"London"

Although Northrop Frye notes the ironic use of "charter'd" in "London" to refute the notion that Blake championed political rebellion as the means for restoring man to his status before the fall, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks , and John Thibaut Purser deliver the first modern analysis of what Oliver Elton had earlier termed Blake's "mightiest brief poem"--that is, if we date the birth of moderncriticism with the rise of New Criticism. Warren, et. al., assertthat Blake's "London" is superior to Wordsworth's "London, 1802" due to the intensity of its poetic language. They also conclude that Blake is the speaker who comments upon the evils which political and commercial institutions have wrought upon the inhabitants of London, including the commercialization of love--an indictment against which is delivered in the "Harlot's curse."

In his historical reading of "London," David Erdman also posits Blake as the speaker of the poem. Expanding upon Frye's discussion of Blake's ironic use of "Charter'd," Erdman notes that this term also functions as an ironic comment upon Thompson's assertion in Rule Britannia that "the charter of the land" keeps Britain free. Unlike Frye, however, Erdman reads Blake's use of "charter'd" as evidence of the poet's agreement with Paine's condemnation of "charter and corporation" in The Rights of Man. Erdman also places other of "London"'s famous phrases in their historical context. He notes the "mind-forg'd manacles" allusion to Pitt's counter- revolutionary proclamations and reads the "blood" on "Palace walls" as an allusion to graffiti chalked or painted on royal and government walls which advocated revolution and regicide.

Helen Watson-Williams also discusses the likely meanings of "charter'd" and "mind-forg'd manacles." She concludes that the former is best understood by its economic connotation and demonstrates Blake's antipathy for the destructive powers of commerce, and that the latter refers the crippling effect that adult institutions--church, government, commerce--have upon the "innocent and intrinsically joyful and loving infant" (183). Williams also notices the possible influence "London" may have had upon Eliot's The Waste Land.

Unlike his predecessors, Robert Gleckner emphasizes the connotation of "charter'd" as bound or restricted. Gleckner reads the regimented mode of living in London as representative of all of England. He contrasts this method of living to the radically different "southern wild" which the speaker of "The Little Black Boy" inhabits.

Proposing a reading which he will later qualify and expand, Harold Bloom, in Blake's Apocalypse, examines two possible readings of the "plagues" posited in the poem's final stanza. Bloom rejects reading "plagues" as referring specifically to a venereal infection which causes prenatal blindness in favor of reading "plagues" as human limitations resulting from the "curse of nature" (142). Bloom's reading rests upon the premise that "the Harlot is not just an exploited Londoner but nature herself" (142).

Ignoring the poem's historical context and focusing exclusively upon its aesthetic merits, D.H. Rawlinson examines the revision of "London" and concludes that the final version more clearly and forcefully expresses Blake's indignation toward the evils of London. Unlike "The Tyger," which lacks coherence and refuses to impart a clear meaning, "London" does not require comparison with other of Blake's poems to demonstrate its "full greatness" (45). Moreover, Rawlinson insists, "London" can be read as a "modern poem" which provides insights into something we know and can recognize: the brutality of life in large modern cities (51).

Taking the opposite view, Karl Kiralis asserts that Blake's corpus exists in "organic unity," with each part contributing to the whole of Blake's unified vision (5). "London," Kiralis argues, examines the evils born of incorrect social organization; the people of London are miserable because of various means to an organized way of society, including the authoritative institutions of Church, state, commerce, and marriage. In Jerusalem, Blake will explain the means of correcting these evils by revealing the proper forms of social organization. The designs of "London" and plate 84 of Jerusalem support Kiralis's reading. In the former, an old man is being led by a child stage left into darkness; in the latter, the same figures are exiting stage right and moving from darkness into light. This suggests that Jerusalem is to be read as a corrective to the social evils described in "London."

Like Frye and Erdman before him, John Holloway offers another historical reading of "London." He suggests that "every ban" alludes to Pitt's repressive proclamations, that "mind-forg'd manacles" allude specifically to the chains worn by those being tried for sedition or treason, and that the Londoners' "marks of weakness" allude to the uncertainty spawned by police spies. All of these allusions reveal Blake's indignation over "the present and pressing destruction of the political liberty of his fellows and himself" (57).

