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Blake, Novalis, and Nerval: the poetics of the apocalypse. A study of Blake's Milton, Novalis' Hymnen an die Nacht and Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Nerval's Aurelia
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Blake, Novalis, and Nerval: the poetics of the apocalypse. A study of Blake's Milton, Novalis' Hymnen an die Nacht and Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Nerval's Aurelia
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BLAKE, NCWALIS, AND NERVAL:
THE POETICS OF THE APOCALYPSE
A STUDY OF BLAKE'S MILTON. NOVALIS' HYMNEN AN DIE
NACHT AND HEINRICH VON OFTERDINGEN.
AND NERVAL'S AURELIA
by
Susan Skelton
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
September 1973
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Xerox University Microfilms
300 North 2o*b Road
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J
I
74-11,708
SKELTON, Susan, 1945-
BLAKE, NOVALIS, AM) NERVAL: THE POETICS OF
THE APOCALYPSE. A STUDY OF BLAKE’S MILTON,
NOVALIS* HKMNBN AN DIE NACHT AND HEINRICH
VON QFlLkDlNCEN.~M"Nt^Vl AL, S AURELIA; ---
University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1973
Language and Literature, modem
University Microfilms, A XEROX C om pany, A nn Arbor. M ichigan
© 1974
SUSAN SKELTON
A LL RIGHTS R E SER V ED
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CAUFORNIA
TH E GRADUATE SCH O O L
UNIVERSITY PARK
L O SA N O E L E S,C A L IFO R N IA 0 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
under the direction of hjetr... Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
SUSAN SKELTON
TATI ITTEE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I should like to express my very great appreciation to
the members of my committee, Professors David Malone, Peter
Clothier, David Eggenschwiler, and Alexander Rainof, for
their help and consideration; and most especially, I should
like to thank my chairman, Professor Malone, for his tre
mendous patience, understanding, kindness, and encouragement
during a very difficult period of my life.
At the same time, I should like to express my gratitude
for the Danforth Graduate Fellowship and the Woodrow Wilson
Dissertation Fellowship which have provided me with the
means of support enabling me to devote my full attention to
the completion of this study.
ii
In loving memory of Professor Ruth Faulk
ill
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................................... ii
DEDICATION..............................................iii
Chapter
I. THE THEORETICAL BASIS: UNCERTAINTY AS
A PRINCIPLE ................................. 1
II. THE SPACE-TIME PARADOX; SALVATION IN THE
PRISON-HOUSE OF ILLUSION.................... 21
III. WHEELS WITHIN AND WITHOUT: SATAN'S MILLS,
OR THE WORKSHOPS OF THE IMAGINATION......... 51
IV. THE MYSTERY OF THE "OTHER": A DIVORCE
DECREED IN HELL, AND A MARRIAGE MADE
IN HEAVEN................................... 82
V. ORPHEUS OUT OF HADES: THE ANTI-TRAGIC
VISION........................................118
BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................133
iv
CHAPTER I
THE THEORETICAL BASIS:
UNCERTAINTY AS A PRINCIPLE
The works of William Blake, Nova1is, and Gerard de
Nerval have drawn extensive scholarly and critical coinnen-
tary, especially in the past three decades. However, de
spite the fact that their names have frequently been linked
in statements of comparison regarding "inspired" or "mystic"
or "seer" poets, as for example by Christian D^d^yan1 and
2
Jean Richer, and even despite the fact that some of their
themes and tendencies have been discussed in studies of a
broader nature or a different focus, it still seems that a
systematic study of the three poets' affinities as
^Nerval: Pelerin de la nuit: Essai (Avignon: Auba-
nel, 1966), p. 30.
2Nerval: Experience et creation (Paris: Hachette,
1963), p. 23.
1
2
adumbrated by Henri Lemaitre in the preface to his edition
3
of Nerval's collected works has yet to be carried out.
Lemaitre, after a brief but intriguing survey of certain
concepts, images, and symbols common to the three poets,
concludes rather tantalizingly:
Blake, Novalis, Nerval: ce sont les trois noms fra-
ternels d'une grande triade romantique, dont la rencon
tre, dans I'ordre de ces affinites plus significatives
que des influences, repr^sente 1'unite profonde d'une
certaine tradition de la po^sie europeenne, alors dpa-
nouie. L'id^e serait tentante d'une anthologie commune
des trois poetea, ou l'on trouverait comme 1'extreme
pointe d'exploration spirituelle et d'expression po£tique
du romantisme europ^en. (p. xxvii)
Of course, the issue is undoubtedly somewhat compli
cated by the fact that there is no substantial evidence that
any of the three poets knew each other's works. Blake and
Novalis did not know each other and for chronological rea
sons could not have known Nerval. Furthermore, it is vir
tually inconceivable that Nerval could have known Blake.
