'I have been very near the gates of death,' Blake
wrote in his last letter, 'and have returned very weak and an old man,
feeble and tottering but not in spirit and life, not in the real man,
the imagination which liveth for ever.
wrote in his last letter, 'and have returned very weak and an old man,
feeble and tottering but not in spirit and life, not in the real man,
the imagination which liveth for ever.
Yeats
Let every Christian as much as in him
lies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some
mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem. ' I have given the whole
of this long passage because, though the very keystone of his thought,
it is little known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most profound
thoughts, in the mysterious prophetic books. Obscure about much else,
they are always lucid on this one point, and return to it again and
again. 'I care not whether a man is good or bad,' are the words they
put into the mouth of God, 'all I care is whether he is a wise man or
a fool. Go put off holiness and put on intellect. ' This cultivated
life, which seems to us so artificial a thing, is really, according to
them, the laborious re-discovery of the golden age, of the primeval
simplicity, of the simple world in which Christ taught and lived, and
its lawlessness is the lawlessness of Him 'who being all virtue, acted
from impulse and not from rules,'
And his seventy disciples sent
Against religion and government.
The historical Christ was indeed no more than the supreme symbol of
the artistic imagination, in which, with every passion wrought to
perfect beauty by art and poetry, we shall live, when the body has
passed away for the last time; but before that hour man must labour
through many lives and many deaths. 'Men are admitted into heaven not
because they have curbed and governed their passions, but because
they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven
are not negations of passion but realities of intellect from which
the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall
not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy. Holiness is not the
price of entering into heaven. Those who are cast out are all those
who, having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have
spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's lives by
the various arts of poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The modern
Church crucifies Christ with the head downwards. Woe, woe, woe to you
hypocrites. ' After a time man has 'to return to the dark valley whence
he came and begin his labours anew,' but before that return he dwells
in the freedom of imagination, in the peace of the 'divine image,'
'the divine vision,' in the peace that passes understanding and is
the peace of art.
'I have been very near the gates of death,' Blake
wrote in his last letter, 'and have returned very weak and an old man,
feeble and tottering but not in spirit and life, not in the real man,
the imagination which liveth for ever. In that I grow stronger and
stronger as this foolish body decays. . . . Flaxman is gone, and we must
all soon follow, every one to his eternal home, leaving the delusions
of goddess Nature and her laws, to get into freedom from all the laws
of the numbers,' the multiplicity of nature, 'into the mind in which
every one is king and priest in his own house. ' The phrase about the
king and priest is a memory of the crown and mitre set upon Dante's
head before he entered Paradise. Our imaginations are but fragments of
the universal imagination, portions of the universal body of God, and
as we enlarge our imagination by imaginative sympathy, and transform
with the beauty and peace of art, the sorrows and joys of the world, we
put off the limited mortal man more and more and put on the unlimited
'immortal man. ' 'As the seed waits eagerly watching for its flower
and fruit, anxious its little soul looks out into the clear expanse
to see if hungry winds are abroad with their invisible array, so man
looks out in tree, and herb, and fish, and bird, and beast, collecting
up the fragments of his immortal body into the elemental forms of
everything that grows. . . . In pain he sighs, in pain he labours in his
universe, sorrowing in birds over the deep, or howling in the wolf
over the slain, and moaning in the cattle, and in the winds. ' Mere
sympathy for living things is not enough, because we must learn to
separate their 'infected' from their eternal, their satanic from their
divine part; and this can only be done by desiring always beauty, the
one mask through which can be seen the unveiled eyes of eternity. We
must then be artists in all things, and understand that love and old
age and death are first among the arts. In this sense he insists that
'Christ's apostles were artists,' that 'Christianity is Art,' and
that 'the whole business of man is the arts.
lies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some
mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem. ' I have given the whole
of this long passage because, though the very keystone of his thought,
it is little known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most profound
thoughts, in the mysterious prophetic books. Obscure about much else,
they are always lucid on this one point, and return to it again and
again. 'I care not whether a man is good or bad,' are the words they
put into the mouth of God, 'all I care is whether he is a wise man or
a fool. Go put off holiness and put on intellect. ' This cultivated
life, which seems to us so artificial a thing, is really, according to
them, the laborious re-discovery of the golden age, of the primeval
simplicity, of the simple world in which Christ taught and lived, and
its lawlessness is the lawlessness of Him 'who being all virtue, acted
from impulse and not from rules,'
And his seventy disciples sent
Against religion and government.
The historical Christ was indeed no more than the supreme symbol of
the artistic imagination, in which, with every passion wrought to
perfect beauty by art and poetry, we shall live, when the body has
passed away for the last time; but before that hour man must labour
through many lives and many deaths. 'Men are admitted into heaven not
because they have curbed and governed their passions, but because
they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven
are not negations of passion but realities of intellect from which
the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall
not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy. Holiness is not the
price of entering into heaven. Those who are cast out are all those
who, having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have
spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's lives by
the various arts of poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The modern
Church crucifies Christ with the head downwards. Woe, woe, woe to you
hypocrites. ' After a time man has 'to return to the dark valley whence
he came and begin his labours anew,' but before that return he dwells
in the freedom of imagination, in the peace of the 'divine image,'
'the divine vision,' in the peace that passes understanding and is
the peace of art.
'I have been very near the gates of death,' Blake
wrote in his last letter, 'and have returned very weak and an old man,
feeble and tottering but not in spirit and life, not in the real man,
the imagination which liveth for ever. In that I grow stronger and
stronger as this foolish body decays. . . . Flaxman is gone, and we must
all soon follow, every one to his eternal home, leaving the delusions
of goddess Nature and her laws, to get into freedom from all the laws
of the numbers,' the multiplicity of nature, 'into the mind in which
every one is king and priest in his own house. ' The phrase about the
king and priest is a memory of the crown and mitre set upon Dante's
head before he entered Paradise. Our imaginations are but fragments of
the universal imagination, portions of the universal body of God, and
as we enlarge our imagination by imaginative sympathy, and transform
with the beauty and peace of art, the sorrows and joys of the world, we
put off the limited mortal man more and more and put on the unlimited
'immortal man. ' 'As the seed waits eagerly watching for its flower
and fruit, anxious its little soul looks out into the clear expanse
to see if hungry winds are abroad with their invisible array, so man
looks out in tree, and herb, and fish, and bird, and beast, collecting
up the fragments of his immortal body into the elemental forms of
everything that grows. . . . In pain he sighs, in pain he labours in his
universe, sorrowing in birds over the deep, or howling in the wolf
over the slain, and moaning in the cattle, and in the winds. ' Mere
sympathy for living things is not enough, because we must learn to
separate their 'infected' from their eternal, their satanic from their
divine part; and this can only be done by desiring always beauty, the
one mask through which can be seen the unveiled eyes of eternity. We
must then be artists in all things, and understand that love and old
age and death are first among the arts. In this sense he insists that
'Christ's apostles were artists,' that 'Christianity is Art,' and
that 'the whole business of man is the arts.
