Philosophy

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30454, 30 May 1964, Page 4

Philosophy

Hidden Riches; Traditional Symbolism from the Renaissance to Blake. By Desiree Hirst. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 348 pp. Illustrated.

The traditional symbolism has influenced a number of the great writers and thinkers of the last 500 years, and in many cases their works are not easily understood without a knowledge of the tradition. Miss Hirst has done her best to throw some light upon the tradition and the way in which it has left its mark on artists, poets, thinkers and writers of that period. The symbolism itself is not at all easy to understand. Miss Hirst traces its beginnings from the Kabalah, the unwritten mystical tradition of the Jews. Of Englishmen, William Blake is perhaps the bestknown of those who have been so deeply influenced by the tradition. Miss Hirst writes: “To trace out this learning, we must ourselves voyage into many strange regions of the mind. The laws that govern them are far from irrational and they provide us with clues to the hidden places of the soul. The dark world of Jacob Boehme, for example, is not an unholy place. Out of the darkness comes treasure.” Boehme and Blake, the Anglican divine and Christian

Platonist William Law, the scholar and soldier, Cornelius Agrippa, John Milton, Henry More and others are given a careful examination.

The tradition took definite shape in the Academy of the Medicis in Florence in the fifteenth century and was developed by the circle surrounding the great humanist Marsilio Ficino. It spread out from the Italian academies to influence thinkers in other European countries; and they in turn influenced men like the English physician, Robert Fludd. The writer says: “An understanding of the tradition is essential to an understanding of European life and art. Only an incomplete conception of the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Durer, Michelangelo, Edmund Spenser, John Donne and Palladio, to mention just a few names, can be arrived at without some grasp of the symbolic language they all used. And some enigmatic figures, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Robert Fludd, even John Kepler, can hardly be appreciated at all. Their thoughts remain for the most part inaccessible. “Moreover the history of particular trends; Neo-classi-cal architecture, the development of the ballet, even the appearance of the new science of chemistry, cannot be explained without reference to the Neo-Platonic theories of harmony, and the material from the Kabalah and other sources, with which these were bound up. “But among all the geniuses and men of note whose work demands an appreciation of the tradition, Blake stands out as an extreme case. For when considering Blake’s work, without a knowledge of the tradition upon which he drew, the reader is rather in the position of an intelligent Mongolian Buddhist attempting to fathom “Paradise Lost” without any knowledge of the Bible, any acquaintance with European letters, or any understanding of the Christian vision. Such a man might make inspired guesses at the epic’s meaning and appreciate many of its qualities, but on the whole he would be baffled.”

Without a doubt there is much in the work of Blake and Boehme which is completely incomprehensible to most. Miss Hirst has done much to lift the veil.