William Blake
The attempt of discussing heaven and hell, and religion in general has occupied the minds of almost every artist and writer of time. The most influential of these writers for Blake’s time is Milton’s Devine Comedy. Blake responds with "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" in his attempt to understand God and his dichotomy of heaven and hell. One of the most interesting statements made by Blake is “that God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Plate 4). Typically it is shown that it is the Devil who is responsible for the forcing of someone from the straight and narrow path that Milton would write about. Instead Blake attempts to see this idea from another angle that perhaps the action of going after the ideal of making it to heaven that God might tempt you with things to push you away from him. Blake shows through the Devil that by using Milton that reason is truly not the highest capacity to experience God. This goes against not only Milton but also against almost any major philosopher in their ideal life which typically ends with reason. The belief that reason is the highest form of thought in known existence allows for reason to be used as the main way to receive Gods warmth. Blake then goes against the holy trinity. While stopping short of what Nietzsche would famously state in Thus Spoke Zarathustra “God is dead” Blake shows that these torments that God has placed humans through shows a sense of testing. By reasoning it would be easy to see that God could not exist in three forms especially the Holy Spirit. Yet in questioning this you question the very existence of God. In doing so you question your beliefs in religion in general. Now the old famous philosophers would eat this up stating that this is the beauty of religion. By questioning the existence of a divine deity we can chose if we want to follow God. How great is it to question the foundation of a belief then by using the highest reasoning tool that is holy to question the fabric of the religion itself. Why would God create an environment that allowed for the questioning on his being as well as provide other areas of resistance along the way to heaven? Perhaps the questioning of our own existence and how we got here allows for a deeper understanding of the ideals of the time. This poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell would be a great supplement to the reading of Devine Comedy and exploring how both authors attempt to see how God truly acts in the conducting of the world as a whole.
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Robert,
ReplyDeleteGood effort on this challenging poet and poem. I like the way you connect Blake to Dante and Milton, two poets with whom Blake was very familiar. It seems you may have had difficulty with Blake's use of irony, though; you frequently attribute to Blake views stated by his characters, which often leads to misinterpretation of Romantics. Try to be more cautious in leaping from a quotation to an assumption about the views of the author.
Also, please be careful to proofread your posts. In both this post and your previous one, there are several errors in spelling (even in the title of this post) and syntax, and sometimes missing words or punctuation. These errors make your posts harder to follow.