There is some slight— and to me unconvincing— circumstantial
evidence that Nerval may have had some familiarity with
Novalis. Lemaitre dismisses the case rather summarily:
"l'on sait qu'il a ignori Novalis" (p. xxiv). There have,
Henri Lemaitre, ed., Oeuvres de Gerard de Nerval. I
(Paris: Garnier Freres, 1966), xxiv-xxvii.
3
however, been several studies of the two poets1 affinities
which have attempted to weigh the evidence: Charles Dede-
yan, in the second volume of his Gerard de Nerval et l'Alle-
magne. devotes more than twenty pages to a discussion of the
two authors, but finally is able to conclude only that
le lecteur devra se faire une idee personnelle et choi-
sir lui-mdme la solution. De toute fagon dans cette
etude sur Nerval et 1'Allemagne, il parait difficile de
ne pas provoguer cette rencontre mystique et de ne point
placer Gerard a cdte de son frere spirituel.4
Lillian Furst, who in a recent article on Novalis* Hymnen an
die Nacht and Nerval's Aurelia5 expresses her surprise that
the striking parallels between these works have thus far
attracted so little critical attention, contends that there
is "sufficient evidence to support the thesis that Nerval
was familiar with the works of Novalis, [but that] this is
hardly a secure foundation on which to conjecture any in
fluence" (p. 44). Moreover, she is forced to concede that
it is rather remarkable that Nerval should mention Goethe,
Schiller, Herder, Wieland, Kotzebue, Heine, KSrner,
4G6rard de Nerval et 1*Allemagne (Paris: Socidte d'Edi
tion d'Enseignement Sup^rieur, 1957), II, 614.
5"Novalis' Hymnen an die Nacht and Nerval's Aurelia."
Comparative Literature. 21, No. 1 (Winter 1969), 31-46.
4
Hoffmann, and Klinger in his journals and correspondence,
but never Novalis: consequently, the question Jean Richer
poses ("Comment croire que, si Nerval avait bien connu
W. Blake, Beckford ou Novalis, il n'en aura it pas longuement
parl£?" [p. 463]) certainly has some justification {Furst,
p. 43) .
Not surprisingly, since the problem of mutual influence
is so difficult— if not entirely impossible— to resolve,
critics have directed their attention to the role of common
sources: Swedenborg and Boehme; Ficino and Paracelsus;
Gnostics, Manicheans, and Pythagoreans; Illuminists, Free
masons, Rosicrucians, Quietists, and Pietists; Tarot, Al
chemy, and Occultism; the Bible, the Kabbalah, and mythol
ogy— Nordic, Celtic, Classical, and Oriental. For example,
Jacques Roos links Blake and Novalis with Ballanche in a
g
study of the influence of Swedenborg and Boehme; Gwendolyn
Bays considers the Orphic or nocturnal aspect of mysticism
in “seer1 * poets from Novalis to Rimbaud (including, of
^Aspects litt4raires du mysticisme philosophique et
1'influence de Boehme et de Swedenborg au d4but du Roroan-
tisme: William Blake. Novalis. Ballanche (Strasbourg: Edi
tions Heitz, 1951) .
7
course, Baudelaire and Nerval); John Senior discusses the
significance of the occult in symbolist literature, a cate
gory which he deems broad enough to include not only Blake
g
and Nerval, but also Hugo, Yeats, and T. S. Eliot. None
theless, the question of sources and influences is by no
means easy to establish, even for a given author. Jean
Richer, in his study of the esoteric in Nerval, readily
concedes that the poet's readings consisted mainly of
"traites d'occultisme et des romans fantastiques" rather
9
than works of genuine erudition. In the case of William
Blake, the issue is most especially complicated by a con
tinuing debate regarding the nature and even the existence
of a tradition in his corpus. On the one hand, T. S. Eliot
contends that what Blake's genius "required, and what it
sadly lacked, was a framework of accepted and traditional
ideas,to which John Senior replies that "Blake did not
7The Orphic Vision: Seer Poets from Novalis to Rim
baud (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1964).
