Though unsigned, untitled, and undated, two short pieces of writing in Blake's hand have long been thought to stand in a significant relationship to Poetical Sketches: both Geoffrey Keynes and David Erdman print them directly after the published collection, the latter under the heading of "Further Sketches." The first, longer, and more complicated of the two pieces, which contains two passages in common with one of the published "sketches," begins abruptly, "then She bore Pale desire." Erdman labels the autograph a fragment, observing and concluding at once that "[t]he first word is not indented or capitalized and was obviously not originally the beginning of the ms" (E 848). But as one never knows what was "originally the beginning" in a poet perceived increasingly as an inveterate drafter and grafter of fragments, and as the manuscript has its own adequately coherent geneology, one may at least assume that nothing "of equal value was lost" (MHH 13).
With run-on sentences, erratic capitalization, ambiguous periods, ambiguous period-marks, and no paragraphing, the autograph would appear to test Blake's strategy of disseminating referential possibilities--loading every rift with "or." Indeed, the many periods from Blake's hand contrast so dramatically with the orderly syntax of the type-set sketches as to suggest a heavy editorial role on the part of those "friends" who arranged publication though "conscious of the irregularities and defects" in what they considered "the production of untutored youth." Perhaps such a betrayal of the manuscript of Poetical Sketches best accounts for the fact that Blake "never seems to have shown much interest in the little volume" (Bentley, Records 26)--the "sketches" as rendered in type weren't his work, in effect. A consideration, bit by bit, of what seems to be the earliest example of Blake's own irregular and defective writing may open some new possibilities even for the reader who feels familiar with it.
"[T]hen She bore Pale desire" seems to carry "irregularities and defects" to an extreme--in the commentary still included with the Erdman edition, Harold Bloom finds it "so slapdash" as to suggest "the most rapid kind of composition," one which "needs to be read as only a curiosity" (E 970). The truly curious reader will, however, soon discover that the composition offers a "blank-versed prose" (Saintsbury 22) and range of quotation and allusion that would suppose some degree of artifice and consideration. The metrical base, which it shares with the published prose sketches, is the most striking aspect of the piece, initially. Indeed, the manuscript was first presented to the public by William M. Rossetti in 1903 as "The Passions, An Unpublished Poem by William Blake," with the observation that "it is indisputably verse--lines in correct decasyllabic and other metre, intermixed with a few which cannot be reduced to regular scansion" (Rossetti 123). Rossetti refers to "another half-sheet of [Blake's] MS."--now apparently lost--which he obtained with "[T]hen She bore Pale desire" and in which Blake had "written out, as prose, the six lines of Shakespearean rhymed verse which begin, `Orpheus with his lute made trees' [`/And the mountain tops that freeze, / Bow themselves when he did sing. / To his music plants and flowers / Ever sprung, as sun and showers / There had made a lasting spring.' (Henry VII III.i)]" (Rossetti 123). This manuscript offers further evidence of an extraordinary concern with rhythm which has been emphasized by only a few critics, though as early as 1910 the historian of English prosody George Saintsbury noted "the extraordinary prosodic quality which, almost as much as his thought, his imagery, and his passion, distinguishes [Blake] as a poet" (9). In 1924, the ever-perceptive S. Foster Damon characterized Blake's "metrical ... `polyphonic prose'" as "one form entirely his own, in which he made several experiments, whose true value could not be appreciated until the present day" (48-49). Blake's prose sketch "Samson" was, in particular, Damon suggests, an attempt "to improve on the broken, yet metrical cadences of Milton's Samson Agonistes" (49).
In order, then, to show how Blake's earliest rough draught may have been prepared--like his transcription from Shakespeare--to study the unifying effect of rhythm, one might return "[T]hen She bore Pale desire" to a form which highlights its metrical basis. Two such attempts by early editors have been generally and justifiably condemned: Edwin Ellis in his 1906 collection gratuitously mends, revises, and transposes the text; Rossetti, in the presentation already mentioned, follows the words more closely, but invents stanzas, punctuation, and capitalization to create "The Passions." What follows is the standard Erdman text (itself based on his exact transcription in The Bulletin of the New York Public Library [1958]) in a format whose lineation stresses the metrical base. The new form results largely from treating Blake's periods as line-endings. So the passage early on, "But Pride awoke nor knew that Joy was born. and taking Poisnous Seed from her own Bowels." produces two lines of blank verse, and a number of similar lines supply a frame around which to organize the rest (the striking exception of the opening will be noted below). This hypothetical form is numbered by line for ease of reference in the extended commentary which follows it.
then She bore Pale desire father of Curiosity a Virgin ever young. And after. Leaden Sloth from whom came Ignorance. who brought forth wonder. 5 These are the Gods which Came from fear. for Gods like these. nor male nor female are but Single Pregnate or if they list together mingling bring forth mighty powrs[.] She knew them not yet they all war with Shame 10 and Strengthen her weak arm. But Pride awoke nor knew that Joy was born. and taking Poisnous Seed from her own Bowels. in the Monster Shame infusd. forth Came Ambition Crawling like a toad Pride Bears it in her Bosom. 15 and the Gods. all bow to it. So great its Power. that Pride inspird by it Prophetic Saw the Kingdoms of the World & all their Glory. Giants of Mighty arm before the flood. Cains City. 20 built with Murder. Then Babel mighty Reard him to the Skies. Babel with thousand tongues Confusion it was calld. and Givn to Shame. this Pride observing inly Grievd. but knew not that. 25 the rest was Givn to Shame as well as this. Then Nineva & Babylon & Costly tyre. And evn Jerusalem was Shewn. the holy City. Then Athens Learning & the Pride of Greece. and further from the Rising Sun. 30 was Rome Seated on Seven hills the mistress of the world. Emblem of Pride She Saw the Arts their treasures Bring and luxury his bounteous table Spread. but now a Cloud oercasts. and back to th'East. to Constantines Great City Empire fled. 35 Ere long to bleed & die a Sacrifice Done by a Priestly hand So once the Sun his. Chariot drew. back. to prolong a Good kings life. The Cloud oer past & Rome now Shone again 40 Miterd & Crown'd with triple crown. Then Pride was better Pleasd She Saw the World fall down in Adoration [.] But now full to the Setting Sun a Sun arose out of the Sea. it rose & shed Sweet Influence 45 oer the Earth Pride feared for her City, but not long. for looking Stedfastly She saw that Pride Reignd here. Now Direful Pains accost her. and Still pregnant. so Envy came & Hate. twin progeny 50 Envy hath a Serpents head of fearful bulk hissing with hundred tongues, her poisnous breath breeds Satire foul Contagion from which none are free. oer whelmd by ever During Thirst 55 She Swalloweth her own Poison. which consumes her nether Parts. from whence a River Springs. Most Black & loathsom through the land it Runs Rolling with furious Noise. 60 but at the last it Settles in a lake called Oblivion. tis at this Rivers fount where evry mortals Cup is Mix't My Cup is fill'd with Envy's Rankest Draught a miracle No less can set me Right. Desire Still pines but for one Cooling Drop and tis Deny'd. 65 while others in Contentments downy Nest do sleep, it is the Cursed thorn wounding my breast that makes me sing. however sweet tis Envy that Inspires my Song. prickt. by the fame of others how I mourn and my complaints are Sweeter than their Joys 70 but O could I at Envy Shake my hands. my notes Should Rise to meet the New born Day. Hate Meager hag Sets Envy on unable to Do ought herself. but Worn away a Bloodless Daemon 75 The Gods all Serve her at her will So great her Power is[.] like. fabled hecate She doth bind them to her law. Far in a Direful Cave She lives unseen Closd from the Eye of Day. 80 to the hard Rock transfixt by fate and here She works her witcheries that when She Groans She Shakes the Solid Ground Now Envy She controlls with numming trance & Melancholy Sprung from her dark womb 85 There is a Melancholy, O how lovely tis whose heaven is in the heavenly Mind for she from heaven came, and where She goes heaven still doth follow her. She brings true Joy once fled. & Contemplation is her Daughter. 