books may be almost confined to the Book of Thel, for this alone possesses sufficient symmetry to allow a judgment to be formed upon it as a whole. The others are like quagmires occasionally gay with brilliant flowers; but Thel, though its purpose may be obscure, is at all events coherent, with a beginning and an end. Thel, “youngest daughter of the Seraphim,” roves through the lower world lamenting the mortality of beautiful things, including her own. All things with which she discourses offer her consolation, but to no purpose. At last she enters the realm of Death himself.

The eternal gates’ terrific porter lifted the northern bar;

Thel entered in and saw the secrets of the land unknown.

She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous root

Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:

A land of sorrows and of tears, where never a smile was seen.