Q
The Wav Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Lit
erature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1959).
9Gerard de Nerval et les doctrines esotAriques (Paris
Editions du Griffon d ’Or, 1947), p. 25.
^ The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
(London: Methuen and Co., 1920), p. 143.
6
lack a tradition— it is just that the one he had is not
acceptable to Eliot" (p. 63). Or, for instance, Harold
Bloom may assert that "Blake read little with any care be
ll 12
sides the Bible and Milton"; Kathleen Raine, Desiree
13 14
Hirst, and G. M. Harper have devoted volumes to proving
just the contrary. Ultimately, as Mark Schorer so aptly
expresses it, if Blake "plunged into the theological jun
gles" of so-called "mystical" authors, it was "to plunder
15
them for figures, not for concepts." What is of real
interest is not what he may have borrowed, but the quality
of artistry that he achieved with the materials which he had
16
at hand. In any case, the purpose of the present study is
to discuss affinities, not to debate sources and influences,
^ Blake's Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument
(Garden City, N.Y.; Doubleday and Co., 1963), p. 77.
12
Blake and Tradition. 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1968).
13
Hidden Riches: Traditional Symbolism from the Ren
aissance to Blake (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964).
^ The Neoplatonism of William Blake (Chapel Hill:
Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1961).
15Wllliam Blake: The Politics of Vision (New York:
Vintage Books, 1959), p. 93.
^®Mark Schorer, "Swedenborg and Blake," Modern Philol
ogy. 36, No. 2 (Nov. 1938), 178.
7
however fascinating such a debate might be.
Perhaps the most provocative study of parallels and
affinities yet to appear is the above-mentioned article by
Lillian Furst, even though she limits her consideration to
Novalis* Hymnen an die Nacht and Nerval's Aurelia. In her
discussion, Professor Furst, beginning with the essentially
"unique" position of each work in its respective national
literary tradition, proceeds to examine the genesis in per
sonal crisis, the fundamental, even Fichtean subjectivity,
the signal importance of dream and imagination, the tendency
toward religious and mythological syncretism, the special
use of symbolic imagery, and the "prose-poem" or "lyric-
epic" qualities common to the two works, concluding that
Aurelia and the Hymnen represent main "gateways" from
Romanticism to Symbolism in French and German literary his
tory respectively. It is my contention that much of Pro
fessor Furst's discussion can be applied, not only to
Novalis* Heinrich von Ofterdingen as well as to his Hymnen.
but also to William Blake, most notably to The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell and certain of the major prophetic poems.
Of course, a rigorous and extended application of the var
ious points adumbrated by Professor Furst to the entire
corpus of each of these three authors would, in order to be
8
meaningful, necessarily entail a comprehensive discussion of
the broader context of Romanticism and Symbolism in England,
France, and Germany; such an attempt is certainly beyond the
scope of this study, although I should hope that my work
might eventually constitute a chapter in such an enterprise,
should ever it be undertaken.
In any case, with regard to literary history, the rela
tionship of the three poets, even in the absence of incon
trovertible evidence that any of the three knew the others
or even that the overall form or content of their respective
works must have been determined by any given sources, tra
ditions, or literary topoi. nonetheless has been remarked
upon, not only by Lemaitre, but by several other scholars
as well. The link between German Romanticism and French
Symbolism, already considered by Albert B^guin in his far-
^ 17
reaching study, L'Arne romantique et le r6ve. is further
explored by Werner Vordtriede, who contends: "Die erste
groBe Nachtdichtung schrieb Novalis mit den Hymnen an die
18
Nacht . . . Gerard de Nerval gehdrt zu den Nttchtigen."
17L'Ame romantique et le r6ve: Essai sur le Romantisme
allemand et la po4sie francaise. 2nd ed. (Paris: Jos4
Corti, 1946).
18
Novalis und die franzftsiachen Svmbolisten: Zur
Vordtriede concludes that the true heirs of Novalis were not
the French Romantics nor even the later German Romantics,
but rather the French Symbolists (pp. 182-183). Professor
Furst, essentially concurring in this conclusion, considers
that the French Romantics were, strictly speaking, the heirs
of Sturm und Drang: it was rather the French Symbolists,
namely Baudelaire, Nerval, Mallarme, and Rimbaud, who fol
lowed the true German Romantics in their conception of the
19
transcendental or visionary role of art and the artist.