90 Sweet Contemplation. She brings humility to man Take her She Says & wear her in thine heart lord of thy Self thou then art lord of all. Tis Contemplation teacheth knowledge truly how to know. 95 and Reinstates him on his throne once lost how lost I'll tell. But Stop the motley Song. I'll Shew. how Conscience Came from heaven. But O who listens to his Voice T'was Conscience who brought Melancholy down 100 Conscience was sent a Guard to Reason. Reason once fairer than the light till fould in Knowledges dark Prison house. For knowledge drove sweet Innocence away. and Reason would have followd but fate sufferd not 105 Then down Came Conscience with his lovely band The Eager Song Goes on telling how Pride against her father Warrd & Overcame. Down his white Beard the Silver torrents Roll. and Swelling Sighs burst forth his Children all 110 in arms appear to tear him from his throne Black was the deed. most Black. Shame in a Mist Sat Round his troubled head. & filld him with Confusion. Fear as a torrent wild Roard Round his throne 115 the mighty pillars shake Now all the Gods in blackning Ranks appear. like a tempestuous thunder Cloud Pride leads. them on. Now they Surround the God. and bind him fast. Pride bound him, then usurpd oer all the Gods. 120 She Rode upon the Swelling wind and Scatterd all who durst t'oppose. but Shame opposing fierce and hovering. over her in the darkning Storm. She brought forth Rage. 125 Mean while Strife Mighty Prince was born Envy in direful Pains him bore. then Envy brought forth Care. Care Sitteth in the wrinkled brow. Strife Shapeless Sitteth under thrones of kings like Smouldring fire. 130 or in the Buzz of Cities flies abroad Care brought forth Covet Eyeless & prone to th' Earth, and Strife brought forth Revenge Hate brooding in her Dismal den grew Pregnant & bore Scorn, & Slander. Scorn waits on Pride. but Slander. 135 flies around the World to do the Work of hate her drudge & Elf. but Policy doth drudge for hate as well as Slander. & oft makes use of her. Policy Son of Shame. Indeed Hate Controlls all the Gods. at will. 140 Policy brought forth Guile & fraud. these Gods last namd live in the Smoke of Cities. on Dusky wing breathing forth Clamour & Destruction. alas in Cities wheres the man whose face is not a mask unto his heart Pride made a Goddess. 145 fair or I mage rather till knowledge animated it. 'twas Calld Selflove. The Gods admiring loaded her with Gifts as once Pandora She 'mongst men was Sent. and worser ills attended her by far. 150 She was a Goddess Powerful & bore Conceit and Shame bore honour & made league with Pride & Policy doth dwell with her by whom she [had] Mistrust & Suspition. Then bore a Daughter called Emulation. who. married. 155 honour these follow her around the World[.] Go See the City friends Joind Hand in Hand. Go See. the Natural tie of flesh & blood. Go See more strong the tie of marriage love 160 thou Scarce Shall find but Self love Stands Between
1 then She bore Pale desire father of Curiosity
The first verb introduces the master trope of the piece, the conception of lineage or the geneology of mental states. For this reason a recent book on "kinship as metaphor" considers the autograph in some (highly selective) detail, arguing that that metaphor "is the principal domain underlying [its] exposition of human psychology" (Turner 108). But perhaps still more dominant, if far less accessible, are the kinship and psychology of the narrator and the author so concerned with them: the domain of what Melanie Klein terms "splitting," or the infant's attempt to mark off a dependable, "good object" from more or less inevitable inadequacies in the prime shaper of its environment. The autograph's emphasis on "bringing forth" or, more graphically, "bursting forth" suggests something more profound and less rational than metaphorical parturition.
The capitalization throughout increases possible constructions of the text. To see "Pale Desire" (Turner 109), for instance, stresses "Desire" and leaves the adjective almost beyond the Pale of due attention (or perhaps "the pale of love," as in The Prelude [1805] 10.760). An uncapitalized "desire" pulls more than a capitalized one toward the following lowercase word (so one may read, in several voices: "desire father"), while the thereby strangely emphasized "Pale" at the same time achieves enough charge to carry through the object ("Pale desire, [Pale] father"). This mention of such ghostly micro-effects at length will stand for many others.
1-5 then She bore Pale desire father of Curiosity
a Virgin ever young.
And after.
Leaden Sloth from whom came Ignorance.
who brought forth wonder.
These are the Gods which Came from fear.Damon's observation concerning King Edward the Third, in Poetical Sketches, and The French Revolution pertains here: "Customarily poets begin with lines absolutely according to pattern, in order that the pattern may be established; but Blake, in direct defiance of this, is apt to begin with variations, so that the metrical basis may be less obvious" (58). And Alicia Ostriker, also considering Blake's early dramatic effort, notes how "[t]he trick of varying line-lengths ... becomes absurdly exaggerated" and how "[o]dd-length lines ... instead of being saved up for relief or dramatic effect, are cast about recklessly, and almost outnumber the pentameters." Blake, she concludes, seems "to feel that if a little freedom is good, a lot must be better" (32).
The psycho-theogony begins with fear, and so accords with "the common maxim" Edmund Burke cites in his treatise on "the Sublime and the Beautiful": "primos in orbe deos fecit timor" ("fear first in the world made gods" as Ben Jonson has it in Sejanus). Discussing what he sees as the crucial relation of power and the sublime, Burke goes on to qualify his quotation, arguing that "the notion of some great power must be always precedent to our dread of it," though, he concedes, "dread must necessarily follow the idea" (p. 70). "Mighty power," one might say in the language of the autograph, "brings forth fear," or the realization of power external to the self and, next, one's own powerlessness before such a potentially annihilating Other ("The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge"; Proverbs 1:7). A decade before Burke's Enquiry, William Collins' popular "Ode to Fear" characterizes its object as the "Dark Pow'r," a description Blake perhaps remembers in conceiving Urizen as "the dark power" (BU 3.7) well-acquainted with "fear & pale dismay" (FZ 24.2). Urizen's subsequent involvement with the concept of futurity also invokes the origins of self-consciousness in fear, which Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary defines (quoting Locke) as "an unpleasantness of the mind, upon the thought of future evil likely to befall us." Blake does not see fear iconographically (with "bristled hair," for example) but psycho-dynamically, as the awareness of time and the accompanying knowledge of transcience, separation, and loss: it is, foremost, "of Death" (M 38.38).
Fear's first act here bears Pale desire, sire of curiosity. "Pale" traditionally describes the effects of fear (Shakespeare's "Pale-hearted Fear," Milton's "pale fear", and Blake's own "paling fears") so her offspring, desire, keeps the family resemblance ("Pale Avarice" and "Pale Envy" appear in Swift, "Pale Grief" in Gray, "Pale Melancholy" in Collins). Desire's virgin daughter, remaining within the family pale, must be not so much an inclination to enquiry, as the obsolescent "Curiosity" which denotes "undue niceness or fastidiousness" (OED)--the qualities of the experienced nurse, for instance, who turns "green and pale" when she remembers "desires of youth" (E 23, 709).
6-8 for Gods like these.
nor male nor female are
but Single Pregnate or if they list together
mingling bring forth mighty powrs[.]An example of this text's mingling syntax: the first "These" points out "the Gods which came from fear", but immediately "Gods like these" slightly but decisively expands the demonstrative to include just-excluded fear, whose ability to "Single Pregnate" has been posited from the beginning. This grammatical glitch pricks the reader's sloth and ignorance and encourages continuing wonder at what Gods are like these. "List" activates another anomaly: on the one hand it refers to a lusty desire for "mingling" and carnal knowledge which saturates the text; on the other, following the brief list which suggests what's to come, this "list" comments on the mighty powers to be brought forth in the reader by its mingling catalogue ("Babel mighty," 21; "motley Song," 96; "Confusion," 113).
9-11 She knew them not yet they all war with Shame
and Strengthen her weak arm.
But Pride awoke nor knew that Joy was born.Shame, like fear, is evidently an aboriginal presence: the "Keys" to For the Sexes imagines the newborn psyche "Naked in Air in Shame & Fear" (E 268). But the deletion of a sentence that followed "weak arm" (telling of "the Golden Sun" and his "beaming Joy") puts Pride in a conjunction with Shame which will soon intensify (13-14). The war with Shame is a vague affair, since she appears with "all the Gods" in the revolt (112ff.) but only toward the very end "makes league" (151). Given the situation of the war, it would seem that Shame is strengthened by desire, Curiosity, Sloth, Ignorance, wonder, and fear--all perhaps to be considered as aspects of a quest for knowledge.
