Post it here, by these Blake engravings commissioned for a project entitled: Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America, from the year 1772, to 1777
***
And if you recall, there was a plate I wanted to show you of Urizen in fetters, but had loaned out. This is Urizen in his dream of infinite divisions. It's one of Blake's most poignant images of "mind forg'd manacles": slavery.
***
11 comments:
Kate's Response for 04/11/08
Essential Human Sympathy
I must admit to having little knowledge of the history of the British slave trade; what I do know if filtered through the lens of American history, which is a bias I feel is important to keep in the mind while examining Ann Yearsley’s A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade.
I found the method and structure of the piece to be the two most notable aspects of the poem, apart from the main theme. Yearsley starts off strong with a direct address, initially to a large audience, specifically Bristol, but with overt intention that all of both Britain and Ireland are to be held accountable as well. She then moves to rally any potential sympathizers through a brief appeal to the better nature of humanity: “But come, ye souls who feel for human woe…” (31) Immediately afterward, Yearsley creates a character, Luco, through whom she will relay the individual horrors of slavery.
By attaching a face and, most significantly, a name to a victim of slavery, Yearsley personalizes the argument in a way that would be impossible with a nameless everyman and intangible philosophical concepts. Yearsley then points an accusatory finger at those who profit from the inhumanity of the slave trade, in a very pointed tirade. From the beginning, Yearsley makes no attempts to refute or contest the slavery-favoring argument that Europeans (whites) are inherently and biologically superior to other races. This creates an important tone in the poem, where equality of humanity in all people is assumed with such certainty that it never even needs to be stated in the text. Yearsley’s description of her character Luco’s life story further expounds upon this universal humanity.
What makes Luco an effective and sympathetic protagonist for a political poem like Yearsley’s are the universal human experiences tied to his very specific life story. The concept of family, detailed and distinct relationships between himself and his mother and father, the pain of his lost love and the intolerability of the labor forced upon him are all concepts that can be understood and grieved for by people who have never been slaves themselves. Yearsley never casts Luco as an innocent savage or a less fortunate creature, as other abolitionists have done in pursuit of their causes; rather, Luco is a man, just like any other, whose life has been terribly disturbed by human cruelty. He is a vessel for sympathy more than pity, which is what sets him apart as a compelling character.
Yearsley casts Luco as the martyr and his death burning on the tree is reminiscent of Christ’s crucifixion. The hypocrisy of slave traders and their supporters is clearly delineated in the poem and Yearsley is very careful to distinguish false “Christians” from actual Christian doctrine. She makes a similar distinction between the law and justice, which I find to be particularly significant towards the overall theme of the work. Yearsley’s argument in this poem is enacted to tremendous effect in her characterization of Luco and the construction of the piece to focus so intently on his situation. All of Yearsley’s incendiary accusations against false Christians pursuing only financial gain are earned and given potency by the sympathetic human soul she places at the center of her case.
(My fault, Kate! Apologies for the missing posting place.)
Response for 4-11-08
Pity and Sympathy in Blake’s The First Book of Urizen
William Blake’s The First Book of Urizen contains a large amount of commentary about separation, specifically about why it is something incredibly painful and unpleasant. In the case of The Book of Urizen, the concept of Pity takes the form that enables this separation. Pity is an emotion that separates because unlike Sympathy, Pity does not allow the person to put themselves in the place of the person they pity. When you sympathize with someone, you are able to imagine yourself in their place and see the similarities that you share. When you pity someone, it is almost as if you are drawing a line in the sand between you and that person making it very clear where each of you stands. A hierarchy is established with one person looking down on the other. Someone will always walk away with the idea that they are better or worse somehow. This is not the case with sympathy where all comparisons are attached to both people, affecting them each in some way. Throughout The Book of Urizen, Blake is very conscious of this. When he describes the act of becoming aware of the world around the Eternals (Los and Urizen), he says “He saw Urizen, deadly black,/ In his chains bound, and Pity began,/ In anguish dividing and dividing/ (For Pity divides the soul)” (lines 292-5). This happens after the forms are given to the body. After everything has started to be named, everything begins to be torn apart.
It is Los who is trying (very much in vein) to keep everything together. He is now aware of everything around him, and so he is unable to ignore the separation that comes along with giving form to everything. When the body is formed throughout Chapter IVb, each of the stanzas is punctuated with the statement that an age has passed “And a state of dismal woe” (lines 215, 224, etc). This woe comes from knowing that with each formation, each realization of some form or shape, comes a dismissal or refusal of all of the other possibilities that could have ever come instead of the ones that actually did. Los tries so hard to bind everything together, to keep everything tied to him, but the more Los fights to hold things to him, the more he sees the separation between them. With every realization of objects, every creation and acknowledgement of shape, there is a loss of what else could have been in the world. So it is a sort of creation at the same time that it is destruction. They are one in the same in The Book of Urizen. We have to pity Los as he fights because of his fruitless battle.
