Visions And Ideas Of William Blake

In what way has a particular aspect, theme or text of Blake’s been adopted by at least one later artist, writer, filmmaker or musician?

William Blake was a complex character and his works are renowned for being near impossible to decipher, yet one fact we are sure of is that Blake was not a nationalist; he was a revolutionary. Yet when we look at the reception that ‘And Did Those Feet In Ancient Times…’ received, a noticeable patriotic theme emerges, with the preface to the longer prophetic poem, ‘Milton’, being heralded as the ‘unofficial’ national anthem. Whether this is creating the opportunity to include the working class in the Olympic Opening Ceremony, an expression of the distinctly ‘British’ nation, or simply alternative to the dreary, depressing ‘God Save The Queen’, it is not what Blake intended for his work.

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Blake lived in relative obscurity and poverty, with his works mainly recognized after his death in 1827. He was home-schooled as a child, his eccentricities proving too difficult to manage around his peers, and in 1772, he was apprenticed to the engraver James Basire for seven years, at the end of which he became a professional engraver. Whilst there is no record of any disagreement between Basire and Blake, Ackroyd notes that Blake added Basire’s name to a list of artistic adversaries, and later crossed it out1 Peter Ackroyd, Blake (London: Ardent Media, 1995), p. 93. ; it is suspected that this is due to Blake’s resentment of Basire’s instruction of line-engraving rather than the modern mezzotint styles, and this was detrimental to receiving recognition for his work in later life.

Perhaps the greatest influence on Blake’s work was his visions, the majority of them biblical; Henry Crabb Robison states in his diary that “[Blake’s] faculty of vision, he says, he has had from early infancy”2 Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence, ed. by Thomas Sadler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 21.

Gilchrist describes Blake’s first vision as such:

“On Peckham Rye (by Dulwich Hill) it is, as he will in after years relate, that while quite a child, of eight or ten perhaps, he has his 'first vision.' Sauntering along, the boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars”3 Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus'(London: Macmillan and Company, 1863), p. 7.

Blake’s visions would continue to influence the work that he produced and develop a life-long fascination with religion and how it is perceived by others. Blake was further influenced by the death of his brother, Robert Blake, when he saw Robert’s spirit ascend through the ceiling, a moment which upon entering William Blake’s psyche, would greatly influence his poetry. In the year following Robert’s death, he appeared to Blake in a dream, showing him a new method of printing, which Blake dubbed ‘illuminated painting’.

Whilst ‘And Did Those Feet…’, more commonly referred to as ‘Jerusalem’ in modern culture, went largely unnoticed when Blake published it in 1804, it gained popularity in 1916 when Hubert Parry adapted Blake’s famous stanzas to lyrics, to become ‘Jerusalem’, the hymn. Parry used a two-stanza format, adapting the poem at the request of now Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, and was written for the ‘Fight for Right’ movement, a group created to sustain the resolve of the British Armies and population during the First World War. Parry handed the manuscript to Walford Davies, Parry’s former student, and Davies recalls that “We looked at [the manuscript] together in his room at the Royal College of Music, and I recall vividly his unwonted happiness over it”4 Jeremy Dibble, C. Hubert H. Parry: His Life and Music (Wotton-under-Edge: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 32. .

However, Parry began to take issues with ‘Fight For Right’, and wrote to Sir France Younghusband in 1917 to withdraw his support. Concerns arose over the scrapping of the song entirely but were put to rest by Millicent Fawcett of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The song was taken up by the Suffragists in 1917 and when asked by Fawcett if the song could be used at a Suffragist Demonstration, Parry responded that:

“I wish indeed it might become the Women Voters' hymn, as you suggest. People seem to enjoy singing it. And having the vote ought to diffuse a good deal of joy too. So they would combine happily.”5 Dibble, p.38

Parry assigned the copyright to the NUWSS, and when that organization disbanded in 1928, the copyright was reassigned by Parry’s executors to the Women’s Institutes, remaining there until 1968 when it was released into the public domain.

Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’ has frequented popular culture, with many churches adopting ‘Jerusalem’ as a recessional hymn on Saint George’s Day. However, some clergymen of the Church of England have stated that the song is not technically a hymn, as a hymn must be a prayer to God6 'Jerusalem: An Anthem For England, dir. by (BBC, 2007). , therefore it is not sung in some churches in England, though it was sung during the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, somewhat disputing the Church’s claim.

