William
Blake was an artist in tune with and in charge of his own mind despite the multitude
of barriers his age beset upon him. He was relatively unpopular in his day compared
to artists such as John Flaxman, with whom he associated. It is interesting,
then, that Blake was the only one of all of his artistic friends to become a
well-known artist after his time (Ackroyd 70). Perhaps this is because Blake
was courageous enough to present a set of very unorthodox beliefs against a
backdrop of iron principles that, although he had lost faith in them, were held
by the religious and political authorities in England (Ackroyd 151). For this
he was considered insane. But if at any stage “Blake suffered from any
sense of neglect or disparagement by his contemporaries … it served only
to spur him forward” (Ackroyd 173). He always had great control over what
he was doing; for, he was convinced that God directed his thoughts and actions.
There was never a long period of time where he doubted his path. He followed
his conscience at all times and acted impulsively as he said Jesus always did.
In his “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” Blake claims that “Jesus
was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules” (qtd. in Damon,
ABD 133). Blake would say that this is the way in which human beings should
strive to be in God. According to Peter Ackroyd, Blake was a born antinomian. This designation proved to be “the true soil of his genius” (23). Antinomianism is defined as “the theological doctrine that by faith and God’s gift of grace through the gospel, a Christian is freed not only from the Old Testament Law of Moses and all forms of legalism, but also from all law including the generally accepted standards of morality prevailing in any given culture” (Webster’s, V.I. 95). Blake might have adopted this idea in his artwork from his dissenting family, from whom “he would have learned that the righteous must eventually triumph over those set in high places, that there is no abiding city on this earth, that prophets and visionaries have an especial calling, [and] that the old order will be utterly consumed at the moment of revelation” (Ackroyd 29). Blake believed that he was helping to usher in a new order that was originally and is eternally promulgated by Jesus. With his conviction that faith was the only prerequisite to salvation, Blake considered himself among the righteous and oppressed prophets of history. He affirmed that it was not the obedience to Law that God wants from humankind, but faith in love, peace, imagination, and the forgiveness of sins, which He embodies.
With these views it certainly might seem that Blake has left the orthodox doctrines of Christianity by the wayside. However, Blake's beliefs are not outside the realm of Christianity. Therefore, it is only right to call him a Christian heterodox. In a letter to Thomas Butts, Blake affirms the idea that he is a Christian and a prophet: “I still and shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God…. Nothing can withstand the fury of my Course among the Stars of God and in the Abysses of the Accuser [.] My Enthusiasm is still what it was only Enlarged and confirmd” (Blake 691). Blake’s Christianity included an understanding of humanity in its essence, or true being, because of its unity in the body of Christ. That is to say that all of humanity is Christ, or God, for William Blake. However, he also saw that mankind differs "as much in essence as they do in form, limbs, and senses” (Blake 572). This is to express the diverse multitude that God expresses himself within. Blake “was much more ready to accept ‘that man is a microcosm, comprehending in himself partially everything, which the world contains divinely and totally’” (qtd. in Ackroyd 90). He affirms that Jesus is God, for God is humankind. Then, he goes further to require that humankind worship the best parts of humanity, for this is surely God to him (Blake l76).
In all his work, Blake illustrates how to interpret the events of the Bible in an imaginative fashion. Imagination to Blake is another form of God. This idea can be understood more specifically as the way humankind interacts with God. Blake uses his imagination to incorporate “conventional Christian eschatology with his own spiritual vision, whether invented or acquired” (Ackroyd 299). However, “there will always be a curse on any critic who tries to see the Christianity and the radicalism of Blake as a dichotomy instead of a unity” (Frye, FSSWB 346). For Blake, contraries promote progression, and unity is “the sympathetic love that binds the whole universe together” (White 154). Blake illustrates this in his artwork, which becomes the main tenant of his Christian religion; for in this way he believes he is communing with God. “There is No Natural Religion” and “All Religions are One” are said to “contain the whole of [Blake’s] thought if they are understood simultaneously” (Frye, FSSWB 345). Blake rethinks the methods that humankind uses in reaching God in these tracts. He sees religion as an imaginative experience, not one that utilizes the functions of reason. He even rejects the orthodox version of the Last Judgment, calling it an “Antichrist,” for it contradicted Mercy and the Forgiveness of Sins (Damon, ABD 235). Blake’s Last Judgment occurs whenever an error, or sin, is recognized and cast out. Only then can one live in the Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love of God, as described in “The Divine Image.” Together through imaginative artwork, the forgiveness of sins, love, and peace, Blake creates an idea of Christianity that is relatively unique.