It is interesting to note as well that they call the female, Enitharmon, “Pity,” which she is by Blake’s definition. She is the physical embodiment of a separation from man. When Los and Enitharmon are seen together, she is referred to as “his own divided image” (line 345). Even when she is showing another form of Los, a copy of him in many ways, she is still dividing. She is the same as him in every way except that she is female. When it is acknowledged that there is a difference between the man and the woman that difference becomes all that Eternity is able to see. From that point on after seeing that she is something separate, Enitharmon becomes something that pulls apart. Everything in The Book of Urizen makes us very aware of the forces pulling things apart as they are created. It is a paradox that creation is destruction, but Blake makes it feel very real. It is hard to tell when we sympathize and when we pity, but both forces are both very present.
Brigette Jolene Todt
Eng 344
April 4, 2008
It was said multiple times in class that it would be unwise to try to pin down William Blake to one opinion or another, one interpretation or another. This seems to be a very good thing to keep in mind. I do not presume to know what Blake was writing about, this is after all my first time doing any attentive reading of him, but keeping this idea in mind is helpful when approaching his works. It seems that Blake was a fan of contradictions, and making the reader think things over. In fact, it is not all that difficult to read a bit of mockery and humor into it.
The presence of contradictions is found in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, as well as instances where Blake seems to me encouraging some further reflection and thought on a subject. Even just the title suggests a blurring of the lines between what is generally thought to be a clear distinction. The Voice of the Devil points out errors in organized religion, “All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors,” and gives their contradictions, “But the following Contraries to these are True.” (Wu, Blake 207). There are many similar instances of this, where the lines between good and evil are blurred.
In fact there are several instances where Blake mocks ideas that many feel so secure in. A few times there will be a note at the conclusion of a section. For example, at the end of the The Voice of the Devil section the notation reads:
“Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.”
(Wu, Blake 208).
One interpretation of this is that perhaps it is a suggestion that the idea of good is confining and stifling, and that evil is not nearly so much because humans are more closely tied to that than they would like to imagine. Though at the same time, one must remember to not try to pry a definite answer out of something such as this. At any rate, it is something fascinating to ponder.
Another point where Blake will set one to thinking and rethinking a subject is The Proverbs of Hell. One could take any of these various proverbs and try to analyze it. Should it be taken at face value? Can it be determined if they are completely right or completely wrong? Is there something deeper hidden there? If so, what is it? For example, “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion,” or one that was touched on in class, “As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.” (Wu, Blake 209-10). What is to be taken from these?
Something that is also interesting to look at is the last part of The Proverbs of Heaven and Hell where Blake writes that “ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods,” and that this happened
“Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.”
(Wu, Blake 210-11).
This seems to imply the possibility that all religion is the result of man’s desire to assign names and roles to everything, and then losing themselves to their own fabricated design. That all Gods, not just the ones of the ancient pagans, but their own Christian God was just a fabrication. Is this something Blake believed or is it just the opposite? Whatever may have been Blake’s goal, if he indeed even had a goal, it is still interesting to read and reflect on. Regardless, oppositions and conflicts that encourage further thought can be found throughout The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, though nothing less should be expected. As Blake writes in A Memorable Fancy [The Vanity of Angels], “Opposition is true friendship.” (Wu, Blake 215).
William Blake wrote about the creation of religion in both a sense of physical and spiritual awareness. In “The First Book of Urizen” Blake proposes existence began as a conglomeration of conforming souls which had the potential to imagine reason, as Urizen finally did, thus creating the world. As he imagined things, they came into existence and because with the creation of any thought an antithesis, a nonexistence which formerly occupied the space of the new thought, forms so Los was manifested from Urizen. He embodied the wonder Urizen felt about what he was destroying by creating the world by making divisions, which Los tried to keep together. He formed webs, nets, and chains to keep the world from dividing into individual judgments. In Chapter VIII, Blake wrote about another web which came from Urizen’s soul and was a “female in embryo” (Blake, 238). Blake wrote “And all called it The Net of Religion” (Blake, 238). This suggests religious tendencies are harvested within embryos, which women carry, so each person is conceived from two people but inside of religion.
