William
Blake declared himself a prophet at various points in his life, his letters,
and writings. Yet, Blake did not assume the role of a soothsayer, or one who
can see into the future. He claimed that the real definition of a prophet is
one who reveals eternal truths. Under this definition, Blake says that any person
who taps into the universal Poetic Genius with his or her imagination and records
his or her vision in some form of art is a prophet. He even says that Truth
is subjective when revealed from the imaginations of various artist-prophets.
However, it is unusual in orthodox religious tradition for an artist to refer
to himself as a prophet. This is where Blake is unique, even though he understood
that this was the case. Consequently, Blake had a hard time coming to terms
with his role as a self-proclaimed prophet. He knew that prophets were self-proclaimed
in the Bible, but the idea that some of his contemporaries believed that he
was insane added to his difficulties. Finally, Blake realized that in order
to be true to himself and true to God, he had to believe in his prophetic mission
and move forward without doubting it. Therefore, Blake moved forward with his
purpose: to reveal Heaven to humanity, and to examine the means by which humanity
may reach a perception of Heaven. In this message (using Blake’s own definition,
and in Blake’s claim that he received revelation from God and the spiritual
realm), it can be said that Blake was indeed a prophetic artist. Blake declares himself a prophet in the tract “All Religions are One.” He writes, “The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness” underneath the title of this tract (Blake 2). This is a direct reference to John the Baptist who is referred to as “The voice of one crying in the wilderness” and who is instructed to “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3). Thus, with this allusion, Blake implies that he is a prophet, like John the Baptist, who will prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. In the New Testament, John is the prophet who reveals the true identity of Jesus as God. This goes along with Blake’s definition of what a prophet is and does: A prophet looks imaginatively into the eternal Spiritual realm in order to reveal the truths seen there to the masses. Accordingly, Blake would say that “prophets are not foretellers of future facts; they are revealers of eternal truths” (Damon, ABD 335). Blake scholar M. Berger says that “Blake would have classed himself among the old Hebrew Prophets, or the great poets of all time, compelled to proclaim to all men the way of escape from eternal death, and to open their eyes to the divine light, which at the appointed hour, will reveal itself and shine forth in full splendor upon all” (qtd. in White 226). In an annotation to Watson’s Apology for the Bible, Blake writes:
"Prophets in the modern sense of the word have never existed …Every honest man is a Prophet[:] he utters his opinion both of private and public matters[.] Thus if you go on So the result is So[.] He never says such a thing Shall happen let you do what you will. A prophet is a Seer not an Arbitrary Dictator." (Blake 607)
With this designation, it may be easier to accept Blake’s claim as a prophet. By placing the implicative line on top of “All Religions are One,” he reveals the tract as a series of eternal truths. He also identifies himself as an honest man who can write openly without fear of misleading anyone. He declares that he has looked into the eternal Spiritual domain, or the Poetic Genius, and has developed a set of truths to reveal at large.
Blake begins “A Ghost of Abel” with a similar heading, then follows it with the pronouncement of one of his contemporaries as a fellow prophet. His subtitle reads, “A Revelation In the Visions of Jehovah / Seen by William Blake” (Blake 268). Again, he implies that he is a prophet, but this time, he clearly indicates that he has received a revelation. In this statement, he declares that the subsequent work is a new vision of Jehovah that was revealed to him from the eternal Poetic Genius. In the same way, as a prophet, he is “that visionary poet who, through his enlarged senses, perceives the ‘eternal principles or characters of human life,’ the living basis of belief” (Schorer 45). Before the subject of the piece begins, however, he writes a preface to Lord Byron:
"To LORD BYRON in the Wilderness
What doest thou here Elijah?
Can a Poet doubt the vision of Jehovah?" (Blake 268)
Here Blake makes the same reference to John the Baptist, but this time he implies that Lord Byron is a prophet. In fact, Blake goes so far as to call Byron Elijah, the prophet who communicated directly with God and was taken up to heaven on a fiery chariot (Damon, ABD 118). The gravity of this reference is meant to suggest that Byron is a genuine poet, and thus, the perfect prophet. Correspondingly, Blake’s “A Ghost of Abel” was a response to Byron’s “Cain, A Mystery” (Damon, ABD 154). Blake honors Byron’s rebellious attitude in his work by referring to him as a prophet here. For, in the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” Blake writes that “the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God” (Blake 38). Thus, Blake sees the prophet as one who rebels against authority, be it religious or political. Damon writes, “The prophets, generally speaking, were anti-‘religious’” (ABD 335). Yet, as seen in the third line of Blake’s dedication, Blake questions how Byron can doubt the vision of Jehovah. Here, Blake suggests that although Byron wrote Truth, he did not go far enough. Blake complains that Byron did not perceive Jehovah as the ‘father of mercies’ in his work. Yet, he can justify Byron as a prophet by indicating that Byron’s “blasphemies … were a necessary stage in [his] spiritual development” (Damon, ABD 154). Furthermore, Blake insinuates in the subtitle that he, as prophet, has corrected Byron’s shortcomings.