Martin Price argues that these "externally imposed suppressions" exerted by authoritative institutions suggest a general condition whose meaning is evident only to the visionary poet (47). Unlike the subjects he "marks," whose "sighs," "curses," etc. are unrealized expressions of the terror born of suppression, the visionary poet possesses an ability to interpret these conventional sounds of anguish and make visible what to others is merely audible.

Like Rawlinson before him, Doyno examines Blake's revision of "London." Doyno's analysis, however, goes beyond merely noticing the greater clarity and forcefulness of the poem's final version. Explaining how each revision of the poem further develops the fusion of visual and aural imagery, Doyno asserts that throughout its revision "London" evolves from a descriptive piece to a miniature drama in which the reader "recreates the synaesthesia of the visual and aural...by transferring marks on the page into perceptions of our world" (63).

Unlike the critics who emphasize the political allusions of the phrase "mind-forg'd manacles" (notably Erdman and Holloway) and read "London" as Blake's expression of revulsion against the political/cultural sources of the Londoners' enslavement, E.D. Hirsch argues that the Londoners themselves are psychologically responsible for their plight. Hirsch asserts that the Londoners' "woes" are entirely the result of the constriction of their Reason. Thus Londoners are complicit in their enslavement by artificially created institutions of authority because their mental weakness allowed the creation of such institutions. Thus for Blake, the division between social satire/political revolution and psychological satire/revolution is a matter of emphasis, not substance. Ultimately, false metaphysics proves the source of all human ills.

In his examination of the ways in which London has been satirized in English Literature, Ian Donaldson notices that Blake's use of repetition in the first stanza suggests the "mechanical effect" the city has upon its inhabitants (113). In this respect "London" resembles Eliot's The Waste Land: both poems suggest that all life in London is marked by sameness and mechanical repetition.

Expanding upon the reading he first proposed in Blake's Apocalypse, in Poetry and Expression Harold Bloom completely divorces "London" from its historical context and reads the poem as Blake's anxious attempt to rewrite "London"'s "precursor text": Chapter Nine of the Book of Ezekiel (34). "London," Bloom insists, is neither a protest against social or political oppression, a condemnation of Pitt's counter-revolutionism, nor a vision of judgement. Rather, "London" functions as a record of Blake's self-condemnation--a record of his lament that he cannot be the Ezekiel-like prophet that he should be. Rather than prophesying the revolution, Blake (who Bloom reads as the speaker of the poem) is admitting his resignation and lamenting the human condition.

In an endeavor to find the meaning of "London," Archibald Hill attempts to discover, through process of elimination, the meaning of six of the poem's crucial terms: "charter'd," "ban," "appalls," "curse," and "Marriage hearse." Hill concludes that "charter'd" alludes to Paine's use of the word and suggests the Londoners' loss of liberty, "ban refers to Pitt's counter-revolutionary proclamations, "appalls" should be glossed as "casts a pall over," "curse" means "imprecation," and "Marriage hearse" suggests "bier" or "bed of death." Hill reads this last phrase as an "imperfection" which does not parallel Blake's metaphorical criticism of Church and government, but concludes that "it is better to accept imperfection than to explain a blemish away at the cost of inconsistency" (82).

While not so presumptuous as to attempt to offer the meaning of "London," Grant Roti and Donald Kent do provide the meaning of the "Harlot's curse." Arguing against Bloom's assertion in Blake's Apocalypse that the "Harlot's curse" represents man's natural limitations, Roti and Kent insist that this curse must refer predominantly to venereal disease-- specifically gonococcal conjunctivitis, a form of gonorrhea which shortly after birth produces a pussy discharge from the eyes.

Bloom is again upbraided by E.P. Thompson, this time for ignoring that the political and intellectual culture in which Blake actively participated serves as the informing context for "London." Thompson insists that Revelation, and not Ezekiel, is the source for Blake's use of "mark," as well as the Biblical allusion which Blake's contemporaries in the dissenting community would most easily recognize. In Revelation, the "mark of the beast" is equated with commerce, which Thompson reads as the "symbolic organization" behind the sources of oppression: Church, palace, marriage (21).

