What was the sound of Jesus' breath? The Earth trembling and naked lay Tho' thy oath turn'd Heaven pale, And the breath Divine is Love. In this, and other similar passages, the prophetic spirit has in no way harmed the poet's work, but has, on the contrary, inspired him to heights of grandeur where he leaves far beneath him even the most subtle allegories and the most complex and mysterious symbols. 1 The Everlasting Gospel. XX: CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY (3) THE EARLIER PROPHETIC BOOKS1 TIRIEL, THEL, VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION T HE Books composing this group exhibit almost the same process of development as the lyrical poems, in their mingling of mysticism and true poetry, and also in the complicated symbolical style adopted by the writer. The three most familiar books, which are also the first in chronological order, are Tiriel, the Book of Thel, and Visions of the Daughters of Albion. 2 They were written about the same time as, or immediately after, the lyrical poems, and form a sort of trilogy. Blake's theories are here expressed in allegories that we can comprehend. His mythical personages move in a strange world, but they have not yet put off their human character. We can picture them to ourselves, can enter into their feelings, and understand the language they speak. The ideas they represent come within our own knowledge, and, to this extent, we recognize ourselves in them. The subject of all three books appears to be very similar to that of the Songs of Experience: namely, the poet's grief at the spectacle of our world under the rule of Law, and his rebellion against it. Blake had by this time lost his first enthusiasm for the innocent joys of childhood, and could only see the wretchedness of fallen man ; but he had not yet seen, in the world outside of ours, his glorious visions of regeneration and of eternal happiness to come. This, however, is only the dominating note, the principal motif, as it were, of these books, and he almost drowns it in an elaborate orchestral accompaniment of thought, sentiment, and pictorial description. It is only in the finales, when all subsidiary melodies are silenced, that the main theme is heard by itself, and leaves our ears ringing with its last cries of revolt and lamentations of despair. But in the meantime, we have often forgotten or ignored it, being in turns terrified, fascinated, or lulled to sleep by the varying harmonies of the poet's music. 1 The entire series of the "Minor Prophetic Books" is now for the first time easily accessible to the ordinary reader in Mr. John Sampson's 'Oxford Edition' of Blake's Poetical Works, 1913. Price 3s. 6d. 2 Visions of the Daughters of Albion is chronologically separated from Thel by The French Revolution, to be examined further on. The first of the group, in point of date, is probably Tiriel. This is the only one of the Prophetic Books which Blake did not engrave, and, as a result, it has no accompanying illustrations. Like all the other books, it probably contains some hidden symbolical meaning; but this makes no difference to the general impression it produces upon the reader. It is, first of all, a book of curses directed against all mankind. Tiriel, king of the West (who here does not yet seem to be one of Urizen's sons) has cursed his children, after the death of his wife, and has left his house, to wander, blind and age-bent, about the world. He is kindly entertained for one day by Har and Heva, the parents of all men, and is then brought home by Ijim, his terrible brother and his enemy. Again he curses his children, calling down destruction upon them. And in the end, led, like Ædipus, by his youngest daughter Hela, whom his curses have driven mad, and mocked by his other brother Zazel, whom he had enslaved, he returns once more to the kingdom of Har, and dies at Har's feet, after first cursing him as the "mistaken father of a lawless race." He is a sort of Lear in his dotage, mad, and only opening his mouth to curse and rail upon his children and his brothers, who will not submit to his tyrannous yoke. His maledictions are as vehement as those of the aged king Where art thou, Pestilence, that bathest in fogs and standing lakes? Rise up thy sluggish limbs, and let the loathsomest of poisons Drop from thy garments as thou walkest, wrapp'd in yellow clouds ! Here take thy seat in this wide court; let it be strewn with dead; And sit and smile upon these cursed sons of Tiriel ! Thunder and fire, and pestilence, hear you not Tiriel's curse? 1 The whole poem is in this key, and reads like a fragment of some ancient epic describing the wordy battles of the Titans. In the Book of Thel we hear a different and much softer tone. Thel is a "Daughter of the Seraphim," a spirit who is about to be imprisoned in our mortal clay, to be "vegetated" and born into this world, and to become a human soul endued with a body. To her, this means death; and already she has left her sisters and sought the secret air, To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day. 2 But here the poet leaves the plane of multiple vision, and returns to earth. Thel laments over her fate, and now we only see her as a young girl doomed to die, and expressing, in words full of melancholy 1 Tiriel, V. a Thel, p. 1. beauty, the sadness that fills us at the death of any creature that is fair and gentle. She is like Chénier's " Captive," but bereft of all hope; and she only asks that her death may be like a sleep. Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard, All the gentle creatures that are around her take pity upon her, but they cannot save her from death. They can only show her that death is but another form of life, that we die only in order that others may live, that " we live not for ourselves." The Lily of the valley, "breathing in the humble grass," dies to nourish the lamb and the cow who crop her flowers. The little cloud that descends before Thel's eyes must indeed dissolve, but it is only to find his partner, the dew, in the vale. O maid, I tell thee, when I pass away, It is to tenfold life, to love, to peace, and raptures holy; 2 The worm, for whom she is to become food, appears before her in dumb supplication; and the clod of clay, at once symbol of mortality, nurse of the earthworm and mother of all living things, sings her its song of triumph. Then Thel becomes once more the Spirit about to receive a body. The clod of clay has reminded the poet of his original vision. It is of clay that our mortal bodies are made: so the clod of clay invites Thel to enter the house of death, the grave, which is also the source of earthly life. She traverses this unknown land. She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous roots A land of sorrows and of tears, where never smile was seen. 3 She listens to the "voices of the ground," the lamentations of the material world. And at last she comes to her own grave-the body in which she is about to be imprisoned—and hears a sorrowful voice issuing from the pit, and mourning over the body and its organs which restrict the soul and are the source of all evil. Why must there be an eye, a tongue, an ear, a nostril ? Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy? Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire? 1 Thel shrieks and flies away, terror-stricken, leaving us uncertain of her fate. But her story has at once soothed and saddened us, making us feel all the pathos of the love and death that await all mortal beings. It is one of the most beautiful elegies in the whole range of English poetry. Visions of the Daughters of Albion is Blake's song of love and longing. Here, more than anywhere else, he gives expression to his anger against those laws which condemn free love and its joys as a crime. I have cited some of the most significant passages in the chapter on Blake's system of morality. Many commentators have shrunk from this interpretation of the book, regarding such a revolt against the laws of marriage and the conventions of society as too audacious, and forgetting Blake's friendship with Godwin and Mary Shelley. But why should anyone try to suppress this part of his creed, as some people wished to suppress the incestuous love in the first edition of The Revolt of Islam, and others the atheistic pantheism of Queen Mab or the irreligious trifling of Don Juan? Blake's genius, like that of Byron and Shelley, could never bow itself to pass beneath the Caudine Forks of law and convention; and Swinburne, the only one of his interpreters who was also a great poet, saw this clearly, and dared to say it. Oothoon, the virgin who " gave up woman's secrecy," has plucked the flower of love in Leutha's vales, and Bromion the violent has possessed her. Thereupon Theotormon, who loved her, and whose love she returns and ardently desires, abandons her and accuses her of impurity. She and Bromion," the adulterate pair," are bound back to back in Bromion's caves, terror and meekness" compelled to dwell together. It is in vain that Oothoon reflects in her soul the pure image of her loved one, that she proclaims the sanctity of all the joys of life and the love which purifies all things, that she curses jealousy 1 Thel, p. 6. |