"I disdaine to have any parents," says Pride in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (l. 723), and Blake's pride is similarly without family, save that its "awaking" links it to Milton's Eve (PL 4.449ff.) and that heavy inheritance. As the principal protagonist in the autograph (the sixteen appearances of her name are twice those of her nearest competitor, Envy), Pride merits extended consideration. Her creator at times certainly evidences an assertive pride: "I, William Blake, a Mental Prince" (E 580) writes of "terrible Blake in his pride" (E 500), and in a letter refers to "my foolish Pride" as though it were common knowledge (E 732). One wonders how he related such a sense of pride to his "Nervous Fear" (E 708). Still more moving is Los's identification of the Spectre as "my Pride & Self-righteousness" (J 8.30). But the specific ontology of pride remains imponderable, a question Blake takes up in a few heavily scored notebook lines which leave the matter wholly unresolved: "How came pride in Man / From Mary it began" (E 472). As the mother of the man-god (to unpack one strand of Christian mythology), Mary so idolized her child and her position as its mother that she never sullied herself engendering another by the usual means. Out of such devotion comes the old sad story made familiar by D. H. Lawrence and lurking behind Jerusalem's identification of "Self-righteousness: the proud Virgin-Harlot! Mother" (50.16). Pride's not knowing "that Joy was born" might suggest the lost possibility of a composite infant to be a positively cherished "Pride and Joy" (hence also the deleted "Golden Sun ... with beaming Joy": in this piece the little boy Joy-son is lost in "poison"). In the famous letter of 23 October 1804 (E 756-57) reporting his victory over the "spectrous Fiend," Blake announces that he is now "proud of my work," a sensation he claims not to have experienced for the preceding twenty years. Some crisis in Blake's self-esteem would thus appear to date from the aera of his marriage, the publication of Poetical Sketches, and the death of his father (August, 1782; 1783; July, 1784).
12-13 and taking Poisnous Seed from her own Bowels.
in the Monster Shame infusd.Who does what? The action centers on something "infusd," some sort of instilling or of fusing within. The verb usually denotes some kind of liquid mixing--semen "infused" in a body would violate ordinary usage--but it also assumed the special sense of referring to the way in which God works spiritual grace. Here, though, the grace infused would be the spirit of Shame in the Monster, Pride; unless, alternatively, Pride infuses Seed in Monster Shame. This conceptual mingling of Pride and Shame persists in Blake's writing; a "Proverb of Hell" describes shame as "prides cloak," and the misguided speaker of "To Tirzah" proposes that "The Sexes sprung from Shame and Pride."
Besides suggesting semen, "seed" applies to offspring or posterity, as does "bowels", which also names the place from whence comes forth the desired seed (for the two senses of "bowels" see Measure for Measure 3.1.29-30 and 2 Samuel 7:12). "The Monster" cues an association to Spenser's figure of that name (six times in as many stanzas of FQ 5.11) which guards the "Idoll" to whom Gerioneo "for endlesse horrour of his shame" daily sacrifices "children and people." Suggestive of Blake's description, Spenser's Monster speaks "blasphemous words, which she doth bray / Out of her poysnous entrails, fraught with dire decay" (5.11.20.8-9). Following Luke 8:11, "the seed" is also "the word."
14-18 forth Came Ambition Crawling like a toad
Pride Bears it in her Bosom.
and the Gods.
all bow to it.
So great its Power.
that Pride inspird by it Prophetic Saw
the Kingdoms of the World & all their Glory.Toads having been popularly imagined as being poisonous, the animal supplies an appropriate analogue for what may be the seed's developed form, a still infantile, crawling Ambition. Discovered in his attempt to taint Eve, Satan appears "like a Toad," not "infusing" but "inspiring venom" with the aim of "ingendering pride" (PL 4.800, 804, 809).
Squat in the center of "ambition" sits it: what men in women do require and vice versa (cf. E 474-75)--"Ambition's lust" (Dryden and Lee, Oedipus 4.1.387), the desire for something more valued than what one possesses at present. In "King Edward the Third," "ambition" figures as "a little creeping root" that "grows in every breast; / Ambition is the desire or passion that one man / Has to get before another, in any pursuit after glory" (4.11-4: "to get" is also "to beget," "to bear"). Directly following the inspiration of Ambition the text dramatically bares an extended graft from Milton: an entire line of Paradise Regained which relates a temptation offered the Son, "The Kingdoms of the world, and all thir glory" (4.89; Milton's version of Matt. 4:8: "... the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them").
19-23 Giants of Mighty arm before the flood.
Cains City.
built with Murder.
Then Babel mighty Reard him to the Skies.
Babel with thousand tongues
Confusion it was calld.
and Givn to Shame.Blake builds here with Milton's vision of "Giants of mightie Bone" (PL 11.642 ["Arms" appears in both immediately adjacent verses]; cf. the LORD's "mighty arm," Ps. 89:13) "Before the Flood" (PR 2.178) and "that proud Citie ... Left in confusion, Babylon thence call'd", "Confusion nam'd" (PL 12.342-43, 62). Added are the elements of using murder as mortar (unless Murder is an assistant giant) and Babel as another God "rearing" himself (or Ambition or Cain) skyward. This mighty city's being "Givn to" or prone to Shame suggests that Shame's weak arm (10) is already considerably strengthened. The flood and confusion will return.
24-28 this Pride observing inly Grievd.
but knew not that.
the rest was Givn to Shame as well as this.
Then Nineva & Babylon & Costly tyre.
And evn Jerusalem was Shewn.
the holy City.
And Athens Learning & the Pride of Greece.Observing inly leaves Pride, like Adam, inly "Griev'd" ("Griev'd at his heart," PL 11.887) at a vision of the shameful world before the flood, but Shame is given rest until line 112, while Pride's labors are just beginning. "Costly tyre" anticipates Blake's later pun utilizing Ezekiel's description of the King of Tyrus as the "Covering Cherub" (Ez. 28:14, Milton 37.8): attire at such cost--work of satin, perhaps (cf. M 18.30)--manifests the "sin" that "covers" a narrator in Poetical Sketches "as a cloak" ("The Couch of Death") and which, as "Shame," is also "Prides cloke." Paradise Regained takes us, with the Son, to "Jerusalem, / The holy city," after its vision of "Athens the eye of Greece" (4.544-45, 240).
29-32 and further from the Rising Sun.
was Rome Seated on Seven hills the mistress of the world.
Emblem of Pride She Saw the Arts their treasures Bring
and luxury his bounteous table Spread.Geographical orientation supplies a new figure who would leave behind the text (as he will by line 71); the Athens of Paradise Regained is similarly "much nearer" to its rising Son than the "great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth," "elevate / On seven small hills" (4.237, 45, 34-35).
33-36 but now a Cloud oercasts.
and back to th'East.
to Constantines Great City Empire fled.
Ere long to bleed & die
a Sacrifice Done by a Priestly handG. E. Bentley, Jr. finds this passage "apparently echoing similar assertions in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vols. I-III, 1776, 1781)" (Bentley, Books 439). The curious diction of "and back to th'East" might recall the speaker of "Mad Song" who has his "back to the East" (E 415).
37-38 So once the Sun his.
Chariot drew.
back.
to prolong a Good kings life.The classical conception of the sun's having a chariot makes a splice--perhaps via the Son's "Chariot of Paternal Deity" (PL 6.750)--with the Hebrew Bible's story of the Lord's adding fifteen years of life to the dying King Hezekiah, the "sign" of this gift being that "the sun returned ten degrees by which degrees it was gone down" (Is. 38:8; also 2 Kings 20:11, and 2 Chr. 32:32 which tells of Hezekiah's "goodness"). Just as unsettling and so compounding the effect is the introductory conjunction and the setting off, by punctuation, of the single word, "back" ("back to th'East"?). "So" implies some logical or causal or consequential or comparative connection, absent which, as here, one might posit psychological connection: something concerning an artistic Blake son's drawing "back" (cf. Blake/black, 111) or repressing the "Chariot of his Contemplative Thought" (E 560) or his "chariot of pride" (FZ 65.4) so to preserve the image of a "goodly king" like Hamlet, or Laios, or the God the good Father, the King of Glory. But soon enough he will back the revolt (106ff.).
39-42 The Cloud oer past & Rome now Shone again
Miterd & Crown'd with triple crown.
Then Pride was better Pleasd She Saw
the World fall down in Adoration[.]Lost from view when a Cloud "oercast" (33), Rome is shown again, shining with the Primacy of the Holy Father, when the dark age of the clouded past "oer past." "Adoration," according to the initial definition in Johnson's Dictionary, denotes the "external homage paid to the Divinity"--here, evidently, Pride herself.
43-47 But now full to the Setting Sun
a Sun arose out of the Sea.
it rose & shed Sweet Influence
oer the Earth
Pride feared for her City, but not long.
for looking Stedfastly She saw that Pride Reignd here.More orientation relative to a Sun, though the two suns and the expression "full to" instead of the usual "full in" complicate mundane geography. Milton puts "Shedding sweet influence" in conjunction with "the Moon" (PL 7.375), a body which might suit the Sun rising here, to the east of a still westering Sun. By the same token, Pride's City would now become "the City" (of London)--"here" where the author writes, a son arising out of what he sees in the city (cf. 157: "Go See the City").