Furthermore, William Blake, in his "deliberate quest for a
new cosmology," alone among the English Romantics stands
"closer to the German than to the English tradition" (Furst,
p. 198). M. H. Abrams similarly maintains that Blake, who
like his German contemporaries . . . waged war against
Bacon, Newton, and Locke, . . . sketched out a world
view which came remarkably close to that of German
romantic philosophy: a view based on the generative
power of opposites . . . and terminating in the concept
of an organically inter-related universe.^0
Entstehungsgeschichte des dichterischen Symbols. Sprache und
Literatur, No. 8 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1963), pp.
151-152.
19
Romanticism in Perspective: A Comparative Study of
Aspects of the Romantic Movements in England. France and
Germany (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), p. 49.
2 0
The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the
Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), p.
10
Indeed, it is undoubtedly the very absence of any con
vincing evidence of an external connection among the three
poets— the ultimate futility of a rational or historical
inquiry into the grounds of their similarities— the utter
inadequacy of a reductive, mechanistic, analytical cause-
and-effect account of their almost mystical affinities —
which especially fascinates me and most motivates me to
undertake this study. If, as Nerval contends in the case of
his Chimeres. "ils ... perdraient de leur charme a dtre
21
expliques, si la chose etait possible" — a statement which
I find applicable to all poetry deserving of the name— and
if, as Lemaitre maintains in the case of Aurelia. "voici un
texte qui ne devrait recevoir que l'hommage du silence" (I,
749)— an assertion vdiich I consider fitting for any literary
text of the first order, then it is with the utmost humility
regarding literature, and the utmost scepticism regarding
criticism, that I proceed along the "perilous path" which I
have chosen, for, in Blake's words, "the villain left the
21
Gerard de Nerval, Oeuvres. ed. Albert Beguin and Jean
Richer, I, 4th ed. (Paris: Bibliothfeque de la Pl^iade,
1966), 159. All subsequent citations to the text itself of
Nerval are from this edition in two volumes (Vol. II, 3d ed.,
1970) and will be cited by both volume and page number.
11
paths of ease, / To walk in perilous paths, and drive / The
22
just man into barren climes." I shall not, as 1 had
originally wished, make any attempt to account for that
which I find finally unaccountable. Mystery shall cease
when the veil is rent and the sea has given up its dead,
and not before. 1 shall merely recount what I have been
able to conclude from the readings I have done; 1 am im
pelled by the same motivation as Blake's Los, who cries, "1
must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Mans / I
will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create" (p.
151); and the ultimate purpose of that creation is not to
establish a new system or to found another church but rather
a "Striving with Systems to deliver Individuals from those
Systems" (p. 153).
So, in the course of this study, I shall essentially
limit myself to an examination and description of some of
the major common assumptions, affinities, and parallels
among the three authors, the similarity of whose views re
garding the original nature of the universe, man's present
22
William Blake, The Poetry and Prose of William Blake.
ed. David Erdman (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1965), p.
33. All subsequent citations are from this edition, except
for correspondence, which will be so indicated.
12
fallen state, the possibility of a reintegration of human
faculties through imaginative vision, the poet's role in
achieving this reintegration, the impending doom of Apoca
lypse, and the ultimate return of the Golden Age strike me
as fully deserving of a much more comprehensive treatment
than they have yet received. If I renounce my previous
intention to explain, inasmuch as possible, what I might
posit as the reasons for these similarities, I do so with
considerable regret, but with necessity. In the words of
2 3
Novalis, "Wer sucht, wird zweifeln.1 ’ At best, such an
attempt would only lead to a desultory recycling of truisms,
to a sort of philosophical halfway house where perspectives
blur until all roads seem part of a roundabout journey to
nowhere. Better far that it not be said, as the apostle has
written, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor
hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou
art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out
of ray mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16).
In any event, at least the fundamental assumptions of
the three poets are not particularly complex. Once— in time
2^Novalis, Werke und Briefe. ed. Albert Kelletat (MUn-
chen: Winkler Verlag, 1962), p. 366. All subsequent cita
tions are from this edition.
