The Columbia History of British Poetry (80 page)

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Page 337
An archetypal hero, Milton must encounter the perils of the way. First he must pass through the Vortex of nature in order to enter space-time. Then the repressive reason of the "Demon Urizen" threatens him. Milton refuses to engage in destructive battle but instead molds Urizen with "the red clay of Succoth" (which Hiram used for the Temple ornaments). Like Bunyan's Pilgrim and Apollyon, "The man and Demon strove many periods" (19 [21]: 27). Though offered earthly power by Rahab and Tirzah, Milton ignores this temptation (as Jesus in
Paradise Regained
rejects Satan's offer of the kingdoms of the world) and so sets into motion the redemptive action of the poem. Entering William Blake's left foot, Milton empowers Blake to see the "Vegetable" world from the perspective of Eternity. Los as the spirit of Prophecy embraces him, ''And so I became one Man with him arising in my strength" (22 [24]: 1214).
Despite the miscomprehension of Los's two ungenerated sons, who see only the old Milton and fear he will reinforce the political and religious divisions of Europe, Los urges the eschatological significance of Blake/Milton: "He is the Signal that the Last Vintage now approaches . . ." (24 [26]: 42). Paradoxically, this impending event leads to a vision of the created world at its most glorious, with its constellations, gorgeous clothed Flies, flowers and herbs, and songs of the Nightingale and the Lark. These images are set in the matrix of a myth of the descent of the pre-existing soul into its material body, now seen not as oppressively restrictive as in
Urizen
but as benevolently protective, "the beautiful House for the piteous sufferer" (28 [30]: 7).
In the last half dozen plates, the apocalypse takes place in Blake's garden. Satan now manifests himself as a parody of the Christ of the Parousia, "Coming in a cloud, with trumpets & flaming fire" (38 [43]: 50). Milton refuses to annihilate Satan, as he previously refused to annihilate Urizen, but instead calls upon the sleeping Albion to subdue his Reasoning Spectre and cast him into the Lake (as is done to the beast and the false Prophet in Revelation 19:20). With this, the sleeping body of humanity begins to stir, though he cannot yet rise. Rahab/Babylon, Moral Virtue, now appears in her true form as dragon and harlot; the Virgin Ololon combines with Milton to produce a new, composite being; Jesus is seen clad in the writing of Divine Revelation; and William Blake falls outstretched upon his garden path to undergo a Last Judgment in his own living body. End time is thus realized for an individual, though not yet for the human race.
 
Page 338
As Northrop Frye remarks in
Fearful Symmetry
, "
Milton
describes the attainment by the poet of the vision that
Jerusalem
expounds in terms of all humanity." It does so, as do the Gospels according to tradition, by addressing each of its four chapters to a particular audience: "The Public," ''The Jews," "The Deists," and "The Christians." In its universality, however,
Jerusalem
still has a great deal of particularity concerning its creator. A quatrain of plate 27 evokes places on those semirural outskirts of London that the child Blake must have explored:
The Jews-harp house and the Green Man;
The Ponds where Boys to bathe delight:
The fields of Cows by Willans farm:
Shine in Jerusalems pleasant sight.
                                                    (1316)
The extended lyric of which these lines are part shows that Blake had lost none of the melodic gift that marked his earliest songs.
In contrast, the struggle of Blake's creative self with his apprehensions and fears is appropriately expressed in powerful rhetoric that describes the conflict between Los and his Spectre. Why should Blake continue to address a public that ignores him, asks the Spectre"Wilt thou still go on to destruction? / Till thy life is all taken away by this deceitful friendship?" (7:910). When Los subdues the Spectre "on his Anvil" (91:43), it is in terms metaphorically describing Blake's work at his chosen profession of engraving. Sometimes Blake speaks out in his own person, as in 34 [38]: 4143, where he sketches his career as a poet-prophet:
                                          I heard in Lambeth's shades:
In Felpham I heard and saw the Visions of Albion
I write in South Molton Street, what I both see and hear
In regions of Humanity, in Londons opening streets.
Elsewhere Blake's seven-footed lines can express the ranting of the enemies of humanity or the suffering and lamentations of their victims, but here they convey his own poetic voice with memorable clarity. Indeed, more than any of his other works,
Jerusalem
displays Blake's range and versatility as a practitioner of verse.
In
Jerusalem
Albion once more represents the body of humanity, and throughout most of the poem, he is threatened with destruction by his terrible Sons and Daughters. The Sons are for the most part named after figures associated with Blake's trial, most notably Scofield his
 
Page 339
accuser. Hayley is represented as Hyle (also, ironically, the Greek word for matter). Another aspect of the destructive forces that Blake saw attacking the divine humanity is embodied in Hand, whose name derives from the pointing hand used by the Hunt brothers as their signature in
The Examiner
. It was over this editorial siglum that Blake saw his exhibition of pictures condemned in September 1809 and himself called "an unfortunate lunatic." The Daughters, who are named after females in the mythological history of Britain, are, if anything, more bloodthirsty than the Sons; because of their allure, Los, Albion's "strong Guard" (19:38) does not dare approach them but sends his Spectre after them. Through much of the work, Albion lies asleep, separated from his emanation, Jerusalem, who is a city yet a woman as in Revelation. Cast out and condemned as a harlot, like Oothoon in
Visions
, Jerusalem's role is largely one of uttering pleas for divine love, mercy, and brotherhood; the wickedly seductive Vala has the more active role. In the postapocalyptic world, however, ''Sexes must vanish and cease / To be" (92:1314): Vala and Enitharmon disappear from the text, which ends by naming the emanations of all human forms Jerusalem.
When Albion awakens, he seizes his bow "firm between the Male & Female Loves" (97:15), suggesting an existence beyond genital sexuality, and with one fourfold Arrow of Love annihilitates the Druid Spectre. Plate 98 then presents a breathless rush of activity, with Blake pushing to their limit the "terrific numbers" that he reserved for "the terrific parts" (plate 3), crowding the line to its breaking point to suggest the forces of the apocalypse:
And they conversed together in Visionary Forms dramatic which bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating exemplars of Memory and Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination . . .                                                        (2832)
Existence continues to be an interplay of forces, with "the great city of Golgonooza" still existing in "the Shadowy Generation" (98:55) and earthly forms being recycled to and from their "Planetary lives" (99:3).
Readers have come a long way from the dismissal of
Jerusalem
as the "perfectly mad poem" that Robert Southey found it to be (see
Blake Records
, p. 229). Blake's mode of "Allegory addressd to the Intellectual powers," as he called it in a letter, makes great demands but offers great rewards. Blake's apt figure for the reader's experience in
Jerusalem
is a ver-

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