Blake's Book of Urizen and Milton as romantic archetypes

Romantic Literature

1st Blog Page

In the first blog page, this author will summarize the Book of Urizen by Blake as an archetype. This "book" which is a parody of the biblical Book of Genesis is named for the character Urizen in Blake's mythology. Urizen represents humanity's alienated reason as the source of its oppression. Blake describes Urizen as the "primeval priest" and explains how he came to be separated from all the other Eternals. Due to this, he creates his own alienated and enslaved realm of religious dogma. The characters Los and Enitharmon both are able to create a space within Urizen's fallen universe in order to give birth to their son Orc who represents the spirit of revolution and freedom (Blake, and Grant, 140-144). Although Frye in our text does not make mention of it, in the opinion of this author, it reminds them of the Genesis Apocryphon since it seems more Gnostic in form since Urizen appears more similar to the demiurge of the Gnostics than to a benevolent creator that we see in the Judeo-Christian tradition ("Bibliotecapleyades.net").

The unique archetype literally runs in Urizen's family as we see in the Book of Ahania. It was produced by Blake at the same time as produced the Book of Los. In this book, we meet Ahania, Urizen's son in the midst of the rebellion of another son, Fuzon. The creation story is essentially retold according to Ahania's telling of the story and from his viewpoint (ibid, 160). Certainly, one can not but be stunned by the parallel with the rebellion of Lucifer against God in the Bible ("McDonald Road.org") .

This would mean that he is not totally beholden to the traditions of the Bible. However, Frye goes on to comment that it could simply be that such unconventionality may simply be to the huge size of Blake's intellect. He had a very comprehensive knowledge of the world and his creation of a primeval "eternal" character such as Urizen could simply be his own poetic creation that fits in no standard existing archetype that existed before he put the book of Urizen to pen and ink. Indeed, in this vein one may see parallels with Dante, which would certainly mean no attack on Christian orthodoxy (ibid).

Blog Page 3

While Israel may be the apple of God's eye, it appears that Jerusalem is that of Blake's since the work comes from this source as well. Inspiring the famous song of the same name that is so well-known in Britain, the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story oft a young Jesus accompanying his uncle Joseph of Arimathea. They both traveled to the area that is now the United Kingdom and visited Glastonbury (ibid, 308). It is amazing to this author that this well-known British song was inspired by the poetry of William Blake. This is truly a tribute to his lasting influence on British literature and the Western literatry tradition as a whole.

The poem and legend is linked to the idea in the Book of Revelation (3:12 and 21:2) which describes a Second Coming, where Jesus makes a new Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem would succeed and replace the old Jerusalem in ancient Israel. Now, the universal Christian church in general and the English Church in particular saw Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven where universal peace and love could be found. Since Jesus according to the legend had set foot in England, the British Isles became an integral part of this story. In other words, as E.J. Rose points out, he has considered that Blake highlighted his poetic theories about Jerusalem via his concept of eternal-historical time. Here, he contends that humanity has discovered its own place in infinity by finding its identity in the moment of its creation (ibid, 594).

It is the opinion of this author understanding where we came from (poetically), we know where we want to go culturally and spiritually in the future. While we may not accept Blake's vision (or Christianity), we certainly need a spirituality that will guide our society and to give it direction. What we have now is a spiritual hunger and a question about what the purpose of our existence is. By identifying the source of hunger and analyzing the spiritual type of "food" (that is cultural) that we need to nourish our souls, we will answer the hunger that we have at the center of our beings for meaning and purpose for ourselves in this spiritually blank era.