48-51 Now Direful Pains accost her.
and Still pregnant.
so Envy came & Hate.
twin progeny
Envy hath a Serpents head of fearful bulk
hissing with hundred tongues,Direful Pains seems a new character with the audacity to seduce Pride (and her still pregnant; "`Accost' is front her, board her, woo her, assail her," by the interpretation of Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, 1.3.59). As for the "twin progeny," the "Imitation of Spen[s]er" in Poetical Sketches links "Envy and Hate, that thirst for human gore," and in the description of "The Last Judgment" the terms appear to be almost interchangeable (E 564-65). Envy's head is of fearful size (like Spenser's monstrous Echidna, "so huge her hed"; FQ 6.6.10.3) or, reflecting Pride's fear (46), bulks fear as its freight; her song (?self-reflexively of the wily author, "his-sing-ing" his tongues) accomplishes a ten-fold reduction of "Babel with thousand tongues" (22).
52-53 her poisnous breath breeds Satire foul
Contagion from which none are free.While her mother Pride possessed "Poisnous Seed" (12), the spirit of "poysonous Envy" (FQ 3.5.54.5) "breeds" or breathes social dis-ease, like Spenser's "old woman," Sclander, whose
... words were not, as common words are ment,
T'expresse the meaning of the inward mind,
But noysome breath, and poysnous spirit sent
From inward parts, with cancred malice lind,
And breathed forth with blast of bitter wind;
(FQ 4.8.26.1-5)or like another of his monsters, cited above (at 12-13), which perishes "Breathing out clouds of sulphure fowle and blacke, / In which a puddle of contagion was" (FQ 5.11.32.2-3). The self-reflexive judgement on "Satire" (in Blake's only use of the term) invokes the autograph's final line of defense, ironic aporia--for if "none are free," then one must suppose that this too is sick satire, especially considering the author's impending satire on the audience and supporters of Poetical Sketches in "An Island in the Moon." Evidently Blake mocks in anger or disgust the snarling muse of the great age of English satire, and his evaluation of what it had to offer governs the first allusion to one of the autograph's crucial contexts, "Lycidas" 125-27 (italics added):
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spredLittleton's 1760 Dialogues of the Dead similarly links contagion of satire to the rank draught of envy as it equates Swift's "satire" with "rank poison" (quoted in Tannenbaum 92).
Such sweeping cultural judgements, however, usually reflect the projection of inner states, and here one might return to the work of Melanie Klein, with its focus on the genesis of envy. Using her rich speculations one might imagine a Blake extremely conflicted as a result of inadequate maternal nourishment (evident in the mostly female, negative cast of the autograph), and, in particular, deeply envious of the breast which, keeping its good for itself, long ago generated a poisonous situation. According to Klein, envy is at bottom "directed against creativeness," the breast and its milk offering the unconscious prototype of creativity. As an example of the "envious and destructive attitude towards the breast" and creativity, Klein cites lines from Spenser which neatly round out the consideration of Blake's passage here. Envie, she quotes (p. 41), "hated all good workes and vertuous deeds" as well as (apropos of "Lycidas," above) "who with gracious bread the hungry feeds":
And eke the verse of famous Poets witt
He does backebite, and spightfull poison spues
From leprous mouth on all that ever writt.
(FQ 1.4.32.6-8)Drayton confirms that the "calumnious Critick" "blasteth all things with his poys'ned breath, / Detracting what laboriously we doe" (Moses his Birth and Miracles 2.165-8). Envy, to reiterate, can occasion extremely conflicted (ambivalent, split) states, as the dim awareness of its spoiling effects generates guilt (shame) and hence resistance to insight. Poetic texts offer one way to attempt to work through or at least temporarily externalize such conflicts.
54-56 oer whelmd by ever During Thirst
She Swalloweth her own Poison.
which consumes her nether Parts.Envy's "ever During Thirst" seems an improbable echo of Milton's "ever during Gates" of Heaven (PL 7.206), but that context seems to resurface when, in Luvah's history of the phallus, Vala becomes a "Serpent" (cf. Envy's "Serpents head," 50) "poisonous" for whom open "all the floodgates of the heavens to quench her thirst" (FZ 26.9, 13, 14). Thirst also denotes "vehement desire" (Johnson) which, via the self-produced "poison" Envy swallows (following Spenser's Envie, FQ 5.12.31), relates the thirst to Pride's "Poisnous Seed," Ambition (14); Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy nicely sums the mix in describing "Ambition" as "a dry thirst, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride, and covetousness ... a pleasant poison" (I.280). The archaic verbal ending for the third-person singular of "swallow", however, together with the ingestion of the poison, can invoke "Death" and thus prime (again la Melanie Klein) some son's phantasy of a mother's devouring him, or, more conventionally, Sin's womb incestuously swallowing (cf. PL 2.149-50) the poisonous seed of a son who would consummate their relation by consuming her transforming "nether Parts" (cf. PL 2.777ff.). Dryden and Lee's version of Oedipus comments that "Nature would abhor / To be forced back again upon herself / And like a whirlpool swallow her own streams." Yet again, it may be that--almost as in these images themselves--the poison apparently, temporarily, purges Envy's "shame" (?infused at 13) or "what one should be ashamed of": pudendum (cf. Spenser, "Her neather parts, the shame of all her kind" [FQ 1.8.48.11]).
57-60 from whence a River Springs.
Most Black & loathsom through the land it Runs
Rolling with furious Noise.
but at the last it Settles in a lake called Oblivion.From the part or rift in the nether world a riv-er springs, assimilating various characteristics of the infernal streams. It suggests "Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep" (PL 2.578) with its "poisonous exhalation" (according to Burke in OED) and, perhaps more phallically , that "blacke flood ... the river of Cocytus" (FQ 2.7.56.7-8). Though "Lethe the River of Oblivion rouls," in Milton, "silent" (PL 2.583, 582), it too "disgorges" in "the burning Lake"; the Blake River settles, swallowed, at "the last" ("the end," according to Johnson) in a Black lake (i.e. a Blake; see also 111). One might also hear, with the last, a lack called Oblivion and its envy at being passed over and forgotten, its anger at repressing and forgetting.
61-63 tis at this Rivers fount where evry mortals Cup is Mix't
My Cup is fill'd with Envy's Rankest Draught
a miracle No less can set me Right.Like Comus, the autograph offers a "cup, / With many murmurs mixt" (525-26), and one doesn't have to listen very closely to hear its obscenity. The "fount" is in "her nether Parts": the term the author can't write initiates "Contagion" (53) and "Contentments downy Nest" (65,) and overdetermines the reading of "rankest" (as in Dryden's "rankest harlot" or Shakespeare's "rank sweat of an enseamed bed"). Less allusive is the evocation of Jove's good and evil urns in the Iliad, from whence "the cup of mortal man he fills," even the happiest of whom finds "the cordial draught is dash'd with care" (Pope's version, 24.665, 672). Like thirsty Envy, "oer whelmed" and consuming her own poison, so evidently the narrator--now directly entering his text--drinks or drafts (or, poetically sketches) "Envy's Rankest Draught." Envy entails ranking oneself against other sketchers (poetic and graphic), and for those who fall short, "the rank mist [/missed--]they draw". In Blake's next autograph such ranking becomes a source of satiric (or manic?) amusement as Quid argues that "Homer is bombast ... & Milton has no feelings they might be easily outdone"; still later, to the unsympathetic Dr. Trustler, Blake asserts that he shares in the power that "sets Homer Virgil & Milton in so high a rank of Art" (E 702). One wonder is that it takes no less than the rankest draught to set the narrator down to write (cf. E 501).
64-66 Desire Still pines but for one Cooling Drop and tis Deny'd.
while others in Contentments downy Nest do sleep,
it is the Cursed thorn wounding my breast that makes me sing.The narrator's Desire, now capitalized and unqualified, continues quietly to languish and to pine, like Tantalus or the fallen angels (PL 2.612-14, 606-607) or Faustus (Dr. Faustus 1433) or Lazarus' rich man (Luke 16:24) not "for" but "but for" one Drop. The particular formulation Blake uses recalls Isaac Watts' song for children "Against Swearing, and Cursing, and Taking God's Name in Vain," which consoles that to those who "treated thee with such disdain," "never shall one cooling drop / To quench their burning tongues be given" (13-14).
Another association leads to The Rape of Lucrece--which also bulks large throughout--and Tarquin, in flagrante, "Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears" (682), though the narrator evidently respects denial. But the quasi-pornographic focus remains as he recalls Spenser's "neast of love, the lodging of delight: / The bowre of blisse, the paradice of pleasure" (Amoretti 76.2-3) and Shakespeare's "nest of spicery" (Richard III 4.4.425) to imagine "others" sleeping "in Contentments downy Nest." The narrator's "thorn in the flesh" (2 Cor. 12:7) or "prickle" (Johnson's definition) is "it" (cf. 9-11), and he uses it to become a Poetic Melancholy Bird who, la Giles Fletcher's Philomel,
...leaning on a thorn her dainty chest,
For fear soft sleep should steal into her breast,
Expresses in her song grief not to be expressed.