Upon hearing the orchestral version of ‘Jerusalem’ for the first time, King George V was said to prefer it over the national anthem at the time, ‘God Save The King’. The irony of the situation is that Blake was charged with making seditious remarks about the King and Army; therefore, on paper, ‘And Did Those Feet’ certainly was not a candidate to become a national anthem. Despite Parry’s attempts at using an upbeat tempo, assisted by Edward Elgar’s orchestration, William Blake’s original words are rife with resentful irony, comparable to that of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony.

Blake asks four fundamental questions throughout the prelude, and the answer to each is ‘no’. Did Christ’s feet ever tread in England? It harks back to the legend of Jesus walking on “England’s Mountains Green”, part of the Medieval legends about King Arthur. Legend states that following Jesus’ crucifixion, Joseph carried the Holy Grail to Glastonbury, proceeding to establish the first English church. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History, describes the legend as “Totally implausible. It obviously didn't happen.”7 BBC, ‘The strange myth in the song Jerusalem’ BBC News [Online] 13 January 2016 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35304508 Accessed 15 January 2019, Paragraph 7. So why would Blake use this myth? England, specifically London, at the time, was not somewhere Blake wished to live. He describes the “dark satanic mills” of the Industrial Revolution; England’s “green and pleasant land” is a distant memory.

Blake asks four questions throughout ‘And Did Those Feet’; we know that Jesus did not walk through “England’s mountains green”. The other three questions asked follow a similar suit; Was the Lamb of God seen on “England’s pleasant pastures”? Did “The Countenance Divine” shine upon our clouded hills? Was Jerusalem built among the “dark satanic mills”? We know from looking at MacCulloch’s answer that the Lamb of God did not meander through the Cotswolds, was not spotted in the London smog, and there was most certainly not a sense of Jerusalem in industrialized London’s “satanic mills”. Consequently, the fantasy of a New Jerusalem being built in England is a striking parody of Napoleonic Era Nationalism.

Rather than present a united patriotic front, ‘Jerusalem’ highlights Blake’s fears surrounding the suppression of individual spirit. The famous “satanic mills” could refer to the Albion Flour Mills; large mills near Blake’s home in London, which were burned down following anonymously following a threat to put smaller mills out of business. If we took this as true, a strong Napoleonic image resonates with the reader. However, when Blake wrote about ‘mills’ in other works, he generally used the word as a metaphor for institutionalized religion, which similarly to Marx, who followed after him, he considered the natural ally for capitalism and monarchy.

The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes that were more efficient, beginning in 1760 and ending around 1840, and presented a large turning point in history. A selection of economists argue that the revolution was the first time that the standard of living increased consistently. Despite this, Blake strongly opposed the ‘dark satanic mills’ he wrote about in ‘And Did Those Feet’. Many romantic poets, including Wordsworth, were opposed to the Industrial Revolution, with Blake expressing his distaste for child labour, particularly through his work “The Chimney Sweeper” from ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. Blake writes “Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand until we have built Jerusalem”, harking back to Bulwer-Lytton’s famous words – “the pen is mightier than the sword”8 Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton, Richelieu, Or, The Conspiracy: A Play in Five Acts (Michigan: Baker, 1896). . By passionately writing this, Blake is declaring his opposition for the industrial revolution, his distaste for the “satantic mills” that ruin England’s “pleasant pastures green”. He is vowing to, with the support of other romantic writers he encountered – he was known to have met Paine, Fuseli and Wordsworth at Joseph Johnson’s house – attempt to combat the ‘impurities’ contaminating his potential ‘Jerusalem’.

When considering Blake’s apocalyptic vision, ‘Vala’, we see why ‘Jerusalem’ is not designed to become a national anthem of any variety. Throughout nine successive nights, Blake has visions of the universe unravelling, and the ninth night, mystery is removed from the world, with “the dark religions [departing] and sweet science reigns”. The spirit, Tharmas, declares:

“Art thou she that made the nations drunk with the cup of Religion?’ declares the spirit Tharmas. ‘Go down, ye Kings and Counsellors and Giant Warriors…Go down with horse and Chariots and Trumpets of hoarse war… Let the slave, grinding at the mill, run out into the field. Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air.”