Blake’s life experience in London was a large contributor to the development of his beliefs. He had always wondered why men in his time were treated so harshly for minor crimes. In his neighborhood “the heads of the condemned were still rotting on Temple Bar, the stocks were still a great public spectacle, and soldiers were lashed in the streets” (Ackroyd 31). Perhaps his first-hand experience with this violence influenced his desire for love, compassion, and forgiveness. Blake wanted to promulgate the dissolution of vengeance so that humanity could be one in the God that is worshipped in love. He taught that “forgiveness of sins is on the moral level the act of entering another’s bosom … which can be accomplished only through the imagination…. When this happens all men are one man … [and] the human form is recognized as the divine” (Rose 456). Blake references his contemporaries’ views of Jehovah as a God of vengeance in his “The Ghost of Abel,” and shows how Jesus as Jehovah has become a God of mercy: “Jesus’ description of him as a loving Father of all was revolutionary; he was no longer the God of vengeful Justice but the God of Mercy” (Damon, ABD 205). Blake’s vision of God can be seen to be one of love and forgiveness. In this vision, mercy is a denial of the laws of Moses, morality, and the sinlessness of Jesus. This is evident in his presentation of Jesus in “The Everlasting Gospel.” For Blake, Jesus could only become a forgiver by sinning himself first. But Jesus’ sins are against the law, not against God. Blake delineates doubt as the true sin against God that occurs when one, who feels shame for sin, doesn’t recognize God’s mercy. This person is blaspheming God’s gift of forgiveness and is condemned for his or her doubt.
Blake further exhibits his doctrines of the forgiveness of sin and the state of humankind in “The Laocoon.” The original “Laocoon was the priest of Poseidon who warned his countrymen against the Trojan horse” (Damon, ABD 234). In Blake’s version of the Laocoon, he engraves a series of inscriptions around a picture of Jehovah and his two sons Satan and Adam. These scattered lines must all be read at one time because they are interrelated in meaning and have no particular order (Erdman, PPWB 735). When this is done, it can be seen that Blake is warning humankind about the trappings of the knowledge of good and evil. This is a perception of shame in the presence of sin. His point is to show how mankind must use imagination and artwork to live in forgiveness as the body of Christ.
It
is quite evident that Blake worked to replace the existing orthodox view of
Christianity with one of his own. It almost seems that “Blake is constructing
systems most coherently when he is smashing systems; Blake is smashing systems
most vigorously when he is constructing systems” (Smith 175). In the creation
of his mythology, Blake replaces many of what he deems the misconceptions of
orthodoxy. In the “Everlasting Gospel,” Blake suggests that “the
Vision of Christ that thou dost see / Is my Visions Greatest Enemy” (Blake
516). The word “thou,” of course, refers to those stuck in the confines
of orthodox religious doctrine. Blake sees vast importance in the distinction
between subjectivity and objectivity. In his “There is No Natural Religion”
and “All Religions are One” tracts, Blake affirms that subjectivity
is a superior attribute. Surely, one cannot be truly subjective under the restraints
of an orthodox system.Blake’s own subjective view of life includes his frequent visions of past prophets, spiritual entities, and God Himself, which “afforded him authenticity and prophetic status in a world that ignored him; they acted as comfort … in circumstances when he felt … unwanted. Yet they were real … he had been blessed with a second sight” (Ackroyd 35). The visions became his strength and the vehicle that he used to establish one of the most extensive myths of all time. According to Ackroyd, “his decision to establish his myth was a way of strengthening and deepening that sense of visionary world which he had possessed since childhood. He had broken open the conventional doors of perception and, through the space he had created, he could now see farther than anyone else” (175-6). Although it might be easy to consider Blake insane because of his visions, as his contemporaries did, the myth that Blake created from them can easily be compared to the Book of Revelations in the Bible. Much of his art is of the most symbolic nature and very hard to understand. Yet, Blake wanted it this way, so it could only be understood by those with a powerful imagination.
