William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

by Michelle Coghlan

Abstract

William Blake's landmark prose piece, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, rose out of the milieu of revolution and his interest in mysticism rather than institutionalized religion. Yet though Blake was a prophetic poet, laboring over Illuminated texts to radically challenge the religious and socio-political "mind-forged manacles" of his day, he found little audience. Today, however, he engenders support from both popular and literary circles. The process of finding this audience for his Marriage of Heaven and Hell has been problematic, hindered by both his artistic genuis and style of printing, and of technology's inability to present en masse his complete text. Internet technology has offered Blake readers new inroads into appreciating both visual and poet forms, and thus in some sense neutralize Northrop Frye's conception of Blake as a poet victimized by anthologies.

A Prophet without Audience

Twentieth century poet Muriel Rutyser writes in The Life of Poetry that "poets areheroes of possibility" (136). Although the comment was directed specifically towards the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley, it seems descriptive of another Romantic poet, William Blake. Blake,s writings champion the possibilities of humanity against the "mind forged manacles" that would subvert that potential. His philosophy dictated that "every honest man [is] a prophet" (Brokowski 36)"and his poetic, prophetic voice resonates as much with modern readers as it did with his few contemporary ones. His words and intricate engravings fell into very few hands; in 1824, Charles Lamb, one of the few to have read and appreciated Blake, remarked to a friend, "Blake is a real name, I assure you"and a most extraordinary man" (Wu 53). Thus, although Blake was indeed a prophet, he was one without a general audience.

In Search of an Audience: Blake and his Critics

Blake's obscurity is largely a product of his artistic genius. Because of the labor intensive and meticulous process that went into his "infernal method" (Wu 89) of printing, few copies of his work were published. Even The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"a work whose lines gave Aldous Huxley the title for his treatise on mescaline, provided Jim Morrison inspiration for the name of his controversial band, the Doors, and whose proverbs would appear on "walls and protest signs throughout the English speaking world [since the 1960's]" (Ferber vii), and emblazon web sites in the Twenty-first century"exists in the form of a mere nine known copies ("William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" 1) . Stephen M. Lane explains, "Most of his work circulated among a very tight circle of friends and admirers" (1).

Indeed, Blake's work was near unknown until Alexander Gilchrist published his 1863 biography of Blake, A Life; writes Geoffrey Keynes, "His art was in fact far too adventurous and unconventional to be easily accepted in the late 18th or early 19th Centuries" (1). However, it was not until the 1920's that Keynes published The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, thus making Blake's prophetic voice readily available to the world. Yet Keynes' text offered Blake readers problems in that he chose to standardize and alter Blake's original texts, and thus did not offer the world true look at Blake's work. Noted Blake scholar David M. Erdman attempted to rectify this situation by publishing first The Poetry and Prose of William Blake (1962) and finally the exhaustive, MLA approved The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (1982). Yet even this text proves problematic, in that Erdman had to choose between various copies of texts and edit Blake's work in light of often very differently ordered or illustrated works. (Miller4-5). Critic Jon Mee explains the difficulty in Blake's texts as the "'radical variability' of Blake's illuminated books [that] prevents their assuming the authority of scripture. The various 'copies' of the same text have differences of detail and even in the ordering of their plates" (15). It is then the prophetic and time consuming method that Blake used--coupled with his variability of texts"that served to obscure his message. Editors to date have yet to find a method of authentically rendering Blake in the form he might have chosen, though the possibilities of hypertext"and the Blake on-line Archive, by presenting several copies of MHH. and by making his graphics readily available, have come closest to doing so.

A Prophet in Nine Copies: Publication of MHH

Blake's illuminated work MHH was begun, according to textual clues, in 1790 at the age of thirty-three. Blake and his wife, Catherine, had recently moved to Lambeth, a suburb of London, and it was here that Blake would compose Songs of Experience and his Prophetic books. Martin K. Nurmi points out that Blake was working on Songs of Experience as he wrote MHH, and this frame of mind heightened the polarity and contraries found in MHH (59). The exact date of publication is subject to critical debate. Duncan Wu in Romanticism: An Anthology puts the publication date as 1790, citing the decision of the Blake Trust/Tate Gallery to do so (84). G.E. Bentley, Jr. in Blake Records cites the publication date as between 1790-1793, but notes in any case that in 1790 Blake did publish MHH with 27 separate colored engravings (612). Critic J. Bronowski also cites the period of 1790-1793 as that of compilation and publication for MHH and contends that "all copies of it have for last pages A Song of Liberty, although this may not have been written for it" (68). Harold Bloom adds, however, that A Song of Liberty was not engraved until 1792, though he also asserts that it was always "boundas a coda or pendant to the greater work" (22). We know that only nine copies of the work were printed between 1790 and 1794, copies K, L, and M were engraved in black ink, and only copies A-C were complete ("The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" 1).

MHH seems a direct response to -- and satire of -- Emmanuel Swedenborg. Blake writes, "The eternal hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes folded up" (WU 85). Originally, Blake closely aligned himself with Swedenborg's ideals. We know, for example, that in 1789 he and Catherine attended the first General Conference of the New Jerusalem Church, and that they signed the forty-two articles proposed at the conference, including those that denounced slavery and heralded that "all are redeemed" (Ferber 90-91). Yet within the year Blake grew disillusioned with the establishment of the new church, and particularly with the church's oath of loyalty to the King. Thus, MHH grows out of Blake's increasing disillusionment with Swedenborg. Indeed, Bloom links the seed for MHH to an annotation Blake made in 1788 while reading Swedenborg's Wisdom of Angels Concerning Divine Wisdom. Blake apparently came to a statement which he felt urgently needed restatement, and thus wrote in the margins "Good & Evil are here both Good & the two contraries married" (Bloom 3). Thus MHH seems to be a refashioning of Swedenborgian ideas rendered in the light of Blakian philosophy.