This also means that religion is an individual humanistic construction, not something which exists from spirituality. Because the “religion net” was formed by Los and Urizen after they divided and became individual beings, it can only be an attempt to tie their future offspring to the collective spiritual world but the web is useless. It only holds the child within the mother’s womb for the first nine months of pregnancy, and when the child emerges from her and is cut away to form an individual being it destroys such a spiritual connection. Also, the embryo is placed within the female who, in Blake’s poem, was spawned as an identical, nonetheless secondary, image of the male. Urizen and Los were directly connected to the Eternals, Urizen having come from them and Los also formed from them as an opponent to Urizen, but women were created as partners for the renegade beings and “All Eternity shuddered at sight/ of the first female now separate” (Blake, 233). Their reaction was negative because the female was a being created not from the collective spirit but from a separate individual who had created an image for himself, different from the others.
In order to complete the female image as a reflection of them, the men needed to “imagine” for them a spiritual connection similar to their own, thus the creation of the “religious web.” Any children born from a woman’s womb are part of the contrived “religion” while those spawned from Urizen have the former connection to the world as a spirit, but at the end of the poem all such creatures left Earth, which means the connection between the original spirit and modern humans does not exist (Blake, 240). The religion humans experience is secondary. It is Urizen’s attempt to define the experience of the original spirit to secondary creatures. From Blake’s poem, it seems humans can comprehend the spiritual creation of their reality but also understand the opposite of the collective spirit, which was created as a result of Urizen. He was part of the spirit, which existed, but in creating the world he destroyed that reality, so both the spiritual world and non-spiritual world are real.
Dyson Shannon
Eng. 344: Gina Franco
Response #2
April 10, 2008
The Search for New Imaginations
While reading Plates 21 and 22 of William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, I stumbled across a connection to William Carlos Williams. First in Plate 21, Blake compares Swedenborg to “Angels [that] have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise . . . with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning” (215). Then, he refutes Swedenborg when he writes, “Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, though it is only the contents of index of already published books” (215). Blake pans Swedenborg further in Plate 22, and his blatant accusation that Swedenborg had written “falsehoods” leans more toward the one-sidedness of the Swedish theologian’s efforts (215). Blake further states, “Any man of mechanical talents may . . . produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg’s . . . and from Dante or Shakespeare, an infinite number” (215). Clearly, Blake has distaste for writing that is not original. If you fast forward 132 years, Williams writes of the same disdain toward unoriginality in Spring and All.
I do not contend that I have a firm grasp on the totality of neither Blake nor Williams’ works, but their penchant for newness runs on a parallel plane. Williams writes of Shakespeare’s genius, “To know that there is no escape except in perfection . . . his buoyancy of imagination raised him NOT TO COPY . . . but to equal, to surpass them [his rivals] as a creator of knowledge, as a vigorous, living force above their heads” (122). 132 years and some of the most insightful writing in our brief history still searches for something new. I’ve another thought though I have no answer. Has there been a “new” since or between Blake and Williams’ efforts to convince us of its necessity? A better question might be—is it possible to have a “new,” or is it already written? There is another connection between Blake and Williams—imagination.
Los is imagination in Blake’s The First Book of Urizen. I am positive we covered this aspect of the book in class; therefore, I will not dwell on the subject, but Los reconstructs like Williams’ “imagination” constructs. Williams insists that “only through imagination is the advance of intelligence possible, to keep beside growing understanding” (106). At times, the appearance of similar trains of thought in Burke and Williams are obvious, but does that mean Williams’ piece is unoriginal or lacks in imagination? Is Burke’s retelling of Genesis lacking in the same manner? No. It simply means that the two cover previously written topics. It is how they write and what they (and we) imagine the meaning of their word selection, usage, and placement conveys to themselves and the reader that is original.
Devilish Gospel
While the Book of Urizen is written to imitate the Book of Genesis, Blake’s writing seems to mostly mirror Milton’s Paradise Lost. The prelude of The First Book calls out to a dark creature whom dictates, “swift-winged words” (line 6) much like Milton’s call to the angelic muse to speed his pen. Much like Burke wrote in Sublime and Beautiful, “terror is in obscurity” (12), Blake has managed to bury his poem in the terror of his vague prophesizing of the world.
In chapter one, we see a creature much like that of Milton’s Death. “Lo, a shadow of horror is risen / In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific! / Self-closed, all repelling’ what Demon / hath formed this abominable void,” (chapter 1,1-4) This description gives us an idea of what the creature is, and gives us an emotion to identify with, but fails to actually describe anything, leaving us with our own imagination. This allows us to build on our fear of the unknown, adding to it just the emotion that the obvious character Urizen portrays.