("Christ's Triumph over Death," 66.6-8)or Richard Barnfield's Nightingale,
... poor bird, as all forlorn
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
(Ault, Lyrics 248-49)Young's Night Thoughts, however, shifts the conceit to first-person:
Grief's sharpest Thorn hard-pressing on my breast,
I strive, with wakeful Melody, to chear
The sullen Gloom
(1.437-39)One can find it odd almost to psychopathology to see this singer curse the thorn in the flesh that pricks him on, but perhaps such unyielding irony and self-satire suggest a subtle yet massive defense against the conscious articulation of psychic traumas.
67-71 however sweet tis Envy that Inspires my Song.
prickt.
by the fame of others how I mourn
and my complaints are Sweeter than their Joys
but O could I at Envy Shake my hands.
my notes Should Rise to meet the New born Day.But turning momentarily to his psychology, the narrator reveals that Envy (however sweet) inspires his song (however sweet)--a significant change on the "Song" in Poetical Sketches where the young lover concludes that "more than mortal fire / Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire" (E 416). All of which might suggest that even the seemingly artless songs of an early adolescent, like "How sweet I roamed," should be studied as envious attempts at envisioning, if not appropriating, the genius of others. So, in addition, the singer's being "prickt" can mean, "dressed for show" (cf. Johnson and OED) "by the fame of others," as well as goaded by their "prick-songs" (vocal music written with notes) and (as always) potency. Nonetheless, he claims that even his (loverly) "complaints" are more filled with sexual pleasure or are "Sweeter" than their "Joys"--or, at least, he complains in ecstasy, sweeter than all their joys except the big "O" ("O was no deny," E 467).
"But O could I at Envy Shake my hands," the narrator mocks in a comical image which gives the reader increasing pause. Will the left hand finally meet the right, showing that the narrator can congratulate himself and feel proud of his work? Or does this notorious wag wish to flourish at himself and other envious detractors his many "forms or casts of writing" (Johnson, s.v. "hand")? Then his "notes" (like these hand-written papers), his "Song. prickt.," would "Rise to meet the New born Day" of himself ("I mourn"), and so become "the Rising Sun" that "rose & shed Sweet Influence" (29, 45). His other notes evidently included extracts from bombastic Homer (to "be easily outdone"), like the formula that opens three books of Pope's translation:
The saffron Morn, with early blushes spread,
Now rose refulgent from Tithonus' bed;
With new-born day to gladden mortal sight,
And gild the courts of heav'n with sacred light.
(Iliad 11.1-4; 19.3-4; Odyssey 5.1-4; second italics added)72-75 Hate Meager hag Sets Envy on
unable to Do ought herself.
but Worn away a Bloodless Daemon
The Gods all serve her at her willThe "New born Day" is suddenly "Worn away" by the reappearance of Hate and Envy, whose twinned identity asserts itself through the possible double predication of the pronoun. This spiritual leader seems the fury or ghost of someone old or dead ("worn away," idiomatically), like Milton's "Blue meager hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost" (Comus 434) or Shakespeare's "timely-parted ghost ... meager, pale and bloodless" (2 Henry VI 3.2.162). Hate or Envy now replaces or joins Ambition as a power the Gods "all" acknowledge (see 15-16). The first of two appearances of the author's given name (cf. "Printed by Will: Blake"; E 60), this "will" can remind the reader that all these Gods serve at a certain will, and a certain image of will (cf. Will's "great ambition" in "King Edward the Third" 4.17). More at 139.
76-77 So great her Power is[.] like.
fabled hecate
She doth bind them to her law."Bloodless" Hate literally expands to "fabled hecate," and Blake seems to recall Hesiod's statement (in Thomas Cooke's version) that "Great is her power" and that "her decrees irrevocable stand" (Theogony, 653, 650). Hecate stands out, however, as the first of only two figures the text cites from classical mythology; perhaps--especially after the mention of "her will" (75)--the name has special resonance for an author whose immediate feminine Other took the triple form of Kate (mother, sister, wife [to whom he was bound in law]; Female Will? He Kate).
78-82 Far in a Direful Cave She lives
unseen Closd from the Eye of Day.
to the hard Rock transfixt by fate
and here She works her witcheries
that when She Groans She Shakes the Solid GroundMuch like Ovid's Envy (Metamorphoses 2.760ff), Hate/Envy lives in a far cave unseen by "the Eye of Day" (not to mention "conscious me," the waking I) and "transfixt" by yet another link in the "-ate" sequence, "fate" (cf. "vengeful Ate" in Pope's Iliad 19.92). Fate would thus seem to be the mightiest power of all, except for the fact that it goes unpersonified (unless, along the lines of Hate's literal expansion to Hecate, "fate" takes the form of the "father" all will soon war against). Envy/Hate's condition, at any rate, brings to mind rebels like Prometheus, Orc, Ajax (not the hero but the plunderer whom Virgil has Athena bind, in Dryden's version, "Transfix'd and naked, on a rock" [Aeneid 1.69]), and Milton's Belial, who fears that the fallen spirits may be "Each on his rock tranfixt" (PL 2.181). Note, however, that one is usually "transfixed on," not, like Hate, "to."
Perhaps she is held motionless to a different kind of rock, like that which Blake's Samson desires to engrave "with iron pens" (E 443) or that of the first "Memorable Fancy" of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which also evokes the copper plate of the trade Blake was bound to. "Here," reports the narrator with typically enchanting ambiguity (hear!), "She works her witcheries that when She Groans She Shakes the Solid Ground"--which might be to say that when she works her wit, the earth moves. The sexual denotation of "groan" occurs most famously in Hamlet (3.2.249). And why, one may wonder aside, does a pun typically elicit a groan? is the solidity of one's "ground" shaken by "groaned"? Does it so shake spheres?
83-88 Now Envy She controlls with numming trance
& Melancholy Sprung from her dark womb
There is a Melancholy, O how lovely tis
whose heaven is in the heavenly Mind
for she from heaven came,
and where She goes heaven still doth follow her."Now" begins a passage of some 350 words written in a different color of ink with a different nib, and the evidence for an insertion is strengthened by removing the entire passage (ending at 132 with "Revenge."), which restores an unimpeded flow to Hate/Envy's development. The interpolation, almost one third of the autograph, seems to offer a somewhat distinct unit concerning memory, contemplation, and, at its center, the Revolt Against the Father (the infant's envy of the breast evolves into heightened oedipal conflict). It opens with the formulation that Hate "controlls" Envy, or that Envy by herself "controlls," with a trance reminiscent of Comus's "numming spell" (853--note that Blake follows the archaic spelling, already corrected in Johnson's Dictionary quotation of it). The first Melancholy, it would seem, is sprung like the Black River (57-58) from "earths dark womb" (Milton, "On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough," 30), and one can recall that elsewhere in Blake "trance" evokes erotic rapture.
Apparently in contrast with the first, the narrator introduces Melancholy again--though the issue is complicated if "There" also refers locationally to the "dark womb" and "melancholy" is glossed as "black bile" (evoking the black river) or, multi-lingually, "black hole." The labored association of Melancholy with "heaven" suggests the erotic euphemism (as in Keats' "I'll feel my heaven anew" ["Unfelt, unheard, unseen" 17]), and Blake later writes of "the whole [/hole-]heaven of [Vala's] bosom & loins" (J 70.29) and of the "Heavens" into which the Daughters of Albion take "whom they please" in "intoxicating delight" (M 5.9-10). If there are to be different Melancholies, one might suppose as well a heaven "where more is meant than meets the ear" ("Il Penseroso" 120). Milton imagines "heav'nly minds" as being clear from "distempers foul" (PL 4.118), and such, like "the fixed mind" of "Il Penseroso," best appreciate the "divinest Melancholy" which is "higher far descended" than the classical pantheon (21).
89-90 She brings true Joy once fled.
& Contemplation is her Daughter.
Sweet Contemplation.This comment may say more about the wished-for departure of, or from, a "once fled" Melancholy than about Joy, whose flight has nowhere been reported. Twelfth Night's pun on the "cont-" in "Contemplation" (2.5.30ff) perhaps helps to expose the Malvolio-like sententiousness of the (immediate) narrator in these lines and to confirm the developing "cont-" concern ("Contagion" 53, "Contentments downy nest" 65). Joy, as in Shakespeare and elsewhere in Blake, can denote pleasure in sexual intimacy and so stand as strongly against "vain deluding joys" as the Melancholy of "Il Penseroso" and its "Cherub Contemplation" (1, 54).