13
or apace, or perhaps more precisely, outside time and space
— we were one: the world or the universe was a vast and
coherent whole, which has since fallen into its present
fragmented and chaotic condition. Once— in time or space,
or perhaps more precisely, outside time and space— we shall
all be one again. The "formule cosmogonique1 1 which Pro
fessor Roos applies to Blake and Novalis can equally as well
be extended to Nerval:
Unity primitive, division et multiplicity accidentelle
et passagere, unite definitive. Celle-ci sera ryalisee
par la dissolution des corps solides dans 1'essence
fluide de la substance primitive, par 1*immersion totale
du monde des volontes particulieres dans l'ocean mouvant
de la vie cosmique, oil tout se perd, s'abime, se con fond,
mais oil la moindre parcelie participe a la plenitude de
la vie et de la felicite suprdmes, ayant echange son
pauvre petit Hoi borne et egoiste contre l1infini de
1‘univers qui emplit toute sa conscience, au point
qu'elle ne fait qu'un avec lui, se sentant la fois
elle-m6me et l'univers tout entier, aussi bien l’univers
pris dans sa totalite que dans l'une quelconque de ses
parties. (p. 247)
The crucial problem is of course how we are to arrive at the
restoration of the prelapsarian or possibly even a higher
state of unity; it is here that the concept of the trans
cendental and “esemplastic" role of art and the artist comes
into play.
Obviously, this body of common assumptions is by no
means peculiar to the authors whom I have chosen to
14
consider: rather, it is present in whole or in part in many
of their contemporaries and in fact pervades German Romantic
thought. What impresses me as truly remarkable is the in-*
corporation, the transmutation, of these elements into lit
erary expression in the three poets. Professor Abrams fur
ther defines this body of presuppositions, which he finds to
be a prevalent aspect not only of German but also of English
Romantic theory:
The poet or philosopher, as the avant-garde of the gen
eral human consciousness, possesses the vision of an
imminent culmination of history which will be equivalent
to a recovered paradise or golden age. The movement
toward this goal is a circuitous journey and quest, end
ing in the attainment of self-knowledge, wisdom, and
power. This educational process is a fall from primal
unity into self-divibion, self-contradiction, and self
conflict, but the fall is in turn regarded as an indis
pensable first step along the way toward a higher unity
which will justify the sufferings undergone en route.
The dynamic of this process is the tension toward clo
sure of the divisions, contraries, or "contradictions"
themselves.24
Indeed, it is this transposition of the doctrine of felix
culpa, the paradox of the fortunate fall, which lies at the
heart of the matter, for in a very real sense, in the pres
ent context, the creation and the fall are to be seen as one
^M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and
Revolution in Romantic Literature {New York: Norton and
Co., 1971), p. 255.
15
- a 4-v 25
and the same.
Clearly, if it is the fallen order of created space-
time which must be returned to its primordial unity, then
the hierophantic role of the artist would be meaningless in
an eternal world transcending space and time. Heaven and
Hell are the necessary and dynamic contraries of thesis and
antithesis which must ultimately culminate in a higher syn
thesis, a union which Blake expresses in terms of the mar-
26
riage metaphor. "Without contraries," he proclaims , "is
no progression" (p. 34). Or, as Novalis states, "Elysium
und Tartarus sind wie Fieber und Schlaf beisammen" (p. 315).
The attainment of paradise is simply inconceivable without a
prior journey into the underworld. What Manfred Krtiger says
of Nerval can readily be extended to Blake and Novalis as
well: "Der Abstieg in die Unterwelt ist zugleich ein Auf-
27
stieg in die Gefilde der Gdttlichkeit." Since one aspect
2 5
Bloom, p. 95} Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A
Study of William Blake (Princeton: Princeton Uhiv. Press,
1947), pp. 41, 256-257} Morton D. Paley, Energy and the
Imagination: A Study of the Development of Blake's Thought
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 66.
2 f i
As, for example, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
27G^rard de Nerval: Darstellung und Deutung des Todes
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1966), p. 175.
16
of the present study will be concerned with the significance
of the poet's Christ-like and Orphic descent into hell, it
is obviously of some importance to establish the nature and
meaning, not only of that descent or quest, but also of hell
itself.
