What was his relationship to TGD? As CSL states in his Preface, the book was a direct response to one of Blake's most famous and controversial works, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The meaning of this enigmatic work is debated even now, two centuries later, and will likely be debated two centuries from now. Was it satire, sarcasm, heresy, or some mystic insight into ultimate truth? Opinions span the gamut, but there are distinct themes that have a direct bearing on TGD. One of these is that Good is stagnant without the "energies" of change, rebellious spirit, and evil forces.
Connected with this is the idea that Truth is continually evolving and being revealed by change. Consider this paragraph from an insightful thesis on Blake:
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a conscious upturning of the mythic soil of the Judaeo-Christian legacy, aims not at negation or mere satire (as Harold Bloom claims at the opening of his commentary to the Erdman edition), but allows for complexity and dialogical heterogeneity hidden within normative and accepted cultural models. Truth, for Blake, is not something that has been or may ever be legislated; it must continuously be created, negotiated anew under the aegis of the imagination. The infernal imagination of Heaven and Hell, as we shall see, is not contrary to a God, per se, but opposes the static and inert, that which lacks the vitality which cardinally signifies the activated and living mind. That religion is one link in the chain of collective "mind forg’d manacles" for Blake does not make him the enemy of divinity or the advocate of evil. Simply, it is his method to reveal--alchemically, or via the engraver’s method of the excision of obfuscatory layerings of illusion--the hidden dynamism and force which the socially and intellectually stagnating, normative hermeneutics and behavior of convention seek to repress. His ideological force stems from outraged rebellion; yet his revolutionary force seethes, like the fallen and damned Lucifer, at the core of the mind in creative fire. He shows no desire to storm the walls of some petty castle or other from without. For Blake, this internality and infernality of the poetic impulse is the secret of its power. In accordance with this view, Heaven and Hell cannot be seen as mere irony or satire--it does not seek merely to lampoon or comment from a safe distance, but rather works from within, seeking the most vital chain reaction and transformation of vision and human consciousness.
The Anti-Teleological Dialogism of the Imagination in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by Steven M. Streufert
The conception of change as an agent provocateur and revealer of truth is still with us today, and even hauntingly reminiscent of the tenets held by some of the recent movements in the church, the "Church Emergent" being one example. They were also quite prevalent in CSL's day, and thus his response and rebuttal to them in TGD.
It is important to understand this relationship between CSL and Blake to appreciate the book more fully and, even more importantly, apply it to our life and times today.
No comments:
Post a Comment