91-93 She brings humility to man
Take her She Says & wear her in thine heart
lord of thy Self thou then art lord of all.Contemplation turns spiritual pander as she turns over humility "to man" with a potentially bawdy instruction ("take her": e.g. Shakespeare, King Richard III, 1.2.231) and echoing Hamlet's declaration, "Give me that man / That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him / In my heart's core" (3.2.76-78). Humility, it would seem, offers freedom from secular contemplation, and with that a solipsistic fantasy which echos Sir Henry Wotton's "Character of a Happy Life"--reprinted in Percy's 1765 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry--and the idea that the man free "Of hope to rise, or fear to fall" is "Lord of himself, though not of lands, / And having nothing, yet hath all" (Ault, Lyrics 459-60; the commonplace goes back to Horace and, supposedly, Pythagoras).
This passage is one of two which directly tie the autograph to Poetical Sketches, for in "Contemplation" the protagonist, foregoing any rank possibilities, says to "vain foolish man," "Lo then, Humility, take it, and wear it in thine heart; lord of thyself thou then art lord of all"; she also exclaims over the "humble garb true Joy puts on!" (E 442).
94-96 Tis Contemplation teacheth knowledge truly how to know.
and Reinstates him on his throne once lost
how lost I'll tell.The underlying steady sexual regard of Contemplation appears in her ability to teach "truly how to know," and perhaps her intimate acquaintance with the loins or seat of the feelings--the "reins," in the archaic term Blake sometimes uses--"reinstates" knowledge "on his throne" ("Reason," not knowledge, possesses a throne in popular idiom). The regret-filled reading of "how lost[!]" perhaps cues the narrator's announcement of an overtly confessional mode.
96 But Stop the motley Song.
But instead the narrator stops himself and trivializes what has come thus far. The narrator of "An Island in the Moon" similarly breaks the frame to report, "I was only making a fool of you" (E 453), and the patchwork incoherences of this piece suggest that the truth in the jest will be hard to gauge. Again, however, one might consider these stops and turns, nearly-concealed double-entendres and self-mockeries as instances of the narrator's increasing resistence to what he has to reveal.
97-99 I'll Shew.
how Conscience Came from heaven.
But O who listens to his Voice
T'was Conscience who brought Melancholy downWhere before Melancholy "from heaven came" (85ff.), now Conscience shares the distinction; to preserve the contrary reading of "heaven," one might invoke Shakespeare's pun that "con[-]science is born of [sexual] love" (Sonnets, 151.2). Melancholy and Conscience are thus linked, with the suggestion that the tale of "how" knowledge lost his throne parallels that of "how" Conscience came and "brought down" or "overthrew" (in one reading) Melancholy. "But O," the teller interjects, stopping himself once again with a general disparagement which asks the reader to attend more closely and to suspect that this confused raconteur is himself troubled by a voice we do not listen to:
And I will place within them as a guide
My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear,
Light after light well us'd they shall attain ...
(PL 3.194-96)100-05 Conscience was sent a Guard to Reason.
Reason once fairer than the light
till fould in Knowledges dark Prison house.
For knowledge drove sweet Innocence away.
and Reason would have followd but fate sufferd not
Then down Came Conscience with his lovely bandThe narrator's tactics are exemplified in the confused temporal sequence and ambiguous semantics which mark the brief tale of Conscience and repay slow reading. Indeed, Robert Gleckner has suggested that the passage might be seen as a rewriting of Paradise Lost, or at least a preliminary take on the version in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (personal communication). Having brought down, or in order to bring down, Melancholy, Conscience "was sent"--by whom one knows not--"a Guard to Reason." Reason then appears "fould in Knowledges dark Prison house," where, it seems logical, Conscience would be stationed. "For," the narrator continues, implying some causal explanation, "knowledge [?foreknowledge] drove sweet Innocence away." "Reason would have followd but fate"--again (as before with Hate, 80) evidently the final authority--"sufferd not": did not permit or was unaffected by the departure of Innocence. "Then down Came Conscience with his lovely band," concludes the interlude, and considering the earlier assumption that Conscience was already descended or descending when he "brought Melancholy down" (the only member of his "lovely band" in evidence), this suggests a general collapse of Conscience, including its "banned"'s and "bonds."
Reason's being "fould" in "Knowledges dark Prison house" offers a curious gloss on the standard soma/sema equation made by the speaker of "Contemplation" ("my flesh is a prison", E 442) and draws attention again to the nature of the "Knowledge" under discussion. Perhaps the text again breathes that "foul Contagion from which none are free" (53), Satire (popularly derived from satura, a "medley" of dishes: motley song). The adjective "dark" reaches back to its single other occurence, the "dark womb" which forms the site of foul carnal knowledge to a certain psychopathology, while the "Prison house" stitches together Milton's Samson in "this loathsom prison-house" (SA 922) and--anticipating what will unfold next--King Hamlet's spirit and the "secrets" he cannot tell of his "prison-house" (1.5.14).
106 The Eager Song Goes on telling
The "motley Song" had been restrained while the narrator give expression to Conscience, but that qualm dispatched, the now irrepressible, even sexually "Eager" Son/g gets the upper hand and as it were with a will of its own moves toward the climactic account of the Revolt Against the Father. Johnson's primary definition for "eager" is "Struck with desire; ardently wishing; keenly desirous; vehement in desire; hotly longing."
107 how Pride against her father Warrd & Overcame.
Pride at the beginning "awoke"; the belated introduction of her sire entails reconceiving Pride and opens the question of what fate her father desired. "Her father" turns out to be the general father as "his Children all" (109) join Pride to become "all the Gods" (116). His identity goes unrevealed, though his "throne" links him to knowledge (95), who lost his, and to Milton's "mightie Father Thron'd / On high" (PL 6.890-91); Milton also refers to a daughter's revolt using Blake's verb: "Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove" (PL 1.198). The omission of any possible mother of Pride reasserts her connection to Eve and to Sin (whose preeminent form was Pride).
108 Down his white Beard the Silver torrents Roll.
"Pity not honor'd age for his white beard," says Shakespeare's Timon, mocking Alcibides' plans to "war against" their fatherland (Timon of Athens 4.3.112, 103) and supplying a proverbial identification. Dalila's "false tears" in Blake's published sketch, "Samson," make her seem "a silver stream" (E 443), opening a slight outline of association involving a tearful father (like Phoenix in Pope's Iliad, down whose "white beard a stream of sorrow flows," 9.559). Rolling torrents suggest something more like a river (like the "Rolling" Black River of 58-59), perhaps the traditional "silver Thames" which appears in Poetical Sketches (E 425). Following the famous classical sculptures of Nile and of Tiber, personified rivers have "flowing" beards such as Blake supplies in depicting Gray's "Father Thames" ("Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," no. 4). This popular image of "Old Father Thames" (in Pope and Dryden, for example)--"parent stream" (J 53.3)--may be as close as the text dare come to encrypting the name of Blake's old father, James (close enough, it would seem, to be itself displaced).
109-10 and Swelling Sighs burst forth his Children all
in arms appear to tear him from his throneTorrents swell rivers; incipient birth/burst swells the pa-rent; the sighing heart bursts too, like Caesar's at the betrayal of "well-beloved" Brutus (Julius Caesar 3.2.176 ff.). "A Sigh is the Sword [the S-word] of an Angel King" (E 202, 489), perhaps manifest in melancholy stabs of conscience at recalling sighs of the departed Good king (38), "The King my father" (Hamlet 1.2.192; The Tempest 1.2.390). Here, however, the appearing of children (James Blake, Sr. apparently fathered seven) "in the Arms of their Father" (E 559) itself tears him ("Do they hear their father sigh"? E 16) from his throne; or the children appear with his weapons to do so; or perhaps they only appear to do so, since, according to Milton, "th' Omnipotent / Eternal Father from his Throne beheld / Thir multitude" (PL 7.136-38). The speaker of Cowper's initial Olney Hymn (first printed in 1772) hopes for "a closer walk with God," and sorrows over the sweet memory of "peaceful hours I once enjoy'd"; "I hate the sins that made thee mourn," he laments to the holy spirit, and concludes:
The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be;
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.111 Black was the deed.
most Black.The "deed" entails a dead dad. In Poetical Sketches the word denotes the murder of fair Eleanor's husband and Dalila's fantasied murder at the hand of Samson (E 411, 443); Oothoon's vision of the family romance combines death and the little death to foresee "the child dwell with one he hates. and do the deed he loaths" (VDA 5.30). Objecting to the deposition of Richard II, the Bishop of Carlisle in Shakespeare's play speaks "boldly for his king" and characterizes the action as "so heinous, black, obscene a deed" (4.1.131). What's Black is at least in part Blake, an association so pronounced in Blake's work that one wonders how, precisely, the name was actually vocalized; in "Blind-Man's Buff," for example, "blear-ey'd Will the black lot holds" (and soon has "titt'ring Kate ... pen'd up"; E 422). The archaic adjective "black" denotes "pale," and the OED observes how this "added to the formal confusion with Black," since "black" also means "absence of color"--so the "Pale desire" which initiates the autograph may be the contemporary form of an older "Blake desire."