In “The Everlasting Gospel,” Blake relates himself to Jesus as a fellow prophet, or seer, of the eternal Spiritual world. Suitably, “Blake’s sense of identification with Christ is profound, and he must surely have felt that he had in vision attained that ‘Eden’ in which Jesus lives ‘in us, and we in him … in perfect harmony’” (Hagstrum 154). Yet, in the following line, he does this with a simple physical comparison: “Mine [Vision of Christ] has a snub nose like to mine” (Blake 516). A snub nose is one that is short and turned up at the tip, and the act of snubbing is “to check or stop with a cutting retort or remark: restrain by reprimanding: REBUKE” (Webster’s, V. III. 2159). To suggest that he and Christ had snub noses is to imply that they both snubbed at some time in their lives. Thus, with this simple physical likeness, Blake compares his own censure of religious authorities to Christ’s. As seen above, Blake views one’s active indignation towards authority to be a major indication of his or her role as a prophet. Since religious authorities unceasingly blaspheme God and oppress God’s children, Blake sees rebellion against them to be a noble undertaking. He also believes wholeheartedly that Jesus’ “impact on society was that of a revolutionary and iconoclast, as that of all prophets must be” (Frye, FSSWB 79). Thus, Blake views both Christ and himself as prophets, or visionaries, who can see eternal truths and use them to break down faulty traditional systems.
Accordingly, Blake capitalizes on any opportunity that links him to the prophetic mission he assumes. When self-acclaimed prophet and visionary Emmanuel Swedenborg marked the year of Blake’s birth with spiritual significance, Blake assumed that Swedenborg’s comment was a reference to him. Swedenborg said, “The Last Judgment was accomplished in the Spiritual World in the year 1757 … the former heaven and the former earth are passed away, and all things are become New” (qtd. in Ackroyd 18). Perhaps Blake interprets Swedenborg’s announcement by his own definition of a universal Last Judgment. In “A Vision of the Last Judgment,” he writes, “This is A Last Judgment when Men of Real Art Govern and Pretenders Fall” (Blake 551). Blake’s response to Swedenborg’s comment coincides with this definition:
"So spoke an Angel at my birth
Then said Descend thou upon Earth
Renew the Arts on Britains Shore
And France shall fall down and adore" (Blake 471)
Here, Blake writes that France, the country known for its great art, will not compare to the level of art and prophesy that comes out of Britain. He attributes this, of course, to the prophecy directed through his own artwork. Thus, Blake believes that he has been sent by God to restore art as the vehicle through which Spiritual truth is communicated to humanity. This coincides with “the idea that the poet is a seer whose mind can penetrate fact for a higher reality, that the poet is the voice of God” (Schorer 440-1). Furthermore, he believes that his own artwork will reveal Heaven to all those willing to accept imaginative vision. All in all, Swedenborg “opened the gate” for Blake; he revealed “the sure knowledge that nature and the material world are vessels of eternity,” and that “each material form reflects or contains its spiritual source” (Ackroyd 103). Thus, Swedenborg’s comment may have had a lot to do with Blake’s desire to reveal eternal imaginative vision.
Although Blake can assert his identity as a prophet quite easily, he has trouble dealing with this office. Perhaps he finds solace in Jesus’ Biblical affirmation that “No prophet is accepted in his own country” (Luke 4:24). But, he still expresses his concerns openly. In a letter to his friend Thomas Butts, he writes:
"O why was I born with a different face
Why was I not born like the rest of my race
When I look each one starts! When I speak I offend
Then I’m silent and passive and lose every Friend
Then my verse I dishonor. My pictures despise
My person degrade and my temper chastise
And the pen is my terror. The pencil is my shame
All my Talents I bury, and dead is my Fame
I am either too low or too highly prizd
When Elate I am Envy’d, When Meek I’m despis’d[.]" (Blake 700)
Here,
it can be seen that Blake is concerned that his claim as a prophet has isolated
him. He also expresses his observation that when he denies his appointed office,
he loses the respect of his friends and also ends in isolation. As a man set
apart, “if he adopted what he called a ‘too passive manner,’
then his real work was overlooked and despised, but if he gave expression to
his ‘active physiognomy’ he found himself being taken before a bench
of judges” (Ackroyd 247). Yet, he discovers that when he acts in a way
that denies his prophetic vision, he is far less happy. In another letter to
Butts he writes, “Sorrow and Desperation pursues you through life! [When
you deny your Spiritual path.] And after death shame and confusion of face to
eternity…. You will be calld the base Judas who betrayd his Friend!”
