Renovation of Form: Time as Hero in Blake's Major Prophecies

Abstract

Renovation of Form: Time as Hero in Blake’s Major Prophecies MOLLYANNE MARKS Because of his special sense of imagination, Blake had inevitably to abandon certain traditional ordering principles. Space, time, and even history itself are in his poetry subordinated to the human imagination. This is apparent dramatically in the mythic figure of Los, who represents imagination and time and whose struggles to overcome various opponents are central to the later poems; and it is evident also in the structure of the poetry itself. Indeed, the necessity for overcoming the limitations of time and space be­ comes the theme, the subject, and the informing principle of Blake’s later poems. But there is perhaps a paradox here—a medi­ um of imaginative expression that seeks to demonstrate the inade­ quacy of temporal and spatial forms can in its turn only create new forms. Blake signalled his awareness of this difficulty when he said, “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.” It is the evolution of Blake’s “system,” in which imagination labors to give a new and more human form to time and space, which I shall now consider, first moving quickly over the major tenets of Blake’s theories of time and then discussing the specific way Blake attempts, in his later poems, to transcend the ordinary limitsofform. 55 56 / MOLLYANNE MARKS Critics have passed beyond the early notion that Blake was a mystic concerned only with the eternal to the realization that his ideas of time and space are particular, precise, and frequently innovative. Yet discussion has only begun on the more specific aesthetics of these ideas as they determine the form of Blake’s art.1 In dealing with time and eternity, Blake endorses the Christian view of the Incarnation as the unique point in history which unites the human and the divine, but through his persistent redefinition of traditional concepts, he greatly alters its meaning. For Blake, it is Jesus who, “breaking thro’ the Central Zones of Death & Hell/Opens Eternity in Time & Space;” (J. 3. 75:21—22; E. 229).2 But Jesus, according to Blake, is the very embodiment of the Human Imagination: “All Things are comprehended in their Eter­ nal Forms in the Divine [p. 70] body of the Saviour the True Vine of Eternity The' Human Imagination” (V.L.J.; E. 545). Time and eternity are therefore reconciled whenever the divine and the human are one; in the fallen world human creativity remains subject to time until it has sufficiently transformed the universal consciousness to effect the apocalypse. In the unfallen state, according to Blake, man is God and knows no distinction between reality and possibility. The Divine Humanity cannot conceive of anything without, by this very act, creating the thing itself. In his fallen state, man loses this ability; and those aspects of eternity, his former creations, which with his obfuscated senses he can still perceive, become time and space: “The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions,/Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fix’d into furrows of death;” (J. 2. 49:21—22; E. 196). It is imaginative death to believe that nothing exists beyond the limited reality we perceive: Many suppose that before [Adam] (the Creation) All was Soli­ tude & Chaos This is the most pernicious Idea that can enter the Mind as it takes away all sublimity from the Bible & Limits All Existence to Creation & to Chaos To the Time & Space fixed by the Corporeal Vegetative Eye & leaves the Man who entertains such an Idea the habitation of Unbelieving Demons Eternity Time as Hero in Blake ’s Major Prophecies / 57 Exists and All things in Eternity Independent of Creation which was an act of Mercy (V.L.J.; E. 552—553) Man’s perceptions may be limited; yet reality is still the product of a hobbled human creativity. It follows, then, that the shape an artist gives his world reflects his imaginative state. More specifi­ cally, to Blake’s way of thinking, the shape a man (or a nation) gives to his conception of time indicates the extent of his vision and reveals his spiritual state. By this standard Blake can pass judgment on himself: (The...