WILLIAM BLAKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19714, 13 August 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

WILLIAM BLAKE.

madman or mystic?

BY MATANGA,

Was Blake mad ? It is one of the most debated questions of literary appreciation and it gets new interest with the reaching of the centenary of his death. He went out of this life on August 12, 1827, at London, still "singing of the things he saw in heaven."

any of those who met him, and many more who did not meet him, in the seventy years of his sojourn among less gated mortals, were quite sure he was mad, and some who were often in his company had doubts as to how far his outlook on the world was to be trusted. "one of them, be it said in defence of both themselves and him, went the length of suggesting lie should be put under restraint of any sort. At the worst, they were content to* neglect him. It mattered little to him what they thought. To exhibitions of his paintings and engravings the public might not come. Ordinary picture-buyers might pass his name by as of no account. But he had a circle of wondrously true-hearted friends, some of them famous in the arts, and an understanding wife, and—what was more than even so great consolations —a vivid, never-flickering faith in the unseen. So the single, tiny room in an unfrequented court of the Strand, where in the westering light of earth's last years he produced his immortal "Illustrations to the Book of Job," was a blessed place; and now many go prying thereabouts, their curiosity charged with reverent awe, asking "Can I see the house where Blake lived ?*' and they speak to each other of genius, with occasionally a meaningful and almost laudatory reference to the saying that it is akin to madness. He is, peihaps, the saying's best example.

The Poet of the Soul. It is Blake the poet, rather than Blake the painter and engraver—though he has himself made it difficult for his lovers to make this distinction, for in his work the crafts he loved are wonderfully interwoven—who has most widely challenged criticism. We all use words and use them all our days; only to some of us is given an enduring aptitude to limn truth in line and colour. So this honest man's poetry comes to a general judgment. Much of it is obscure. Not even Mr. E J. Ellis, with- his prodigious commentary, can make all clear. The fact, though no real reflection on Blake, is excuse enough for those who deem queer a taste for his "prophetic works." It may be pleaded also on their behalf who destroyed after his death some of his writings. He never wrote for any who should look merely for logic. With scant regard for their limitations, he followed a scheme of punctuation that has been the despair of his editors, driving them to commoner devices ox their own —and to apologies for using them. Here is material for the charge of madness—well, eccentricity! But, since Swinburne first divined the deep sanity and the great splendour of this poet, and set them out in his brilliant essay, the charge in even its milder form has fallen a ""little flat. The truth is put in Mr. Max Plowman s insistence that " Blake was the poet of the soul," and that's a role it- takes a colossal genius to fill. All poets, in a sense, are'poets of the soul; but it was his objective treatment, as distinctive as that followed by Dante and Milton, that made his poetry of the soul so marvellously exquisite as to elude the coarse touch of many a casual reader. This is the key to his mind. Use it, and you may wander ecstatically through "the splendid corridors of his imagery. Neglect it, and you see nothing but a rugged, enigmatic exterior. "Cowper sang the sofa," says Mr. Plowman. " Blake sang the soul; and the difference between Blake and his age—between Blake and the fashionable poets of his vouth—is paralleled by the difference between a sofa and a soul." In its way, a sofa is not to be despised, even as a theme for poetry; but you ought not to apply the same criteria to the analysis of the movements of the soul that yon find efficient in judging a description of the more obvious virtues of a so,a.

Exquisite Songs. The towering " prophecies " of Blake, to bo best understood when remembering that the essence of prophecy is forthtelling, not foretelling, are not his only claim to honour There is wondrous beauty in many a little "song of innocence, sung in the days when he went Piping down the valleys wi' c '- Pipin? songs of pleasant Everybody knows the dainty stanzas " Little Lamb, who made thee . and has met his " Infant Joy," with the refrain " Sweet joy befall thee. Eveij body, too, has met his Tyger, Tyger, burning bright In°the forests of the nigilt.

What needs to be said is that these snatches of song, those of " innocence no less than those of " experience, are inspired by thoughts about his one beloved theme. They show, each group in its own way, as Blake entitles them, " the two contrary states of the human soul " But they show these states after the manner of a connoisseur so much in love witii his possessions that he handles them daintily as he points out their worth. He who saw not the sunrise save as the coining of a multitude oi the heavenly host found beauty ever nigh at hand, and words held music for his ea B C ut T'is in his longer, sustained poems that there is revealed the mind about which so manv have wondered whether it were wholly sane. It moves with tremendous energy, with terrific avi iy. outstripping ordinary powers and fining with an «erie fear those left breathless bv its gigantic strides. In the tracfates," as when he thunders at the deists •is " enemies of the human race and of universal nature." the same energy riots jovouslv, and at times the professional exponents of orthodoxy have had qualms about the way in which, he proclaims a faith no less sincere and thorough than their own. " Jerusalem."

One word he has made live again in English sneech —Jerusalem. He leaves us In no doubt as to what he means by it It is the coming of the Kingdom of Ood in a final humanising of all things. For its establishment men are bound to strive heroically, dauntlessly, inspired by divine motives and forces. In particular, he envisages it as struggling to" aid ac rornnlishment in England. Not in fable or allegory, as he savs, but in vision, he sees the strife and the triumph, and with a vigorous symbolism he treats London, Albion's city, as the battleground of his hopes. I will riot cease from mental fight-. Nor mv pw>rd sl-'ep m my hand. Till v" have set Jerusalem Tn Kp tr'3Jirl' 3 ixmr-n and pleasant land And he looks steadfastly beyond his dav qnd land. He was a loyalist of splcnd'd fibre, as his war song "To English men " Prepare, prepare the iron helm of warso graphically tells. Yet he takes all earth into the firm grasp of his hope. I give you the end of a golden string. Only wind it into a ball: ■"lt will lead you in at Heaven a gate, Bui't in Jerusalem's wall. He comes into his own, this greatest of the English mystics. Mad'! God send us a few more such. If He can find it in His heart to make them a little less unintelligible to sordidly sane mortals, that would please many well. But we must not presume too far in so venturesome a request. Perhaps 'twere better to ask that a little more of this splendid madness of Bla'ke—since full-orbed sanity and perfect poise are unattainable to common men—might be vouchsafed to us. Then we too would see things in heaven —and sing.