The question remains as to how Blake may have come to his theories that led to his artistic creation. He never strayed from his native country, “and never experienced fame of any kind…. That is why in his epic poems, England becomes the holy land, the seat of the ancient patriarchs and the home of the chosen race; for it was here, too, that he experienced his own spiritual reawakening” (Ackroyd 97). Yes, he had a multitude of visions almost daily that were the source of most of his work. But, his visions alone could not have allowed him to refer so closely to the Bible and works of classic literature. According to Ackroyd, “Much of his education certainly came from solitary and incessant reading” (24). This style of study had a series of disadvantages though. His work is full of unorthodox spelling and grammar. Beyond this, the act of reading alone without experience has been known to encourage “single-mindedness, obstinacy, and even pugnaciousness” (Ackroyd 24). However, “from his reading he eventually was able to fashion a mythic system that has no equal in his own, or any other, century” (Ackroyd 24). Of all his studies, the Bible was his main focus. “He assimilated the very shape and structure of the biblical narrative, which in strangely changed form, is to be glimpsed in his own epic poetry” (Ackroyd 25). It is not only visible in his epic poetry, though, but all of his work combined becomes an imaginative recreation of the Bible. Blake argued “that the inner meaning of the Bible lay in a revelation not of ‘Divine humaneness’ but of the ‘divinity’ of human nature itself” (Beer 31). Blake’s “was a privately gained and more esoteric knowledge, which could never be imparted in … liberal and rational conversation…. In that sense Blake stood apart from the mores of his age, and as a result, he never became a member of any group, sect or club. He prided himself on his self-sufficiency, and his ‘unbending deportment’ was such that he was to spend much of his life in self-imposed isolation” (Ackroyd 87). Beyond this, “he rarely became attached to ideas or suggestions other than those that he formulated for himself. But he was immensely receptive to beliefs which might confirm his own sense of life” (Ackroyd 88).
Interestingly, the only time that Blake attached himself to a group or congregation of any kind was “on 13 April 1789, … when he attended a general conference of the New Jerusalem Church at the Swedenborgian chapel in Great East Cheap; it lasted five days and there were some sixty to seventy participants, filing through a portal that had inscribed on it ‘NOW IT IS ALLOWABLE’ – words that Swedenborg had once seen in a vision” (Ackroyd 102). Blake later disassociated from the group because they became institutionalized and talked more about avoiding sinfulness than invoking charity and love (Ackroyd 147). Moreover, it is recorded that Blake never attended the small church in Felpham, where he lived for a couple years (Ackroyd 220). However, he did draw some of his philosophical beliefs from the mysticism of Emmanuel Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme, and Paracelsus (Ackroyd 147). It can be definitively said that Blake’s lifestyle did not include orthodox religion at all. He was a very spiritual man: he had visions of the spirit world, ‘talked’ to God, and dedicated his life to recording what he called the Word of God. Yet, with a lifetime of avoiding religious groups with the one exception of the Swedenborgian church, he can be said to be a non-religious person in the orthodox sense. However, if Blake’s life is observed in a larger perspective, he was a very religious person. His artwork became the symbols of his religion and his lifestyle was the method that he used to unite with God. His visions became the mystical part of his religion and the use of Imagination was the meditative part of his religion. Perhaps Blake suggests, by example, that all people should create their own way of worshipping God outside the confines of orthodox religion.
This thesis leaves many of Blake’s more studied prophetic works to stand for themselves. They have been overanalyzed to the point where a reader might not be able to use his or her imagination while reading them. Instead, this thesis will focus on Blake’s less analyzed work so that a fresh perspective can be given to his spirituality and religious heterodoxy. It will also examine some of the comments Blake has made in his letters and annotations to established works. The intent here is not to analyze Blake’s philosophy as right or wrong, but to present it as the subjective truth of an enlightened human being. While reading the Bible, one may allow God to talk through the Word that is there, so that enlightenment ensues. Blake asks his readers to see his work as the Word of God directed through him. Therefore, this thesis may only present a subjective view of the truths Blake promulgated. The first question that one might ask is, “Did God talk through William Blake?” It is orthodox Christianity to believe that God dwells in all the faithful, and William Blake expressed an absolute faith in Jesus Christ throughout his life. The subsequent question then is, “What did God say through William Blake?” That is what this work will attempt to establish.
The foregoing paragraphs have provided a brief overview of what this thesis will contain. Chapter one will examine Blake’s belief in God, and what that belief entails. Chapter two will investigate Blake’s doctrines on the forgiveness of sins and Jesus’ destruction of religious law. This chapter will also briefly consider what sin really is: disbelief in God. Finally, chapter three will ponder the idea of Blake as a true Christian prophet based on his life and work.