Michael Ferber takes issue with both Bloom's and Thompson's reading. Bloom errs, Ferber argues, in divorcing the poem from its historical context and reading nature, and not commercialism, as the primary agent of oppression. Although Thompson recognizes commerce as the primary target of the speaker's indignation, he errs in conflating "the mark of the beast" with the "Marks of weakness, marks of woe" evident on the faces of Londoners. For unlike those marked in Revelation, the Londoners are not directly responsible for their enslavement by commerce. Thus Blake is not prophesying his subjects' ultimate destruction, but recognizing the underlying social disease of buying and selling. This recognition, Ferber insists, is the first step to precipitating the revolution. Ferber suggests that "London"'s design may have been meant to illustrate a fifth stanza, now lost, in which Blake would offer such hope.

Zachary Leader also examines the discrepancy between the figure of the aged wanderer in the design and the text this is supposed to illustrate. Leader concludes that this figure is an illustration of the speaker of the poem, and, what's more, is the same Bard who speaks in the "Introduction" to experience and "The Voice of the Ancient Bard." In "London," the formerly youthful and optimistic Bard of the "Introduction" has become "lame and embittered," his optimism undermined by experience (197). The speaker of "London" reveals the Bard in his "middle state;" no longer optimistic, he is not yet self-aware of his degradation by experience, as is the figure whom in the designs he most resembles: the speaker of "The Voice of the Ancient Bard" (197).

Heather Glen also notices a correlation of text and design in "London," or, more specifically, between the text and the process of engraving. Glen claims that "London" is not a statement of moral outrage or despair, but the voice of a "marking prophet" who discloses the hidden logic of society by means which transcend rational analysis (216). Thus, like Price, Glen reads "London" as an affirmation of the visionary poet's powers of perception and articulation. Noticing the poem's movement from an observer's abstract account of the city in the first two stanzas to the specific images of oppression which "leap into life" in the final stanzas, Glen concludes that the poem's text follows the process of relief engraving (215). In the first two stanzas, meanings hidden from conventional vision are marked by the speaker--just as the text/design is marked onto the plate. In the final stanzas, this hidden meaning is made manifest--what was abstracted is clearly and specifically revealed--just as the text and design are formed as the remainder of the plate is dissolved away.

Harold Pagliano echoes Leader's claim that "London" represents only the first step in man's liberation from the destructive forces at work around him. "London" suggests that the destructive work man has inflicted upon himself can be undone once it is intelligently identified. The poem does not, however, reveal the method by which the natural and social causes of man's condition may be overcome, but only reveals the insufficiency of attempting this corrective step through natural methods.

Like Hirsch, Harriet Kramer-Linkin asserts that the speaker recognizes the source of oppression in "London" not as a specific time-bound political or cultural institution, but "recognizes the source of idiolectical restriction as the human brain" (17-18). However, unlike Price and Glen, Kramer-Linkin does not view the speaker as a visionary poet with the ability to objectively articulate his judgement upon the sources of humanity's ills. Rather, the speaker, equally a representation of "every man," is also enslaved by "mind-forg'd manacles." A participant in the general logic that results in social inequities, the speaker cannot escape the "perceptual categories that mandate grim visions of existence" (19).

Stanley Gardner shares Ferber's assumption that the "marks of weakness" evident on Londoners' faces reveal not an infirmity of character, but "the debility required to support the privilege" of commerce, Church, and palace (119). Claiming it to be the only such instance in the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Gardner affirms Blake as the speaker whose utterance is not merely an objective account of the ruin that is London, but an expression of "reigned-in anger" (119).

John Brenkman delivers another critique of Bloom's reading on the grounds that it ignores the political meaning of the poem. Rather than reading "London" as Blake's anxious response to a "precursor-text," Brenkman reads the poem as a political text whose examination of the means by which man's self-imposed chains of Church, state, commerce, etc. become sources of his own enslavement anticipates Marx.

--Mark Rollins (November 1995)

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