What we can take from this passage is that Blake’s views on Royalty, Organised Religion, and Mills – previously discussed as a metaphor for industrialization – are not positive. This highlights the irony of Parry’s work to turn ‘And Did Those Feet’ into a nationalist anthem to rally patriotic support; Blake harboured a distaste for everything that represented nationalism. Following his trial for high treason, in which a drunken soldier caused a fight in the garden of his sequestered cottage, with the red coat boasting about being ‘the king’s soldier’, to which Blake replied, “Damn the King, and you too”9 Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus'(London: Macmillan and Company, 1863), p. 173 , showing that Blake’s original intentions were not for his words to be used as a way of supporting the King and Country.

Whittaker and Whitson state that “Blake, himself, in many respects, failed to recognise the full significance of the text he composed”10 Roger Whitson, Jason Whittaker, William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation, And Social Media(Oxon: Routledge, 2013), p. 73-74. , and it only appears on two out of four copies of ‘Milton’ (Copy A and Copy B). ‘And Did Those Feet’ was aimed at finding a wider readership for Blake, yet Essick and Viscomi explain that, when confident that the preface would find a wider readership, “[that confidence] Blake may have lost by the time he collated the two later copies”11 William Blake, Milton, A Poem: And The Final Illuminated Works, ed. by Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi (New Jersey: Princeton University press, 1998), p. 40.

Bentley states that “William Blake was a visionary”12 G.E. Bentley, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). , and whilst the simplicity of the statement may incite devoted critics, it is nonetheless true. Blake conversed with angels and his deceased brother and following the previously discussed ‘Peckham Rye’ vision, he continued to have visions throughout his life that drove his creative works. Blake was reportedly suspicious of memory, with Rowland stating that “[memory is] the mere repetition of that which was received without that enhancement of that which has been received through the creativity of the visionary imagination”13 Christopher Rowland, 'Blake and the Bible: Biblical Exegesis in the Work of William Blake', International Journal of Systematic Theology, 7.2, (2005), 142-154 (p. 143). . Blake viewed himself as in the same league as Prophets, if not one himself; combined with his visions, in the Preface to Milton, he quotes Bible Verse 11:29 – “Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets” – suggesting that he himself was some form of a modern prophet. Blake has a sense of insight and prophetic vision equipped in order to provide an explanation as to the meaning of the current events he experienced. Blake continued to recognize the prophets of the bible as interconnected beings; he dines with Isiah and Ezekiel in ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’.

Blake creates his own idiosyncratic faith, the major hero of which is Los, who’s figure as a prophetic role is exponentially explored; Blake can manipulate the prophet’s style and prophecies. Blake explains in 1798 that his prophecies were not intended to predict what would happen:

“Jonah was no prophet, in the modern sense, for his prophecy of Nineveh failed. Every honest man is a prophet; he utters his opinion both of private and public matters… A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator”14 William Blake, Annotations to Richard Watson, An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas Paine, reprint edn (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1984), p. 392.

The prophecies propose the bare bones of the dynamic history of revolution, highlighting the potential for positive change marred with the corrupt impulses that humans possess. The optimism that Blake potentially harboured towards the end of the eighteenth century is forced to compete with his desire to explore the complex nature of human nature and the probability of succumbing to the ‘dark delusions’ of the world. Europe was to be briefly lit with the flame of revolution, yet with the failure of the French Revolution, the continent is seen as sleepy and immune to this spirit of change15 See L. Tannenbaum, Biblical Tradition in Blake’s Early Prophecies: The Great Code of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 168; C. Burdon, The Apocalypse in England: Revelation Unravelling 1700–1834 (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 180–208; and M.J. Tolley, ‘Europe “to those ychaind in sleep” ’, in D. Erdman and J. Grant, Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). , entangled with religion and an ethic that resists any form of revolutionary change.

In the preface to ‘Milton’ we find a selection of the recurring themes in Blake’s works: his campaign against an education based solely on memory, and Rowland showed us that Blake is suspicious of memory, rather than inspiration. According to Goslee, Blake possessed the “conviction that the domination of classical culture had quenched the vitality of biblical inspiration.”16 N. Goslee, ‘“In England’s green & pleasant land”: The Building of Vision in Blake’s Stanzas from Milton’, Studies in Romanticism 13 (1974), pp. 105–25. . The idea of a ‘New Jerusalem’ presented in ‘And Did Those Feet’ was not a far-off dream nor as remote as it seemed, but a possibility of a better England, something purer and without the mechanical influences of the industrial revolution; something built to represent England’s “green and pleasant land”.