Geoffrey Hartman, in The Unmediated Vision, in a pene
trating discussion primarily of Rilke, provides a definition
of considerable interest and value:
Rilke, moreover, is aware that in submitting to sense
experience he follows a long line of literary precursors
who sought a modern descent into hell. The myth of this
descent may be said to start with Novalis, reaching its
climax in French symbolism— Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud—
and its conclusion in Rilke, although Thomas Mann will
still concern himself with it. . . . The descent into
hell is the total acceptance within art of everyday
reality. . . . For Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, and, as
it happened, for Rilke also, hell, at least the inner
circle, was Paris.2®
Hell, in other words, is the world around us: it is here
and now. Or, more precisely, it is our way of looking at
the world, for, as Blake states, "If the doors of perception
were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, in
finite" (p. 39). Heaven, then, is the world around us, or
28
The Unmediated Vision: An Interpretation of Words
worth. Hopkins. Rilke, and Valery (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1954), pp. 134-135.
17
rather the world around us as it should be seen. "Das Para-
dies 1st gleichsam Ober die ganze Erde veratreut," Novalis
writes, "und daher so unkenntlich usw. geworden— seine zer-
streuten Zttge sollen vereinigt— sein Skelett soil ausgeftillt
werden" (p. 470).
Significantly, Professor Hartman considers this process
in terms of a discussion by Novalis himself in one of his
fragments (pp. 135-136):
Bedeutender Zug in vielen Mfirchen, daB, wenn ein Unm6g-
liches miiglich wird--zugleich ein andres Unmdgliches
unerwartet mdglich wird— daB wenn der Mensch sich selbst
(Iberwindet, er auch die Natur zugleich (iberwindet— und
ein Wunder vorgeht, das ihm das entgegengesetzte Ange-
nehme gew&hrt, in dem Augenblicke, aIs ihm das entgegen
gesetzte Unangenehme angenehm ward. Die Zauberbedingun-
gen, z.B. die Verwandlung des B£ren in einen Prinzen,
in dem Augenblicke, aIs der BSr geliebt wurde usw. . . .
Vielleicht gesch&he eine Xhnliche Verwandlung, wenn der
Mensch das Obel in der Welt lieb gewttnne— in dem Augen
blicke, aIs ein Mensch die Krankheit oder den Schmerz
zu lieben anfinge, lltge die reizendste Wo 1 lust in seinen
Armen— die hdchste positive Lust durchdrKnge ihn. Kttnnte
Krankheit nicht ein Mittel hdherer Synthesis sein? (p.
504)
In other words, the metamorphosis is one of perception, not
of reality. The bear was always a prince, but it is only
through love that we succeed in seeing him as what he is.
The problem, as Blake expresses it, is that “man has closed
himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of
his cavern" (p. 39). Consequently, as Kafka portrays the
18
matter in Die Verwandlung. we are much more likely to see
the human being as a dung-beetle than the dung-beetle as a
human being. It is against these conditions of fallen ex
istence that every man— and the poet most especially— must
struggle, unceasingly and unrelentingly. As Blake states in
one of his often-cited letters, the sun is_ the sun, but it
is also Los; the thistle is^ a thistle, but it is also "an
old Man grey.1 ’29
It is interesting that Professor Hartman should omit
William Blake in his discussion of the modern descent into
hell. If, however, Professor Hartman ignores the English
poet, there is another scholar who sees Blake as the pioneer
of the very process which Hartman describes . Blake, con
tends Thomas Altizer, was "the first visionary who chose the
kenotic or self-emptying path of immersing himself in the
profane reality of experience as the way to the God who is
30
all in all in Jesus." In this sense, he is the precursor
of most significant modern literature, from Symbolism to
29The Letters of William Blake. Together with a i,i fe
by Frederick Tatham. ed. Archibald Russell (London; Methuen
and Co., 1906), pp. 108-111.
30
The New Apocalypse; The Radical Christian Vision of
William Blake (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press,
1967), p. xi.
19
Joyce and Kafka (p. xviii). Furthermore, "what is uniquely
modern or Blakean is the conjunction of . . . perennial
vision with an openness to and an immersion in the concrete
and actual space of the fallen order of time" (p. 36). For
Altizer, the signal importance of Blake is that "he chose
to confront the awesome reality of history as the total
epiphany of the sacred" (p. 115). It is my contention that
the modern descent into hell as defined by Professor Hartman
began simultaneously and independently with Blake and with
Nova1is, did indeed climax in the French Symbolists, but has
by no means reached its conclusion, although a thorough
treatment of this latter point is clearly beyond the scope
of this study.