(Blake 689). These statements may seem harsh, yet to Blake, this is the result
of abandoning his imagination and his vision of the Spiritual. In this situation,
only the material world is left for him to endure and this leads him into both
shame and self-pity: Shame because he knows that he should be forwarding the
message of the Spiritual world, self-pity because he has lost his vision and
is living in a world far less real. In another letter to Butts, he writes, “If
we refuse to do Spiritual Acts because of Natural Fears of Natural Desires!
Who can describe the dismal torments of such a state!” (Blake 688-9).
Thus, Blake implies that he cannot choose this option. After a certain amount
of time he realized that he could use others’ scorn to encourage him:
“As his sense of neglect [from his contemporaries] grew more profound,
so all the more forcibly he claimed a prophetic role” (Ackroyd 275). Accordingly,
he writes in the same letter, “I am under the direction of Messengers
from Heaven Daily and Nightly” (Blake 688) and assures both Mr. Butts
and himself that “I cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treasures
in heaven … and to do this I have long made up my mind” (Blake 688).
Thus, he has chosen the former option: to speak and offend and to live under
the scorn of his contemporaries. By doing this, he hopes that he will reach
the imaginations of at least some of his readers, inspiring them to perceive
the eternal Divine. Even while on his mission Blake looks back to make sure he has made the right choice. In a letter to George Cumberland, Blake writes, “I myself remember when I thought my pursuits of Art a kind of Criminal Dissipation and neglect of the main chance which I hid my face for not being able to abandon as a Passion which is forbidden by Law and Religion” (Blake 679). The scorn of powerful figures and patrons during his time was hard for Blake to take. It is probable that he was accused of blaspheming God at one time or other; for, he was certainly thought to be mad: “to claim divine inspiration, as Blake often did, was to be almost automatically labeled insane” (Ackroyd 223). A person cannot shut these remarks out completely. Yet, Blake tries his hardest to drive them out with positive affirmations based in vision. In a letter to Butts, Blake writes, “I see the face of my heavenly Father he lays his hand upon my Head and gives a blessing to all my works[.] Why should I be troubled[,] why should my heart and flesh cry out. I will go in the Strength of the Lord … that those who dwell in darkness and on the Sea coast may be gathered into his Kingdom” (Blake 697). Blake is convinced that his artwork is a part of his prophetic mission to bring humanity back to Christ. Fittingly, “what the artist has to reveal, as a guide for the work of civilization and prophesy, is the form of the [Spiritual] world as it would be if we could live in it here and now” (Frye, BTA 8-9). In other words, he wants everyone to join him in perceiving the Spiritual world; he wants everyone to live in Heaven.
In another letter, Blake writes, “I must not bury the Talents in the Earth but do my endeavor to live to the Glory of our Lord and Saviour” (Blake 696). In other words, it is not for his own glory that he writes, this much he knows for sure. How could he have even intended his own glory with so much disrespect directed towards him? It is for the glory of God that he inculcates his message. He wants everyone to be able to share in that glory. Accordingly, “It was the Holy Spirit that spoke by the prophets, which means that it continues to speak by the artists who have prophetic imaginations. The ‘inspiration’ which artists have is therefore the breath or spirit of God which dwells in the artist and is the artist” (Frye, FSSWB 52). Thus, he writes to share the breath of God with humanity. This is the true prophetic mission.
After Blake has come to a full realization of his own mission, he articulates what that mission entails in his works. In “The Everlasting Gospel,” Blake refers to the prophetic attribute of eternal vision. He writes, “I was standing by when Jesus died / What I called Humility they called Pride” (Blake 510). Here, Blake implies that he, as a prophet, can actually see into eternity. This idea may seem to contradict his pronouncement that a prophet does not predict the future, but it does not. He is not referring to his actual presence at the crucifixion, but his imaginative presence there. Ackroyd writes, “Blake was not concerned with literal truth but with the spiritual realities” of his assertions (Ackroyd 77). In other words, he was not an actual witness to the event, but, he can determine and declare its implications on an eternal scale. In the line that follows, Blake implies that his idea of what was happening is the opposite of the idea that those crucifying him believed. Blake knows in his eternal vision that Jesus was humble before God, and haughty towards his fellow man. Those crucifying him believed that he was proud in general. Thus, as a prophet, Blake can look at an event in the past and redefine its importance in the present, even if it is against the word of eyewitnesses. In general, “The visionary tries to combine [past, present, and future] into an eternal vision” (Frye, FSSWB 300). This is exactly what Blake does throughout the entire “Everlasting Gospel” and all his other works. In order to promulgate his vision of Christianity, he incorporates his own beliefs into the eternal story of Christ that he sees with his imagination. Even so, according to Hagstrum, “There is considerable evidence that Blake renewed, perhaps more than once, his spiritual contact with Christ in moments of exalted and intense dedication” (146).