This grim and brooding mood continues with the end of Chapter II, “one command, one joy, one desire, one curse, one weight, one measure. / One King, one God, one Law.” (Chapter 2, section 8). This harsh Old Testament viewpoint brings Urizen out as the Creator, king of Heaven and Hell and master of the universe. However, as Blake points out, he is not the kind or gentle lamb of the Protestants, but instead he shakes with the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament. This is a strange twist, placing darkness an evil into the portrait of the being that is all good, by doing his he increases our uncertainty, making Urizen even more terrifying than before.
In Chapter IVb we get to the chorus of the First book, “And a [insert age number here] age passed / And a state of dismal woe.” (Chapter 4). This is a mockery of the Old Testament’s book of Genesis, in which the Lord says over and over, “and saw that it was good.” By using this reference Blake quite blatantly reinforces his reference of Urizen as a creature of misery and woe, much like the God of the Bible is a creature of good.
Ann Yearsley’s A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade initially begins with Yearsley’s own criticism of her hometown in Bristol and its rather large role in the slave trade with its popular seaports. Because she was able to witness all of the inhuman behavior that was going on around her, it is apparent in her work that she was strongly influenced to write about the cruelty of it all; the inspiration came in form of a very eloquently written poem. As strong as her words are on paper, I am curious to know what type of action she took in Bristol against the slave trade and if she was involved with any other types of public disapproval (besides her writings).
The poem’s focus on Luco, a man who is stripped of not only his family, but also his very identity, makes this a very real and personal experience. With this fictional character, the reader can imagine Luco representing a larger whole of African American slaves and the connection within all of mankind at this point in American history. His work on the sugar plantation (which has been notably recognized as some of the most consuming and wearing farm work) makes him think of his parents and the pain that he has to carry of those who have come before him. Yearsley does a good job using words with strong connotations. A line such as “Fury, grief, alternate shame, the sense of insult, all conspire to aid the inward storm – yet words were no relief” (Yearsley 165) portray a very powerful description of the mindset of Luco and so many other trapped African Americans. It’s also interesting that Luco is having these memories while he is working at the sugar plantation because it is work like this that reminds him of his own history; this was the work that his parents did. This work was bringing him closer to Luco’s memory of them, aging and tired, but still determined. They had nowhere to turn to and were left feeling isolated and embarrassed because of their society and the role that had been forced upon them.
Another part of this poem that should be looked at more closely is the idea of Christianity and how the slave owners and whites interpret its supposed beliefs and morals. There is a sufficient amount of literature that acknowledges the two-sidedness of Christianity and how it is practiced at this time. After preaching about equality and love, the listeners and preachers are those who have no problem purchasing another human being and forcing them into slave work. Yearsley has no problem addressing this issue on several different occasions; when Yearsley writes, “Behold that Christian! See what horrid joy lights up his moody features, while he grasps the wished-for gold, purchase of human blood!” (Yearsley 162), she is not shying away from the issue at hand. Several practicing Christians were allowing this type of treatment (that supposedly goes against what they’ve been raised to believe) to continue as more lives were traded and sold. Later in the poem Yearsley makes the comparison between Christians and slaves, mentioning that “the savage tribes are angels when compared to brutes like these” (Yearsley 167). In doing this, she is admitting once again that this “vile race of Christians” (Yearsley 167) are complete brutes matched up against savages – a group of people who are recognizably looked at as inferior. This confession is refreshing and honest, making people take a closer look at what was being said and what was actually happening.
Language of Urizen
In verse two of the Preludium to the First Book of Urizen, Blake writes, “Eternals I hear your call gladly / Dictate swift-winged words, and fear not / To unfold your dark visions of torment” (223). The call Blake hears is literally the eternal, the infinite that exists before the division of reason. His call echoes the invocation of the muse, but the muse has been replaced with a brief vision of the infinite. The text of Blake’s “The First Book of Urizen” simultaneously divides and reconstructs this original state of Eternal. The Language itself enacts the endeavors of Urizen and Lot. It delineates and it creates, so that the reader may also view Blake’s vision of the eternal.
As Urizen imagines himself as a separated entity, he becomes distinct from the Eternals. He is an “I” and there is an “everything else”. In this moment Blake calls him “Urizen,” where before the character is only called the kenning, “the primeval Priest” (223,224). Urizen moves from a figurative phrase to a particular name, and in that moment is set apart from the infinite. Urizen artificially separates existence by distinguishing one form from another. As the poem progresses, Blake’s language enacts Urizen’s endeavor. Chapter one begins with the indefinable: “a shadow of horror is risen / In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific! / Self-closed, all-repelling; what Demon / Hath formed this abominable void,” but as Urizen divides eternity, Blake gives names to the forms Urizen divides, “Of beast, bird, fish, serpent and element, / Combustion, blast, vapour and cloud” (224). Here the language of the poem delineates the forms Urizen conceives. Each noun signifies a form separate from the others, and as result separates them from the infinite into the finite world of Urizen.