Such inspiration to rebuke Swedenborg and ally himself with the prophetic voice is evident in the text of MHH. Blake's mention of "As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent" (Wu 85) is a direct jab at Swedenborg, who wrote in his True Chirstian Religion that the last judgment in the spiritual world was 1757, the year of Blake's birth. In 1758 Writing in 1790, at the Christological age of thirty-three, Blake celebrates in himself the reviving of the Eternal Hell" writes Erdman (51). However, Blake's work must be seen in light of both his evolving theological ideas, and in the perspective of a England newly confronted with the ideals of the French Revolution. Erdman points out that MHH represents not only a shift in Blake's religious sentiments, but also in his radical political consciousness: "In MHH we see what a contrary and revolutionary step Blake has persuaded himself to take from an interest in the New Church to an enthusiasm for the new society[He] progressed from Wilkite patriotism in 1770's to humanitarian Christianity in the late 1780's to political radicalism in the 1790's" (37). This radicalism is evident in not only the text of MHH, but also in Blake's decision to end it with A Song of Liberty"a poem Erdman describes as "speak[ing] of a new republic" (42). Yet Blake's radicalism would only be appreciated en masse in the Twentieth century, and draws us to again ponder his position as prophet without audience.

Finding an Audience: Modern Takes on Blake

In his landmark Blake criticism Fearful Symmetry, Northrop Frye remarks that Blake is a "victim of anthologies" (Lane 1). We see such victimization in the text we have of MHH"its standard spelling and sterility on paper, robbed of its accompanying plates, does not give us Blake's holistic work. The concept of authentic rendering"though problematic with Blake's textual variability--is yet important because of the craft that went into producing the illuminated text of MHH. Blake revived the Illuminated Manuscript so that each of his books would be a "unique work of art and a radical break with not only traditional book printing but the traditional means of presenting poetic and philosophic discourse" ("Blake and the Illuminated Book" 1). It was a means of marrying the visual and the poetic forms of his prophetic voice. Thus Blake writes in MHH "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite. This I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid" (Wu 89). He termed the process "illuminated printing" and asserted that it is "a style more ornamental, uniform, and grand than any before dictated" (Ferber xiv). We cannot partake in this marriage of visuals, poetry, and philosophy without being granted access to Blake's engravings.

Let us consider Plate 1 of MHH.. Although it does not substantially alter the reader's perception of the Blake's title, his choice of offering us couples in uninhibited embrace to foreground the title does offer clues to the freedom presented by the marriage of heaven and hell. Plate 2's etching of the act of raising another person up a tree points to the "once meek" (Wu 84) Rintrah who now roars to raise the just up in the time of revolution ("Now is the dominion of Edom" Wu 85). Similarly, Plate 21 offers another example of the etchings illuminating the text. The plate depicts an old man, hand bound behind his back, naked before the vast pyramids. The man evokes the idea of men bound by ancient wisdom which Blake so powerfully alludes to in his discussion of Swedenborg: "Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, though it is only the contents or index of already published booksNow hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods" (Wu 92). Finally, Plate 24 offers further example of the illuminating qualities of the engravings. In its depiction of an old man crawling on all fours we see a visual of the mind-forged manacles Blake spoke of in Songs of Innocence and Experience, the old man becoming emblematic for all those trapped within a theology, or society, of tyranny. Blake urges us to cast off such trappings, relating that "No virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments: Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse"not from rules" (Wu 93).

Thus, the engravings offer key insight into the text. And at the same time, such engravings serve to keep the text from an audience of readers because of the energy needed to print each individual plate of MHH. Today, because of Internet and hypertext technology, we can appreciate Blake's work on paper and in its entirety on the web. Yet even web technology and links, while illuminating Blake's work, can be cumbersome in that the reader must constantly shift between plate and text link. The reading's cumbersome quality is heightened by the variation of copies that the reader should browse through in order to fully appreciate Blake's text Such problems have yet to be resolved. However, these textual and readerly problems are minimal in the context of Blake's previous obscurity. Indeed, it is a small wonder that with only nine known copies of MHH we are able to appreciate Blake's prophetic prose. Perhaps Blake was correct when he said, in MHH that "Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed" (88). Perhaps it is Blake's faith in is art, and his voice, that neutralized his need to widely publish his works. The fact that we are to this day reading, rereading, and appreciating MHH points to the fact that regardless of the number of people who originally were privy to his work, he is today a prophet with an audience.

Works Cited

Bentley, Jr., G.E. Blake Records. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.

Bloom, Harold. William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. New York: Chelsea House, 1987

Bronowski, J. William Blake and the Age of Revolution. New York: Harper, 1965.

Erdman, David M. "The Eternal Hell Revives." William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987.

Ferber, Michael. The Poetry of William Blake. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Keynes, Geoffrey. " William Blake: An Introduction." William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.

Lane, Stephen M. "Blake, the Common Reader, and Multimedia." University of California, Berkeley. 2 Feb. 1999.

Mee, Jon. Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790's. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.

Miller, Dan, Mark Bracher, and Donald Ault, eds. Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method. Durham: Duke UP, 1987.

Nurmi, Martin K. "Polar Being." William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987.

Rukyeser, Muriel. A Muriel Rukyeser Reader. Ed. Jan Heller Levi. New York: Norton, 1994.

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." The Blake Archive.

"William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." http: members.aa.net/ ~urizen/ mhh/mhh.html

"William Blake and the Illuminated Book." The Blake Archive.

Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1994.