What I propose, then, is an examination of some of the
major common assumptions, themes, and tendencies of Blake,
Novalis, and Nerval regarding the fallen order of the cre
ated world and its restoration to perfection and unity, most
especially in terms of the poet's role in this modern quest
or descent into the physical, psychological, and perceptual
inferno of the here and now. In my study, I plan to concen
trate on Blake's Milton. Novalis* Hymnen an die Nacht and
Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Nerval's Aurelia. but with
considerable cross-reference to the other works of these
three authors. I shall first consider the fallen world of
created space-time, which is, however, theoretically the
indispensable first principle of the resurrection of the
eternal order; next, the "dark Satanic mills" of death and
destruction, which are ostensibly dark and Satanic only
because they have still to be restored to their rightful
position as the workshops of the creative imagination;
afterwards, the powers, processes, and agents of evil—
Doubles, Spectres, Emanations, Sphinxes, Covering Cherubim-
which resist man's efforts to regain the paradise he has
lost, but do so supposedly only because their seeming multi
plicity has not yet been recognized as the varying aspects
of an essential unity. Finally, I shall discuss the prob
lems posed by the anticipation of this poetic Apocalypse,
the expectations of this esthetic Utopianism, in somewhat
more general terms.
CHAPTER II
THE SPACE-TIME PARADOX: SALVATION
IN THE PRISON-HOUSE OF ILLUSION
The condition of fallen nature— of created space-time—
is envisioned by the three poets as one of limitation, con
traction, reduction, and division, existing through a series
of endless and meaningless cycles, like the revolutions of
the stars and the movements of the tides, which tend to
dominate the natural man in his imperfect state. One prin
cipal characteristic of the postlapsarian universe is the
fact that it is subject to measure. "The hours of folly are
measured by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can meas
ure," writes Blake. "Bring out number weight and measure in
a year of dearth" (p. 35). In his cosmogonic satire, The
Book of Urizen. Blake shows the fallen creator Urizen, who
in eternity is the entire human intellect, exploring the
dens of created space-time:
21
He form'd a line & a plummet
To divide the Abyss beneath.
He form'd a dividing rule:
He formed scales to weigh;
He formed massy weights;
He formed a brazen quadrant;
He formed golden compasses
And began to explore the Abyss.
{pp. 79-80)
It is the fallen Urizen's misguided intention to impose a
monolithic structure upon his creation that is both cause
and consequence of the catastrophic events of history. "One
command, one joy, one desire," he proclaims, "One curse, one
weight, one measure / One King, one God, one Law" (p. 71).
Essentially the same vision is present in Novalis, who in a
myth of the fall in his Hymnen an die Nacht.^ depicts a
world abandoned by the gods: "Einsam und leblos stand die
Natur. Mit eiserner Kette band sie die dtirre Zahl und das
strenge Maafi" (p. 69). Night, on the other hand, symbolic
of reunion with the Beloved, transcends the categories of
spatial and temporal measure: "Zugemessen ward dem Lichte
seine Zeit; aber zeitlos und raumlos ist der Nacht Herr-
schaft. — Ewig ist die Dauer dee Schlafs" (p. 51). For
Nerval, human freedom and the capacity of imagination and
judgment are constantly menaced by the usurpations of caba
listic numerology: the poet-persona of Aurelia. seeing a
*A11 citations are to the Athentfurns fassung.
23
street number which happens to coincide with his age, is
suddenly troubled by the apparition of a woman and becomes
convinced that his death— or that of his Beloved— is immi
nent (l, 361). Above all, as Lemaitre emphasizes, Gerard is
obsessed with time, with the recurrent apprehension that "il
est trop tard" (p. 797).
Closely associated with this imagery of weight and
measure, of clock-time and yardstick-space, is the motif of
entrapment, entanglement, and imprisonment. Throughout his
corpus. Blake characterizes the fallen condition in terms of
chains, gins, traps, nets, webs, and manacles. In his lyric
"Earth's Answer," the world of experience, "prison'd on
watry shore1 ' and "chain'd in night," cries out to the Bard:
Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around
Selfish! vain,
Eternal banel
That free Love with bondage bound.