When Los is wrenched from Urizen’s side he sees the delineation of the infinite and is horrified. In vain he attempts to reconstruct with chains that which has been separated: “Restless turned the Immortal enchained / Heaving dolorous! Anguished! Unbearable” (230). Though the language of the poem delineates forms from one another, it is also able to enact Los’s reconstruction. Movements into the figurative link the dissimilar. Blake describes the effects of Los’s work: “the sulphureous foam surging thick / Settled – a lake, bright and shining clear, / White as the snow on the mountains cold” (230). Here foam literally becomes a clear lake, and the two distinct forms condense into a single image. Simultaneously, the lake is figuratively described as having a quality of snow on the mountains, and as result the image of the lake is bound to the image of snow. It is as though the language of the poem first represents a part of the infinite, and in doing so separates it from infinity. However, the figurative gestures of the poem artificially bind these representations together. They become an imitation of the infinite.
Blake’s use of language as a method of delineation and reconstruction are both necessary in order for him to suggest the infinite, the muse of the poem. After Los’s work is finished Urizen sleeps:
Ages on ages rolled over them,
Cut off from life and light, frozen
Into horrible forms of deformity.
Los suffered his fires to decay,
Then he looked back with anxious desire,
But the space undivided by existence
Struck horror in his soul. (232).
The description echoes the first stanza of Chapter One, just before Urizen divides himself from eternity. The “Self-closed, all repelling,” indefinable shadow and “This soul-shudd’ring vacuum” become, “the space undivided by existence” (224,232). Here the language does not delineate and it does not reconstruct. The words describe the indefinable. They are vague enough to create something unknown, but descriptive enough to suggest something vast and terrifying. In a sense they enact the void described. Since the language is neither delineating nor reconstructing, it becomes an indeterminate space. Blake’s words are able to take wings in these moments, as they seem to suggest something beyond the representative capability of the poem. Ultimately the reader must pass these indeterminate gaps, and in the process is allowed a momentary glimpse into Blake’s Eternals.
Hilary Grimes
Response for 4/11
Akin to its biblical predecessors, the Book of Urizen enacts meaning through imagistic figuration. The narrative repeats images that are important to the telling, of which I noted the “rolling” orb, the watery and sighted “cataract,” the shadow, the web, the human body, and metal (purified by flame).
Language enters the narrative in tandem with the trumpets as the “myriads of Eternity… uttered / words articulate, bursting in thunders,” (54-55). Urizen then uses writing “in books formed of metals” to record “seven deadly sins of the soul… laws of peace, of love, of unity, of pity, compassion, forgiveness,” (75, 81, 84). It is after this utterance that “all the seven deadly sins of the soul / in living creatures appeared,” as though the act of distinguishing something from the void is enough to create it (101-102). These references to language appear to echo God’s biblical pronouncements, His Genesitic ‘calls’ and later ‘commandments.’ They also lead me to question causality within the Book of Urizen. I don’t want to suggest that Blake was a religious skeptic, only that this telling does not cast creation as an orderly or conscious act. Creation, or the “shadow of horror,” begins as Urizen (I assume, though the text is ambiguous) grows introspective, “a self-contemplating shadow / in enormous labors occupied,” (6, 27-28). This inward space, a “deep world within” and “Nature’s wide womb” is where creation appears to occur (65,67). Urizen later views everything, especially Pity’s race, to be of his own making: “Urizen sickened to see / his eternal creations appear- / sons and daughters of sorrow,” (435-436). Yet, he did not appear to command any life, merely delineating his secrets “’from the depths of dark solitude,’” (57). Neither is he conscious as the body is constructed in Chapter IVb. “In stony sleep ages rolled over him,” leaving his fantasies hidden “in surging / sulphureous fluid,” (174, 185-185). Though the causality is not explicit, these fantasies could be the source for the physical, shadowy though they are. We know the distinction between thought and action, yet when Urizen conceives, it is in both senses.
