A Ramble

“Blake wrote convincingly about things that shouldn't exist.” What a naughty boy he was!


Perhaps I am just going to sound like an idiot. Perhaps this will become so confusing that I will forget to make my point at all (if I even have one), make it to the end, feel convinced that the point is there, only to have you all wondering why the hell I posted this in the first place. Which is actually quite likely. (I’m not nearly as capable as eloquently articulating my thoughts as most of you are in this class.) Regardless, when I read this definitive statement in Scott’s blog post (wherein he makes some interesting points), I immediately started questioning it. Blake writes convincingly. Yes, that is certain. But about things that shouldn’t exist? Maybe this is just me, but I see it maybe as more of Blake writes convincingly about things that we aren’t entirely comfortable with. Or that we are far too comfortable with. Maybe it’s sympathy discomfort, we feel uncomfortable for him to have existed with these things in his mind for so long that it necessitated him writing it. Perhaps we’re irritated because we aren’t quite capable of accessing that particular locale. I could go on—this is what Blake compels us to do. Immediately we want to shout ‘No!’ or nod our heads emphatically and point to a passage and say ‘Yes, yes! This is where it is. This is true. This is real. This is what he’s getting at!’ This, however, is where we are prone to folly, or at least I am.

I remember the first time I read some of Blake’s works, in Romantic Lit with Gina last year. I was terrified. All those big ideas! I wanted to take it too seriously, which was intimidating and frightening. I sat down with Gina and had an interesting conversation, though I can’t remember the specifics of what she said to put me at ease. After that meeting though, I didn’t take Blake so intensely seriously (Life or death?! Heaven or Hell?! Pass or fail?! Holy crap!), and thus my mind was open in a different way, and for the first time I was able to read a passage of Blake and actually not want to tear my hair out due to my frustration at my own idiocy. (Though there were still moments I wanted to tear my hair out due to my frustration with Blake.) I’m not saying I ‘got’ it. Hell no! You’ve got to be kidding me, of course I didn’t. Of course I don’t. However, it is helpful to be aware of different facets of perception as well as the facets of interpretation that we generally work within. So often we assume. Let the text deliver assumptions for once. Step way the hell back from the text and tackle it in a new way. I feel we limit so much of what we are capable of accessing depending on how and with what attitude we decide to approach a text.

Emily imagines Blake as someone hiding under her bed with a knife. How frightening! I imagine him as someone who, as intelligent, creative, and intense as he might have been (again just musings—he could have had a secret passion for knitting as well, for all I know), also had a pretty damn good sense of humor. I think you’d have to when taking on this kind of work, lest you kill yourself (Won’t I look silly if I find out he did!). Here we are trying to designate, delineate, label, all of these things, components of even just small sections. I feel like he’d say after seeing our frustrated countenances , ‘Hey, just take a step back for a minute folks, and let it just be, before you begin picking it apart.’ Either that or, ‘Hey, you look like you could use a drink,’ more eloquently, of course. (Isaac, I’m all for the William Blake party.)

The clearest example in my mind of this is when during class the other day there was so much frustration in the “Argument” of “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” over the delineation of time and the inconsistencies of paths etc., etc., and the question of whether there was one man or different men and what happened first. Would it not also be beneficial, considering this argument is a bit like a prologue or ‘In this episode of “The Adventures of William Blake,”’ to try to think of these things and this passage without trying to separate it out right from the get go? These things seem to exist outside of time, perhaps outside of space. Try allowing dichotomies, and convolutions. Could not the “just” man also be the “villain”? Could not the “perilous path” also be the “path of ease”? Could not it be these things and also not these things? Why the hell not? Could we not consider how these things relate to the rest of the work? We have contraries, contradictions in "Marriage". But how seriously, how literally, are we going to take these? These standard approaches seem so, I don’t know, almost violent to me. I’m left wanting to apologize to the page after glaring at it so long in search of some hint. The proverbs could send you spinning around for days, just on a single one. “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.” Because this is one of the “Proverbs of Hell” perhaps we are initially prone to think this is false, but then we think, no there is some truth to this, I could see how that is so, (Melodramatic version: Oh! My delicate sensibilities! How morose and pessimistic Blake is here! I am so severely offended!*faints*) But then, should we not also question this? It could be taken further. These first two minimalist reactions are both just initial. More and more I feel Blake would encourage us to challenge ourselves and challenge those initial reactions, look at why we thought these things, and recognize that as readers we are bringing certain things to the table (perceptions, fallacies, inaccuracies, biases) and then how to work around and with those.

Basically, why not have it both ways. Let there be contradictions. That’s the fun of it, don’t let it kill you. Especially on a day like today when the weather is so nice!

Where did I start? Right. Shouldn’t. Comfortable and uncomfortable. (Do you see how easy it is to form tangents and run away with them? And why not?) If we were either entirely comfortable, or entirely uncomfortable with Blake I would see no reason for this class. I think there is something to be said for challenging our perceptions of what should and shouldn’t be in Blake. Maybe Blake broke the rules. Maybe to Blake there were no rules. Or maybe he felt there shouldn’t be. Maybe it isn't anything like this at all.

Forgive my humorous tone. I feel that one becomes utterly ridiculous when one takes Blake too, too seriously. And I am only comfortable with being mostly ridiculous. I mean no one any offense.

On another note: Procrastination prone student that I am, I decided to Google "William Blake - comics" hoping to encounter something like Kate Beaton's comic about Shelly and in so doing stumbled upon this: William Blake, Taxi Driver, a series of comic strips by John Riordan where William Blake drives a taxi around present day London encountering famous personalities past and present. Enjoy!