In
“A Vision of the Last Judgment,” Blake implies that prophets all
see the eternal reality differently, yet they all discern Truth. He writes,
“The Last Judgment is one of those Stupendous Visions[;] I have represented
it as I saw it[.] To different People it appears differently as everything else
does[.]” (Blake 544). Here, it can be assumed that Blake believes that
he is a prophet. In “All Religions are One,” Blake explains that
“the Poetic Genius … is everywhere call’d the Spirit of Prophesy”
(Blake 2). Therefore, when he says that the “Last Judgment” is a
“Stupendous Vision,” implying that it exists in the eternal Poetic
Genius, he is also saying that he developed it as a prophet. As an individual
prophet he has intended and symbolized Truth when he “represented it”
as he “saw it.” However, he also states that eternal vision appears
differently to each individual prophet: “Blake never was known to show
the slightest belief in the objective reality of any vision” (Damon, WBHPS
7). Thus, persons who imaginatively view a concept in the Poetic Genius with
an honest mind can prophesize, or reveal, their vision of reality to others.
For, “the prophetic consciousness is a consciousness of having seen the
truth, of having seen a message whose authenticity and significance are quite
beyond any question of the fitness of the messenger, being justified by him
who sent the messenger” (White 116-7). The prophesized vision of reality
is subjectively true for the person prophesizing it, but it can also be true
to anyone who understands it in an imaginative way. It is the source of the
message that remains the important concept. For Blake, he maintained that his
message was from God. Later in the same work, Blake reveals the purpose for his own prophetic mission. He writes “The Nature of my Work is Visionary or Imaginative[.] It is an endeavor to Restore <what the Ancients calld> the Golden Age” (Blake 545). In Blake’s symbolism, gold is used to “describe anything beautiful or precious, his general meaning is ‘intellectual.’ Such are the keys to Paradise, the poet’s bow, the string which he gives us as clue to his meaning” (Damon, ABD 162). Thus, Blake is attempting to reintroduce humanity to the Kingdom of Heaven by sharing his prophetic artwork. This concept deserves some contemplation: “His visionary conceptions are not the elements of theory … but matters of pressing and urgent significance. He was trying to do no less than change the entire nature of human perception” (Ackroyd 279). The “Golden Age” that he was attempting to illuminate can only refer to an age when all of humanity understands and visualizes the Spiritual world. As previously mentioned, this will occur when humanity accepts God’s mercy, the forgiveness of sins, and its own true essence as God. In the above lines, Blake expresses a hope that his “Visionary or Imaginative” work will inspire humanity to reach a new understanding of reality. He also articulates his belief that his work has the power to inspire humanity in this way.
It must be said, in conclusion, that each reader of William Blake’s work should judge for himself whether or not Blake was a prophet. The reader must ask himself whether William Blake’s vision of reality inspired him or her to reach a perception of Heaven. It may be relevant that from among his contemporaries “there is a testimony that Blake attained in his later years a kind of radiant sainthood” (Hagstrum 143). It also may be useful to consider Jesus’ affirmation that “except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18: 4). William Blake certainly did profess himself a Christian and “a soldier for Christ” (Blake 688). It is also reported that “in his impulsiveness there is also a curious childishness or child-likeness” (Ackroyd 81). Beyond this, it has been said that his marriage was childless, because, “perhaps in a sense the true children” were he and his wife (Ackroyd 83). Furthermore, Blake’s entire message was intended to bring humanity's perception into the eternal Spiritual reality of Heaven. However, it is up to Blake’s readers to determine whether they will accept Blake’s definition of prophesy or use the commonplace definition referring to one who can decipher the future. This writer will suggest, however, that using Blake’s definition of a prophet, William Blake was indeed a prophet. It has been said, “Blake could not ‘write for blockheads’ or those unwilling or incapable of thinking beyond the spatial and temporal limitations of this world” (Kiralis 114). In other words, he could not write for those who doubted him or doubted the Spiritual world. Therefore, it is relatively important that the reader approach Blake’s work with an open mind; willing to enter his world of imaginative vision in order to understand what he is saying. Perhaps, if this process is conducted properly, the reader may find himself in the presence of God.