In this telling, there is not a great difference between shadow and material. Human birth is both labor, a physical molding, and “man begetting his likeness / on his own divided image,” (345-346). This “image” may be sculpted, perceived, or imagined, as the word itself allows for ambiguity. Baby Orc is called “the Human shadow,” “child,” and “infant,” a mixture of names that are ambiguously physical and intangible (371, 380, 383). The shadow figuration calls upon darkness, an intangible byproduct from some other thing. An abstract, I am tempted to imagine everything created as simultaneously real and ethereal. The surreal poetic space mirrors this, driven by a similarly autonomic, similarly shadowy writing process. I am reminded of the proverb from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell which says “what is now proved was once only imagined,” (p. 209). This presupposes that the imagination dictates what can be proven about reality. Perception, dependent on the senses and brain, is not terribly far from the intangible, given the tenuous human memory. Yet it is this capacity to reason, to analyze and divide, that enacts creative division in this text.
Emily Mutchler
Response 2
04/11/08
After reading Addressed to Sympathy, it seems that Ann Yearsley is skeptical of the Romantic idea that the imagination has the capacity to truly inspire sympathy, to unite people, and, in doing so, is able to fully spur people on to take action to end social injustices, rather than merely inspire an idle, public sense of pity. It seems logical that Yearsley would be concerned with physical, Burkean conceptions sympathy, particularly the limitations of hierarchical pity which result, as she herself was separated, as a poet, from her contemporaries, as a sort of an anomaly, by virtue of her low social class and gender.
It is particularly interesting that Yearsley’s contemporaries condescendingly describe her as a “phenomenon” (Wu 155) as a poet, because she is an “uneducated” milkmaid. Interestingly, they seem to create an image of Yearsley as a sort of “noble savage,” through Romantic aesthetics, depicting her as an idealized, innocent, pastoral image, as a 1784 letter to Gentleman’s Magazine describes her as having lived “the painful life of a milkmaid” (Wu 155). Similarly, Yearsley’s upper-class, Bluestocking patron, Hannah More, writes that she fears that introducing Yearsley to other writers, such as Walpole and Francis Burney, would “turn her head, and indispose her for her humble occupations” (156). More even refers to her as “illiterate,” (Wu 156), though Yearsley obviously does read; Duncan Wu, the editor of our Romanticism Anthology notes that her work “contains many stylistic mannerisms which she had picked up from Milton and Young, whose work she knew well” (Wu 157). Both Yearsley’s benefactor and her contemporary critics seem to discuss her work as one would, today, discuss “outsider art.” Interestingly, More seems to describe Yearsley’s work in terms of pity, rather than admiration; she even tries to emphasize Yearsley’s lack of formal education, as she relates that Yearsley’s: “verses excited my attention; for, though incorrect…[were] interesting by a certain natural and strong expression of misery” (Wu 156).
We can also see that Yearsley is somewhat alienated from the literary community as she is idealized as a pastoral, domestic figure. Tellingly, a letter from the 1784 Gentleman’s Magazine describes and emphasizes her dedication to her domestic duties, before even beginning to discuss her poetry: Yearsley “has shown the most pious cares to a mother lately deceased; has proved a most excellent wife to a husband…and still takes, the care of her five children” (Wu 155). (It could be argued that later, in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley challenges this assumption, that a woman should be viewed as an essentially domestic being, as a similar, idealized description of the details Justine’s tender nursing of a similarly, recently, deceased mother, fails to prove her innocence.) This pastoral, idealized image of the domestic woman also becomes a part of the idealized, “uncivilized,” “noble savage” context in which Yearsley is being read, as the same magazine describes her as “warbl[ing] in wild notes” noting that “with instruction, she might become a siren” (Wu 155). The criticism that Yearsley’s work lacks “instruction” obviously separates her from, and lowers her in comparison to, her literary contemporaries, by underscoring her low socio-economic status. However, it also eroticizes and demonizes her, as a woman, distancing her further: I would argue that to be described as a “siren” is to be reconstructed, like Frankenstein’s creature, into something larger than life, yet less than a human being. It seems fitting that the narrator of Addressed to Sensibility mocks her admirer, another inmate, who examines her from a distance: “Why does thine eye run wildly o’er my form/ Pointed with fond enquiry? ‘Tis not me” (Yearsley ll. 12-13).
When I read Addressed to Sensibility, I thought it was interesting that Yearsley critiques this same sort of condescending pity and idealization which results from the Burkean concept of a Sympathy which first occurs within one’s own body. In the same way that “sensibility” can refer to both one’s physical “susceptibility to pain and pleasure” and a “refined sensitiveness in emotion and taste, with especial responsiveness to the pathetic,” Addressed to Sensibility depicts pity, allegorically, as a physical disorder, rather than a means by which to form sympathetic relationships. The human body itself becomes the cell of a madhouse.
