Blake’s Writing Process As Shown in Europe A Prophecy

In this post, I’d like to provide some insight to the introductory poem in Europe a Prophecy and in turn, Blake’s writing process.  Firstly, the speaker walks upon a fairy, who is preaching bits a wisdom.  The speaker, possibly Blake, hides and listens to the fairy saying ”five windows light the cavern’d man.”  To me, the fairy seems to be giving an example of how one may purely experience the poetic genius, which is through the cleaned doors of perception.  This has to do with Blake’s idea of organic perception.  If the physical senses can perceive organic perception, then the “bread (is) eaten in secret pleasant.”  This concept is essential to how Blake writes.  He must clean when writing or already has cleaned his perception.  To gain organic perception involves dissolving all the systems which the block internal mind from flat physical sense perception.  Blake’s process is one of totally clearing the mind to then receive, what he considers, divine inspiration.

When the speaker, supposedly Blake, makes himself known to the fairy, he inquires “what is the material world?”  The fairy, for Blake, is a source of authority, which then the speaker sits down to completely and without conflict dictate its speech. This is also very telling of the way Blake writes his poetry.  Blake, as a person, is just writing what the fairy says, which means Blake himself isn’t doing art but letting it flow through him from a non-self source.  This is the state of the poetic genius as it is pre-thought, acted on impulse, and from the imagination.  Blake, through the poetic genius, is basically writing whatever comes to mind and then editing it.  To understand Blake, it is essential to understand his writing process and through the fairy, we see Blake as someone who lets a universal knowledge flow through him.  He is a receptacle of the divine.

The Nightmare of Female Power

Enitharmon’s “female dream” is not the first mention of the goddess’s eighteen-hundred-year reign on the earth: a few stanzas previously, Enitharmon expresses her intent to have “dominion” over “the human race”: “Who shall I call? Who shall I send? / That Woman, lovely Woman! May have dominion?” (Plate 8, line 3; Plate 8, line 5; Plate 8, lines 2-3) Her plan to dominate mankind is clearly premeditated and involves summoning two of her sons, as well as their nameless female counterparts, to carry out her plot on the earth. A definite method of dominance exists in the “spread[ing] of nets in every secret path” by “the little female”: from their youth, women are to serve as the forbidden objects of desire by men, for Enitharmon’s plan of conquest rightly perceives that men are easily ensnared by sexual attraction that is denied consummation (Plate 8, line 9; Plate 8, line 8). For in Blake’s worldview, suppressed desire (particularly sexual desire) is the ultimate means by which humanity’s imaginative link to the divine is controlled and repressed.

Enitharmon’s plan is evidently successful, for an eighteen-hundred-year period passes in which “Man was a Dream” (Plate 12, line 2). The end of this tyrannical period is marked by Orc’s successful bid for revolution on the earth, and thus we may equate man with freedom of desire and woman with desire’s repression. Openness and liberty in desire are termed a “Dream” because they exist only in the imagination during the period in which false chastity, counterfeit modesty, and the tenet that “Woman’s love is Sin” reign over humanity (Plate 8, line 5). According to Blake, it is this imagination, associated with the figure of Orc, that eventually overcomes woman’s rule and allows for the freedoms of desiring, creating, and acting that, to Blake, are the ultimate marks of mankind’s “poetic genius.”

The “female dream,” then, is the antithesis of Man’s Dream: it represents the exploitation and control of desire perpetuated by Enitharmon’s system. Unlike the male “Dream,” the female “dream” is not capitalized and is thus symbolic of systematic, repressive traits and actions associated with created society rather than the natural, creative elements that exist because of the divine. It is not a positive, imaginative state of mind like that Blake advocates; rather, it is the hazy existence under authority that is much like the literal dreams one has during sleep. Such dreams are without meaning and, unlike the Dreams produced by desire, contain no implications for one’s mortal or immortal life. Clearly life under the influence of the female dream is, according to the poem, a fuzzy and unreal experience in which the manipulative power of women dominates. Freedom occurs when woman’s authority is revoked and the Dream of man is restored: in this sense “Europe a Prophecy” is a strikingly anti-feminist vision of how the world should look.

The Epic War

Los and Orc serve to be an interesting combination for Blake’s prophecy. Los being a representation of the Creative Poetic Genius and Orc serving as Revolution in the Material World work together to spread the spirit of revolution, eternalized by the Poetic Genius, throughout the “vineyards of red France” (106). It is Blake’s, taking the form of the Blacksmith Los, to have revolution continue and not be constrained as Orc has been bound by Enitharmon–his mother–for most of the work.

Orc–the son–serves to be a means for Los–the father–so that people can access the Poetic Genius. For Blake’s ideal revolution, one that does not merely deteriorate as it progresses and is then restrained by a new and corruptible system, Los and Orc must be together. The pair represent Blake’s hope of an ideal revolution in his work, or at least how he hopes the revolution will play out. Their portrayal as warriors fighting an epic battle is Blake’s effort to symbolically demonstrate what he is doing in his work–waging war with the corrupted system.

Blake wishes to overturn the corrupted system in France with the spirit of revolution, Orc, and wishes to diminish any chance of the system returning through the Poetic Genius, Los. However, one issue comes to mind: Europe was published right in the beginning of the French Revolution–1794–so Blake obviously sees the potential of the Revolution; my question though: is it possible that Blake could foresee the imminent deterioration of the Revolution in favor of a new system? Or was he fully on board with the French Revolution being the spiritual revolution that he hoped for? The reason I ask is that Blake ends his prophecy with the beginning of the war cry of Los, but does not seek to go further. This is why I ask if Blake is having second thoughts–any thoughts on the matter?

Father-son relationship: causation and progression

Blake Dictionary p.246: LOS is Poetry, the expression in this world of the Creative Imagination.

Blake Dictionary p.309: ORC is Revolution in the material world.

The father-son relationship of Los and Orc symbolizes an important causation. Los is Poetry and imagination, which is the Poetic Genius. By experiencing and expressing Poetic Genius, people will see beyond the contraries and recognize the need of a revolution in the material world. Thus, just like the father-son relationship, poetry and imagination are forms to achieve Revolution.

However, Los also has to prepare for the epic war because the revolution brought by Orc is not enough. Los, the father, symbolizes the progression beyond Orc. The revolution brought by Orc is represented as the French Revolution: “But terrible Orc, when he beheld the morning in the east, Shot from the heights of Enitharmon; And in the vineyards of red France appear’d the light of his fury” (106). The French Revolution, though achieved a substantial amount of overthrowing, is never radical enough for Blake. It was still bounded by reason and did not free the human race ultimately. Los represents the revolution brought by Poetic Genius, which leads to infinite and the New Jerusalem. So the battle between Los and Orc is necessary. This cosmic battle will result in the victory of Los and the apocalypse, the coming of Christ and the New Jerusalem.

optional question prompt and instructions (3/16)

Here is two optional prompts on Europe A Prophecy:

1. In Plates 17 and 18, lines 37-39, 1-11 (p. 106), why does Los prepare for epic war along with Orc, who arrives with “furious terrors” and “golden chariots”? Explain the significance of this cosmic battle for Blake’s prophetic vision of Europe.

2. In Plate 12, line 5 (p. 101), why is Enitharmon’s eighteenth hundred year-old slumber described as a “female dream”?

For this week only, every post must be written as a comment to another post, building on the previous interpretation. Please tag accordingly. Because class will be cancelled this Friday, I also will require students to provide an additional short comment on a post/comment of their choice sometime between 2:10 and 3:00pm. Next week’s graders will choose which string of posts/comments will be discussed in class on Monday, 3/19.