Blake's London: Times & Spaces

Abstract

WILLIAM BLAKE IN JERUSALEM DECLARED WRITE IN SOUTH MOLTON Street, what I both see and hear / In regions of Humanity, in Londons opening streets, and in bio-celestial atmospheres of Mental Traveller Blake traveld thro Land of Men ... & Women too / And heard & saw [my emphasis] such dreadful things / As cold Earth wanderers never knew, phrasing which reflects Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (a work annotated by Blake), whose extensive title mentions the Wonderful Things Therein, as Heard and Seen, by Emanuel Swedenborg. A WALK through London and Westminster, Or, Serious and Comical Amusements for rational Minds, an article published in Oxford Magazine in June 1776 (pages 34-37), surmised that Otaheitan would find London Town a and uncommon animal, streets are so many veins people circulate in the of metropolis, and in Jerusalem (33/37:29-38) A Human Awful Wonder of God, Man-City, declares that My Streets are Ideas of Imagination, while my Inhabitants, Affections, / [are] The children of thoughts, thoughts which appear walking within blood-vessels, veiny pipes or concourses of Heart. (1) In Blakean allegory it is in of heart of this English city favour'd by (King Edward Third 2:30, E 425), that redemption takes place. In Jerusalem (4:9) solar-cardiac Fibres of unite man to man, mutual in love divine, for in Eternity it is possible to enter / Into each others Bosom (which are Universes of delight) (J 88:1-5; emphasis). Blake took note of Lavater's statement that Each heart is world of (E 599), and in Exchanges of London in Jerusalem (24:42-45, 27:85-86) every Nation walked, Mutual each within each others bosom in Visions of Regeneration. Such hearts reborn relate to earthly quadrangle of Exchange, called Walks, for its many porches of Commerce within were designated by names of nations (such as America, Portugal, Ireland, Norway). Swedenborg, who greatly influenced Blake, stated in The True Christian Religion (Notes 809, 811) (2) that good English after death go to middle or heart of spiritual London, where there is meeting of merchants, called [Royal] Exchange or Walks. The centre of another great city, also associated with London by Swedenborg, is reserved for English miscreants--those inwardly wicked, and this City leads to an open communication with (a deduction repeated in Swedenborg's Last Judgment). In The True Christian Religion (Note 161) hell is accessed through mill, Swedenborg sees an arched roof above ground, to which there is an entrance through (a similar description of this also appears in Swedenborg's The Apocalypse Revealed, par. 484). (3) The Swedish philosopher descended into his hellish space, and upon entering Swedenborg sees an old Man assembling sacred Passages, words collected by Scribes who then copied them into Book. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (6) Blake as scribe collected hell's Proverbs, and in The Marriage (pls. 17-18) Blake also speaks of cavern of Senses that leads through stable & down into church at end of which is [starry grinding] mill (the heavens of hell). Blake's topo/astro imagery relates to St. Mary's Church of Battersea, Blake's marriage ties were enunciated in 1782. St. Mary's Church had vault or crypt burials took place during Blake's lifetime, and precisely next to church, in 1788, was erected huge grinding with stables. According to Universal Magazine, September 1796, horizontal at Battersea was converted into for grinding corn, and its stables were greatly expanded for oxen, providing separate stall for each beast. …