At the onset of the poem, Yearsley links emotional Sensibility to both the feminine domestic sphere, and the idea of physical malady, personifying it as a “nurse” (Yearsley l.1). We might initially assume that this nurse, like other idealized nurses of this troupe, will use her Sensibility, her heightened sense of emotion and responsiveness to the pathetic, to cure her patient and possibly, though unintentionally, win his heart. We soon find, however, that this nurse is the “nurse/ Of inj’ries” (Yearsley ll.1-2). However, she is actually“nursing,” or feeding, the patient’s wounds, as the narrator laments: “why wilt thou feed/ those serpents in the soul” (Yearsley l.3). This imagery becomes potentially problematic, as it becomes unclear if these serpents have invaded the soul, and are creating the injuries, or rather, are innate, self-destructive flaws within the soul itself; After all, the Sensibility which “nurses” these serpents is, according Burke, innate (Burke 544). The trajectory of this disorder becomes more clear when considering that Yearsley was influenced by Milton. The image of Sensibility as a sort of perverted nurse, who feeds the serpents as they wound her, resembles that of Sin in Paradise Lost, who, like Sensiblity, is a purely (self-conceived?) mental construct. We can also see this sort of Miltonian imagery at work, as Satan, in Paradise Lost, takes the form of the “serpent” to tempt Adam and Eve with knowledge. Not only do these serpents carry the Satanic connotations of self-centeredness and deceit, but also the knowledge which includes the Burkean idea of analytical, deductive thought (Burke 543), the painful awareness of oneself as a separate entity from the world which comes with the ability to reason.
The serpents in the soul, which have become conflated with the wounds within the soul, which Sensibility nurses, make Sensibility (or at least the interests she serves) both deceptive and self-centered; it is particularly telling that Yearsley uses the word “vain” a few lines down. When the snakes tear at the narrator, and she tries to "tear" them away, her “effort” is in “vain” (Yearsley, 158-59), meaning that she: she cannot control the snakes; her efforts to do anything about them are ineffective; and, in the same way that “vain” carries the connotation of being self-centered, her attempts serve only to turn her focus further inward; the pain intensifies, snakes "grow[ing] rapturous" (Yearsley l.7) as she recollects. Tellingly, it is not until line eleven that we even realize that she is in a prison in which there are other inmates.
When the snakes “Strike at [the] poor memory" of the narrator, pain and pleasure become conflated, as the narrator's wounded memory "deplores/ Her ravished joys, and murmurs o’er the past” (Yearsley ll.7-8). “Deplore” in this context becomes deceptive, as "to deplore" can mean to “express grief for” something and it can mean “to regret.” When Memory “murmurs” (Yearsley, l.8), it performs an imaginative act; the mind is retelling, rescripting, and creating images. So, it seems as if the “joys” themselves are inherently “ravished” That is, this “joy” becomes cyclical, even to the point of being illogical; the “joy” is in the retelling, the memory's “murmuring” of the ravishment of its own “joys” (Yearsely l.8). We can see that this vicious cycle of memory leads the narrator to ask :“why shrinks my soul within these prison walls” (Yearsley l.10) because of its imploding introversion. The “walls,” of the prison, which separate the prisoners, both terrorize the soul, causing it to ‘shrink” in fear, and also “shrink” the soul by blocking its view of the outside, separating the inmates from one another, the way that individual bodies can be thought to separate the souls they contain, limits the soul's otherwise empathetic, humane scope. It seems no coincidence then that the footnotes explain that this “prison” is Bedlam, a mental institution (Yearsley 158), because to create images and representations, to “imagine,” is, in a Platonic sense, “madness.” One could even argue that the prison cell bears a strong resemblance to the cave in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which the audience is so distracted by the images, the shadows on the cave wall; they do not even realize that there is a world above the ground.
When the narrator describes the prison, “Where wretches shake their chains” (Yearsley l. 11) these "chains," evoke similar images to the ones Los forges in Willaim Blake's poem Urizen, (Blake l.168) as they both represent dividing, confining restrictions, like the walls of the prison, and, conversely, an imaginative attempt to make new connections; ironically this is the same sort of attempt that the prisoners make when they “shake” them in an attempt to escape. We can also see that the imprisonment is likened to the condition of being in separate bodies, like the cavernous “rib” cage in Urizen. (Blake l.247). After all, though the narrator is describing Bedlam, we are also still located within the body, where the poem began, "here" in the “breast” (Yearsley 6).