112 Shame in a Mist Sat Round his troubled head.
Absent since line 14, Shame is revived by the naming of the Black deed and, reminiscent of the "black mist" Satan sat in (PL 9.180, 75), becomes a type of crown. Aeneas sees the ill-fated Marcellus in the underworld and wonders why "hov'ring mists around his brows are spread / And night with sable shades involves his head" (Aeneid, Dryden trans., 6.1198-99).
113 & filld him with Confusion.
Confusion is "putting to shame" as well as "ruinous destruction" as well as the state manifest by Babel (22-23: Babel ... Confusion ... Shame) and by this motley babbling, this "tumultuous medley" (Johnson, s.v. "Confusion," 1).
114-15 Fear as a torrent wild Roard Round his throne
the mighty pillars shakeBlake's rough verse does, following Pope's dictim in An Essay on Criticism, "like the Torrent roar," perhaps even suggesting "the wild Torrent of a barb'rous Age" (369, 695). Fear, later for Blake "a living torment" (E 821), roars round the father's throne, or his own, and the pillars shake; or just roars, and the pillars round his throne shake. In Milton's memorable image, cannon are "Pillars" which "roar" (PL 6.572, 586), but Blake seems closer here to Watts' popular hymn stanzas which ask "for a strong, a lasting faith":
Then should the earth's old pillars shake,
And all the wheels of nature break,
Our steady souls should fear no more
Than solid rocks when billows roar.
("The Truth of God the Promiser," 33-36)116-17 Now all the Gods in blackning Ranks appear.
like a tempestuous thunder Cloud Pride leads.
them on.When last seen, "the Gods all" were serving Envy/Hate "at her will" (73); now, like the father's "Children all," they "appear" and show a blackning family resemblance. In Poetical Sketches the "sons of blood" in revolt are likened to "tempests black" and as "nations black" they "Like clouds, come rolling" toward Gwin and his chiefs, each of whom is also "like an awful thunder cloud" (E 418). If not in heaven, then war in "the heavenly Mind" (86).
118-19 Now they Surround the God.
and bind him fast.
Pride bound him, then usurpd oer all the Gods.This single mention of "the God" evidently invokes the father. Blake's anxiety-provoking precursor reports that "cloud ... and ever-during dark / Surrounds me" (PL 3.45-46), and in the "bind ... bound" sequence one might hear Samson, "bound and blind" (438). But the emphatic action suggests more the binding of Proteus as related in Dryden's translation of Virgil's Georgics, Book 4. Aristaeus is told by his mother of "a prophet and a god" whom the "river gods adore," and that "Proteus only knows / The secret cause, and cure, of all thy woes" (569-70). Once having surprised "the wayward sire," she says, "bind him fast. / Thus surely bound, yet be not over bold" (584-85)--since Proteus will try to escape by assuming various forms (Blake uses the story again in Tiriel 4.49ff.). The idea of usurpation swerves toward another story however, as evident in Blake's later reference to the mythological account that "Jupiter usurped the Throne of his Father Saturn" (E 555).
120-14 She Rode upon the Swelling wind
and Scatterd all who durst t'oppose.
but Shame opposing fierce and hovering.
over her in the darkning Storm.
She brought forth Rage.Pride also denotes sexual heat (Tarquin's veins "Swell in their pride" in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece 432) which readies her to ride (nb.: P/ride Rode) "the Swelling" and, swelling, bring forth lust, or, "amorous rage" (Dryden, trans., Georgics, 3. 433--the context is Virgil's account of mares and the impregnating "parent wind, / [Which] Without the stallion, propagates the kind"). The "Swelling wind" of Pride recalls the "hungry sheep" of "Lycidas" "swoln with wind" (see discussion of 52-53) and the "vain foolish man" of "Contemplation," whose garments "are swoln with wind" (E 442). Shame opposes such tumescent display and, in one reading, hovers or broods over, incubates Pride, and herself brings forth Rage ("to swell" is "to be inflated with anger," notes Johnson); in another reading, Shame wavers uncertainly, like Lucrece who "prepares to write, / First hovering o'er the paper with her quill," but finds that "What wit sets down is blotted straight with will" (1296-97, 1299).
Freud's first case in Studies in Hysteria presents a patient who describes as "`storms in her head'" her many confusing "fits of despair" (p. 80). The image seems to bear comparison here, and more strikingly in the separate fragment two pages further on in the autograph. "What does this mean," cries the narrator of "Woe cried the muse," seeing that in the midst of "Buxom Joy" (as per M. Klein) he is struck with Grief and his "Nerves with trembling": "how soon the Winds Sing round the Darkning Storm ere while so fair" (E 448, emphasis added). Another fragment refers to "the Mental Storm" (E 482), and the Spectre or feeling of shame evidently is followed "in a Storm" (E 477). As Albion faces Eternal Death ("Envy hovers over him!"), the narrator sees foresees his body "Torn with black storms, & ceaseless torrents of his own consuming fire" (J 36[40] 14, 39).
125-27 Mean while Strife Mighty Prince was born
Envy in direful Pains him bore.
then Envy brought forth Care.The opposition of Pride and Shame appears as/in Strife; but at the same time the text revels in the "aspectual interconnection" (Donald Ault's term) of these states: Strife was born (as) Envy who in turn bore him, and with "Direful Pains" like those which saw Envy herself come from Pride (48-49). In the midst of all these bearings, one recalls that "to bring forth" also means "to express, or utter," as in Isaiah 42:22, "bring forth your strong reasons."
128-30 Care Sitteth in the wrinkled brow.
Strife Shapeless Sitteth under thrones of kings like Smouldring fire.
or in the Buzz of Cities flies abroadThe "wrincled Care" of Milton's "L'Allegro" (31) joins his picture of Satan with "Pride" in his "Brows" and "Care" sitting ("Sat") on his cheek (PL 2.601-603). In For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, "Fire" is glossed as "That End in Endless Strife" (E 262), an anagrammatic association (fire/strife) which perhaps here draws on Donne's "shapelesse flame" ("Aire and Angels," 3) to qualify Strife and join it to Dryden's description of the "smould'ring" beginnings of the City's Great Fire ("Annus Mirabilis," 870). Sitting, as he may, in the "Buzz of ... flies," Strife can double for the Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub. "Buzz" also denotes "rumour, ferment" which "flies abroad" through the great hive of the city.
131-32 Care brought forth Covet Eyeless & prone to th' Earth
and Strife brought forth RevengeThe OED does not document a single instance of "covet" as a substantive, and it is disconcerting to imagine exactly how those "that covet such eye-glutting gaine" (FQ 2.7.9.8) would function without sight; but Blake likes the formulation enough to join "Eyeless Covet" with the more stereotypical "Thin-lip'd Envy," "Bristled Wrath," and "Curled Wantonness" in The Book of Los (3.10). Almost subliminal disruptions continue with the preposition "to," the semantics of which the reader may be prone to neglect in favor of a more physical, down-to-earth association with "prone"--Milton's Satan in the Serpent, for instance (who is, in the usual idiom, not "Prone on the ground, as since" [PL 9.49, emphasis added]); "earth," as in Shakepeare's Sonnet 146, can denote the body ("my sinful earth"). These curiosities ask for closer consideration even if they cannot be resolved. In Poetical Sketches, for instance, Blake's Samson states "for care was I brought forth," while Fair Eleanor laments that her husband was "`Drawn down to earth'"; and in Songs of Experience, "EARTH'S Answer" equates that speaker with "free Love." Whether or not or in what way slight idiomatic discrepancies ("to" for "on") or conceptual anomalies (eyeless covet) can be the cue for, or trace of, greater liberties undisposed remains: but perhaps in this text which bears with such labored care so many bringing-forths (or, "emanations"), the narrator reports that "care brought forth" and then jumps to the rhetorical comment that he doesn't covet anything less ("covet I less?") even if his care is not really for airy nothings but (like the covert blind mole or eyeless worm) partial to "th' Earth." Great poets can be blind and covet still treasures for th' ear. Care having elicited such a display, Strife continues and produces "Revenge" to terminate the lengthy insertion which began back at 83 with "Now Envy."
