http://socialistreview.org.uk/372/blakes-jerusalem
The above (linked) nonsense is - I judge - typical of the way that William Blake is understood and taught nowadays - in a culture that has so completely and vehemently rejected Blake's mystical Christian metaphysics - and so fully adopted a this-worldly metaphysics of atheism, materialism and socialism - as to render the reality of Blake all-but invisible!
Interestingly, this way of ultra-selectively reading Blake dates back to Jacob 'Ascent of Man' Bronowski's 'Man without a Mask 1944 study. Bronowski was himself a prominent atheist humanist and internationalist communist in politics (at this time of his life, anyway).
What is interesting to me is the way in which metaphysics - that is, a person's fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of reality - functions in a manner identical with insanity; in the sense that the presumptions shape reality to such an extreme extent that a writer who almost continuously talks of Jesus, angels, and the spiritual - who writes again and again of Albion in the most mystical and prophetic fashion, can be seen as primarily a proto-socialist, dedicated to socio-political revolution on the lines approved by modern Leftists!
Blake a revolutionary - Yes, of course! A political revolutionary atheist/ materialist Leftist - of course Not!
As an antidote - here is a long excerpt from Blakes prophetic poem Milton - spoken by the Milton character - prophetically of the horrors of exactly the rationaism, reductionism, and scientism that was s eloquently advocated by Jacob Bronowski (among many - far less eloquent - others!).
Take note, particularly, of his account of the 'idiot Questioner' - who sounds like the typical mainstream modern Establishment politician/ journalist/ professor - close-kin to the author of the Socialist Review article:
The negation is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Man: |
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This is a false Body, an Incrustation over my Immortal |
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Spirit, a Selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway. |
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To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by self-examination, |
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To bathe in the waters of Life, to wash off the Not Human, | |
I come in Self-annihilation and the grandeur of Inspiration; |
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To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour, |
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To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration, |
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To cast off Bacon, Locke, and Newton from Albion’s covering, |
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To take off his filthy garments and clothe him with Imagination; | |
To cast aside from Poetry all that is not Inspiration, |
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That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness |
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Cast on the Inspirèd by the tame high finisher of paltry Blots |
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Indefinite or paltry Rhymes, or paltry Harmonies, |
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Who creeps into State Government like a caterpillar to destroy; | |
To cast off the idiot Questioner, who is always questioning, |
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But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin |
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Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave; |
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Who publishes Doubt and calls it Knowledge; whose Science is Despair, |
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Whose pretence to knowledge is Envy, whose whole Science is | |
To destroy the wisdom of ages, to gratify ravenous Envy |
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That rages round him like a Wolf, day and night, without rest. |
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He smiles with condescension; he talks of Benevolence and Virtue, |
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And those who act with Benevolence and Virtue they murder time on time. |
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These are the destroyers of Jerusalem! these are the murderers | |
Of Jesus! who deny the Faith and mock at Eternal Life, |
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Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination |
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By imitation of Nature’s Images drawn from Remembrance. |
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These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation, |
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Hiding the Human Lineaments, as with an Ark and Curtains | |
Which Jesus rent, and now shall wholly purge away with Fire, |
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Till Generation is swallow’d up in Regeneration.
or ?
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1 comment:
"Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also."
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