So, now, these "disturbed" (Yearsley l.6) imprisoned people are trying to “shake their chains” (Yearsley l. 11); to escape the bounds which confine and separate them. The attempt to shake these chains becomes an attempt to connect to others, to find Love. Then, problem of Sensibility becomes linked to the failure of two potential lovers to find Sympathy in one another, as the narrator asks a “youth,” another “ill-fated” chain-shaker: “Why does thine eye run wildly o’er my form/ Pointed with fond enquiry? ‘Tis not me” (Yearsley l.12-13). Once again, actual Sympathy is thwarted by the confines of the human body. Though the inmates try to break out of the chains that confine and separate them, the youth cannot reach the narrator by studying her “form” (Yearsley l.12). We can see that a sympathy located within this prison, within the body, becomes problematic, particularly as she describes the youth’s gaze in sexualized, phallic, even the scientific terms. The youth eroticizes the narrator in this attempt, as his enquiry is described as “fond,” a word referring to affection which carries both the connotation of foolishness and of “fondling.” When the youth begins his “enquiry” into the narrator’s body, he seems to view her as a specimen. His eye is “pointed,” as if it is attempting to use it to simultaneously dissect the narrator, penetrate the prison wall, and penetrate the narrator’s body, to get to her essence, or soul, though, as the narrator reminds him, her “form” is not actually her (Yearsley l.12-13). Both courtship and the very rational, deductive scientific methods which are probably also being employed by the doctors running this facility, fail to bring them together.
Because the narrator and the youth cannot sympathize with each other, and therefore cannot love each other, they can only pity one another. It could be argued that the youth has already, in a way, imposed When the youth cries a “silent tear,” Yearsley seems to echo the image of Los and the female, refusing his advances and "flee[ing] from his arms" in Urizen (Blake ll.339-342). The youth cries, either because he cannot reach the narrator, or because the narrator scorns his attempt. When the youth cries, the narrator pities him, in the same way that Los "pities"(Blake ll.338) the female when he sees her, and arguably, the same way that the youth tries diminutize the narrator by analyzing her form. This "pity" is “vain,” both self-centered and to no effect, as the narrator laments: “could my arm/Afford thee refuge…vain the wish” (Yearsley l.17-18).
Carolyn Hanig
Professor Franco
Romantic Literature
11 April 2008
Response to “The First Book of Urizen”
I thought that Blake chose a really good name for the imagination. It kind of sounds like “lost” which Los certainly is in the beginning and it seems like that Blake would use this because as the footnotes tell us “Urizen himself has been aligned in the past with Reason – ‘your reason’” (pg 223). It seems as though this would suggest that Urizen knows what he is doing while Los is just thrown out into the world unknowingly. Los “howled in a dismal stupor” (152) because he is suddenly separated from the being that he once was. He is now essentially lost in this world that isn’t even fully developed and he’s in pain for it.
The repetition of the number seven seemed to closely relate two things which have somewhat significance in the story. The deadly sins of the soul are seven as well as the days of making. Blake repeats the symbol of seven because he is retelling the story of Genesis. The way he tells it is very kind of disturbing. Rather than a gentle creation, one has:
“Rage, fury, intense indignation
In cataracts of fire blood and gall,
And enormous forms of energy;
All the seven deadly sins of the soul
In living creatures appeared” (96-101).
This is not something that is peaceful but chaotic and rather violent. Here the phrase “seven deadly sins” is repeated, but Blake says that they appear in living creatures. This relates back to the choice to stick at the end of each day made the phrase “state of dismal woe” (215). This state of dismal woe and sin is instilled in all living creatures before the world was fully developed. This is before humans were even created so that they came into a world that is not Eden as the bible would have us believe, but a world already without grace.
The way that Blake creates the human race is not also only disturbing, but indistinct. As we talked about in class, Los tries to or does rape Enitharmon. The impregnation of Enitharmon is portrayed through the use of a “worm” (349). In chapter four, stanza three Blake says “when Enitharmon sick,/Felt a Worm within her womb” (348-349). When they say that Enitharmon is sick it makes me think that she is already pregnant, but then the next line says that she felt a worm within her womb which could mean that she’s still being impregnated. This could be just people’s rudimentary way of viewing pregnancy, but I think Blake does this on purpose. After it has been shown that she was pregnant there is in the fifth and sixth lines suggestions that she hasn’t been impregnated yet: “All day the worm lay on her bosom;/All night within her womb” (353-354). Perhaps this is to show how the human person isn’t perfect, that the creation of something isn’t perfect. As we were saying in class, Urizen is the one that wants to categorize. Perhaps Los is imperfect in his regeneration on his own self or he cannot regenerate easily because he cannot make distinctions like Urizen can. Or perhaps Blake simply did not want to make it explicit because it was not ok to make it explicit at his time.
Works Cited
Blake, William. “The First Book of Urizen.” Romanticism: An Anthology, Third Edition. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. 2006. Pages 223-240.
Post a Comment