133-34 Hate brooding in her Dismal den grew Pregnant
& bore Scorn, & Slander.
Scorn waits on PrideHate here fulfills Milton's type of the "Spirit" which "from the first / Wast present" and "satst brooding on the vast Abyss / And mad'st it pregnant" (PL 1.19-22), except that the abyss, seen before as Hate's "Direful Cave" (78) and "dark womb" (84), becomes the Serpent's "dismal Den" (PL 9.185), never occupied in the Garden.
135-39 but Slander.
flies around the World
to do the Work of hate her drudge & Elf.
but Policy doth drudge for hate as well as Slander.
& oft makes use of her.
Policy Son of Shame.
Indeed Hate Controlls all the Gods.
at will.Like Strife before (132), Slander "Rides on the posting winds and doth belie / All corners of the world," frequently to the poisoning of sexual trust (as in the context of the quotation, Cymbeline 3.4.36-37). An underlying context of sexual relationships includes the repeated term "drudge" which can denote, as in Shakespeare and Dryden, "male sexual servicer/servicing". In Sonnet 151, for example, the speaker remarks his flesh "rising at thy name" and comments, "Proud of this pride, / He is contented thy poor drudge to be" (10-11); Dryden's translation of Juvenal's sixth satire urges the (evidently male) reader to let his eunuch "drudge for" his lady (496); that is, "make use of her" (cf. "Take her," 92). Policy as "cunning" continues the sexual reference but also seconds the re-emerging focus on "man politic". For, as "Blind-man's Buff" concludes, the state came into existence to structure sexual desire, the "will" by which and "at" which hate "Controlls all the Gods" in deed (on "will" as sexual desire, sexual organs, and personal name, see especially Shakespeare's Sonnets 135 and 136).
140-42 Policy brought forth Guile & fraud.
these Gods last namd live in the Smoke of Cities.
on Dusky wing breathing forth Clamour & Destruction.The "Smouldring fire" of 129 here generates more obscurity: "Smoke" is traditionally "Dusky" ("duskish ... smoke," Spenser; "smoke and dusky vapours," Shakespeare; "smoke ... in dusky wreaths," Milton). If these Gods live "in the Smoke" (like Strife "in the Buzz of Cities" [130]) and "on ... wing," then they must be, like Shame, "hovering ... in the darkning Storm" (123), while their black pall sounds a bit like Saul, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter" (Acts 9:1). In a published sketch, Contemplation reports, "Clamour brawls along the streets, and destruction hovers in the city's smoak" (E 442). London, one recalls, centered on "the City," and owing to its atmosphere was known in the nineteenth century as "The smoke"; the harlot's cry seems to have been an aspect of the clamour (c[see] l'amour?) which greatly affected Blake (E 492, 27).
143-44 alas in Cities wheres the man
whose face is not a mask unto his heartSamuel Palmer called Blake "a man without a mask" (Gilchrist 301) and the phrase has enjoyed some prestige in the history of Blake criticism; but like Poetical Sketches, this text displays one mask after another, and here the mask of pointing to itself. Such a world of masculine masquers--whose "observing inly" only leads to Grief (24)--suggests a few two particular applications: where's the father whose deep emotions are evident to his son? where the great poet who does not raise A Mask before his heart's desire? And lastly, "where's the Man, who counsel can bestow .... a Soul exempt from Pride ...?" (Pope, An Essay on Criticism 631, 641).
145-46 Pride made a Goddess.
fair or I mage rather
till knowledge animated it.
'twas Calld Selflove.A mage, like a magician or magus, has great knowledge, so the two odd spacings in the autograph here (the second not recorded by any editor but suggested in the manuscript [Berg Collection, New York Public Library]) can reinforce the intensifying sense of an authoring conflict even as the "images" proliferate:
...the dreadful Mage there found
Deep busied bout worke of wondrous end,
And writing strange characters in the ground,
With which the stubborn feends he to his service bound.
(FQ 3.3.14.6-9).Pride makes the masked man's heart a "Goddes fair" (like Milton's "Mirth," "L'Allegro," 11) or, rather, it was an image I, mage, enjoyed until carnal knowledge, displaced, returned to animate the displacement as selflove, the defensive posture to which "I" is now devoted ("Self-love each jealous Writer rules" [Pope, An Essay on Criticism 516]). "Knowledge" has, evidently, no truck with a hypothetical "self-knowledge." "General Knowledge is Remote Knowledge; it is in Particulars that Wisdom consists & Happiness too," Blake writes later (E 560), but the manuscript refuses such particulars, masking a heart one can only hear in the remote depths of its abstract conjurings with vague, general names of Pride, Envy, Self-love, Knowledge, Emulation and the rest.
147-50 The Gods admiring loaded her with Gifts
as once Pandora She 'mongst men was Sent.
and worser ills attended her by far.
She was a Goddess Powerful & bore ConceitBlake again loads his rifts with Milton, here the description of Eve "in naked beauty more adorn'd, / More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods / Endowd with all thir gifts" (PL 4.713-15). The comparison to Pandora--like Eve for Milton, the first woman according to Hesiod--would seem to lend an exclusively masculine cast to "men" and confirm the unthinking sexism of the autograph. As Pandora's box brought labor, old age, disease, misery, and care, Selflove's "worser ills ... by far" seems quite a conceit on the narrator's part. The meanings of "Conceit" over-determine its appearence at this point: as "imagination" it develops logically from an "image animated"; as "an overweening opinion of oneself" it embodies "Selflove"; and as "something conceived" it reflects something conceived and born.
151-54 and Shame bore honour & made league with Pride
& Policy doth dwell with her
by whom she [had] Mistrust & suspition.
Then bore a Daughter called Emulation.From her beginning, Shame has been warring with all the Gods (9) or "opposing fierce" (122), now, after the advent of Selflove, she is evidently strong enough to change policy and, marrying her interest with Pride, express herself through an increasingly socialized progression of offspring. Emulation, however, still remains marked by the world of its forebears, like Hamlet's "most emulate Pride" (1.1.83) or the "envious fever / Of pale and Bloodless Emulation" of Troilus and Cressida (1.3.133-34).
155 who.
married.
honourWilliam Blake and Catherine Butcher (or Boucher) married on August 18, 1782. Gilchrist reports that "[t]o his father, Blake's early and humble marriage is said to have been unacceptable" (Gilchrist 37; cf. Bentley's objection, Records 24).
156 these follow her around the World[.]
As Slander drudges for hate "around the World" (135), so now do Policy, Mistrust, Suspition, Emulation, and honour work for Shame.
157-59 Go see the City friends Joind Hand in Hand.
Go See.
the Natural tie of flesh & blood.
Go See more strong the tie of marriage loveThe Hand-in-Hand was a noted fire insurance office in the City (London): its plaques on protected houses representing the work of "Policy" and the kind of mutual ties to see in cities (as Cowper wrote in 1781, "Hand-in-Hand insurance plates / Most unavoidably creates / The thought of conflagration"; "Friendship," 106-08 [published 1800]). "Hand in Hand" also recalls Milton's repeated description of Adam and Eve, whose "Link of Nature" and "wedded Love" (PL 9.914, 4.750) occasion such woe. The use of the imperative, quaint expression, and following second-person familiar pronoun suggest that the narrator may be addressing someone familiar ("Go see, love"). These insistant lines of blank verse coming at the end of the piece can serve to alert the reader to the metrical variations that have been offered along the way.
160 thou Scarce Shall find but Self love Stands Between
"Such is self-love that envies all! a creeping skeleton / With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed," laments Oothoon (VDA 7.21.22), hinting, perhaps, at a much earlier scene with a child's lamprey eyes frozen to the image on the marriage bed, emblem and generator of its outcast condition. Perhaps only some such perception of real or imagined rejection primes a sight such as that which "often" struck Blake: "a Dog will envy a Cat who is pamperd at the expense of his comfort as I have often seen" (E 565--shades here of Will "Quid the Cynic" on sister or wife Cate?). As the hurt drive for "comfort" experiences intensifying conflict and lack of fulfillment in sexual relations (since sex doesn't answer the drive's imaginary goal of permanently annihilating its ambivalent self, and self-knowledge--of one's split-off hatred, for example--feels too geniunely annihilating), sexuality itself comes under rejection as the occasion of "Self-love / The Rocky Law of Condemnation & double Generation, & Death" (J 44[30].36-37). The autograph may be seen to announce such psychic disturbance and the pale desire to set things right by sketching in hopes of the scarce find the rankest draught.
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