When exploring Blake’s poem, ‘And Did Those Feet’, and the reception it received, we see that Blake’s history and his intentions for the preface were morphed through Parry’s setting of the preface to music. Whilst minor revisions of the poem had been made beforehand, none had the consequences of Parry’s. Both the preface and the poem went unnoticed in Blake’s lifetime, therefore Blake’s feelings on how his work was adapted will never be definitively known, however, we can draw some conclusions. Following his arrest and attempted charge of high treason, we can conclude with reasonable certainty that Blake would not have been a supporter of ‘Jerusalem’ as a national anthem. Despite this, there is still significant calls for ‘Jerusalem’ to replace ‘God Save The Queen’, so much so that it is used before England National Team Rugby and Cricket matches as opposed to ‘God Save The Queen’, a fact that supporters of these sports are quite passionate about.

‘And Did Those Feet’ has taken on more modern adaptions as well; a popular Netflix animated TV show, ‘Neo Yokio’, uses ‘Jerusalem’ as it’s fictional country’s national anthem, replacing ‘England’ with ‘Yokio’. This provides an interesting point surrounding Blake’s intentions for the preface; not only was it used long after it was first published as a national anthem, a rallying cry of sorts, centuries on it is still being adapted as a fictional national anthem. This suggests that while Blake did not intend for this purpose, the ‘death of the author’ principle has taken over, with the opposite of what Blake wanted becoming the main use for his work. Unlike Neo Yokio, however, is the 1981 film ‘Chariots of Fire’, which takes it’s inspiration from the line “Bring me my chariot of fire”, a film which embodies the beliefs that Blake and his wife, Catherine, held.

This essay was started exploring the patriotic themes of Blake’s ‘And Did Those Feet’, and whilst it was not written with the intention of stirring up patriotic pride, it did so anyway, adapted by the Suffragette movement and many other organizations throughout centuries to create national pride, whether fictional or realistic. Despite its unintended uses, critics cannot dispute that whilst its effects were unintended, ‘And Did Those Feet’ remains one of Blake’s most poignant works, despite its status as merely a preface to a larger poem.

Bibliography

1. Ackroyd, Peter, Blake (London: Ardent Media, 1995)
2. (BBC, 2007), 'Jerusalem: An Anthem For England’
3. BBC, ‘The strange myth in the song Jerusalem’ BBC News [Online] 13 January 2016 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35304508 Accessed 15 January 2019
4. Bentley, G.E. The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
5. Blake, William, Annotations to Richard Watson, An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas Paine, reprint edn (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1984)
6. Blake, William, Milton, A Poem: And The Final Illuminated Works, ed. by Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998)
7. Bulwer Lytton, Edward, Richelieu, Or, The Conspiracy: A Play in Five Acts (Michigan: Baker, 1896)
8. Dibble, Jeremy, C. Hubert H. Parry: His Life and Music (Wotton-under-Edge: Clarendon Press, 1998)
9. Gilchrist, Alexander, Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus'(London: Macmillan and Company, 1863)
10. Goslee, N. ‘“In England’s green & pleasant land”: The Building of Vision in Blake’s Stanzas from Milton’, Studies in Romanticism 13 (1974), pp. 105–25.
11. Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence, ed. by Thomas Sadler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
12. Rowland, Christopher, 'Blake and the Bible: Biblical Exegesis in the Work of William Blake', International Journal of Systematic Theology, 7.2, (2005), 142-154
13. Tannenbaum, L. Biblical Tradition in Blake’s Early Prophecies: The Great Code of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 168; C. Burdon, The Apocalypse in England: Revelation Unravelling 1700–1834 (London: Macmillan, 1977)
14. Tolley, M.J. ‘Europe “to that chaind’ in sleep” ’, in D. Erdman and J. Grant, Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
15. Whitson, Roger, Jason Whittaker, William Blake, and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation, And Social Media(Oxon: Routledge, 2013) FUL15593115 Single Author Study: A ENL3085M