(pp. 18-19)
For Blake, it is above all the institutions of a corrupt
society, "Churches: Hospitals: Castles: Palaces:" which are
"Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity"
(p. 66). As it is written in the proverb: "Prisons are
built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion"
(p. 36). Established religion is most especially to be
24
condemned. Urizen, wandering over the desolation of his
fallen dominions, is pursued by a cold, shadowy spiderweb,
which grows until it encompasses all of creation. The web
is indestiuctible, "So twisted the cords, & so knotted / The
meshes: twisted like to the human brain / And all calld it,
The Met of Religion" {p. 81). Blake repeatedly emphasizes
the mental character of human bondage: the baited trap in
"the Human Abstract" grows nowhere but in "the Human Brain,"
and the universal sufferings evoked in "London" are deter
mined by "mind-forg'd manacles" (p. 27). And yet, the mind
of man is supposed to be eternal and infinite: the tragedy
is that the delusion of rational and sensory limitation has
enclosed the "infinite brain into a narrow circle" {p. 46).
At the nadir of imaginative existence, in The Book of Uri
zen. Los, who as Urthona in eternity represents the creative
imagination and who rightfully should work to restore man to
a vision of the infinite, instead forms “nets & gins . . .
rivets of iron & brass . . forging chains new & new /
Numb'ring with links, hours, days & years . . . In chains of
the mind locked up" (pp. 73-74). The eternal Prophet is
doing the devil's work. It is a perversion of the creative
process, a travesty of the Poetical Character.
Likewise, for Novalis, what must be broken, once and
25
for all, is “das Band der Geburt--des Lichtes Fessel" (p.
55). Even in the time of the Golden Age, before the advent
of death turned the world into a wasteland forsaken by the
gods, the conditions of fallen existence were already pres
ent in inchoate form: “tiber der Menschen weitverbreitete
Stfimme herrschte vor Zeiten ein eisernes Schicksal mit
stummer Gewalt. Eine dunkle, schwere Binde lag urn ihre
bange Seele" (pp. 63, 65). In the Mflrchen of Fabel and
Eros, the rationalistic Scribe overthrows the house he is
supposed to serve, imprisoning the father— his master— and
binding the mother in iron bonds. His machinations are
finally thwarted by Fabel, the poet-figure, who entangles
his accomplices, the three spinners, in a vast spiderweb.
It is, however, essential to recognize that Fabel's act is
a necessary first step along the road to salvation, unlike
the work of Los in the passage just cited from The Book of
Urizen. who is only aggravating the problems which he should
be seeking to solve. When the adversaries of mankind have
been overcome and exist only symbolically as the pieces of
a chess set, then nets, traps, and shackles will simply
become superfluous. In the Hymnen. the loosening of the
bonds is the condition of our resurrection: "Gehoben ist
der Stein— / Die Menschheit ist erstanden— / Wir alie
26
bleiben dein / Und ftlhlen keine Banden" (p. 80) . Ulti
mately, as in Blake, the character of our bondage is essen
tially mental, and can be overcome only by the imagination:
"Ein Traum bricht unsre Banden los / Und senkt uns in des
Vaters SchooB" (p. 83).
For Nerval, the imagery of entrapment and confinement
is literally realized in the experience of the straitjacket
and the "cachot"; not surprisingly, the preoccupation with
prisons, especially institutions for the insane, is a re
current element in his works. One of the most fascinating
accounts of Les Illumines is that of Raoul Spifame in "Le
Roi de Bic£tre," whose remarkable resemblance to the king
Henri II so obsesses him that it finally reduces him to
insanity. Confined in a madhouse, he is nonetheless con
vinced that his dreams are reality and his prison only a
dream. At the end of the day, before going to bed, he would
often say, "Nous avons bien mal dormi cette nuit; ohl les
f£cheux songesI" (II, 956). In a striking reversal of this
situation in the Histoire du Calife Hakem of the Voyage en
Orient, the real king Hakem is taken prisoner and put in a
madhouse; his repeated announcements that he is not merely
calife but god as well only serve to convince the doctors
that he has utterly taken leave of his senses, especially
27
since the institution already contains "cinq califes ... et
un certain nomibre de dieux" (II, 377-378) . In his absence,
he is replaced by his "double" Yousouf, the companion of his
hashish debauches . Ultimately, both prisoners manage to
escape— Hakem, however, to be restored to his throne, and
Spifame, to be returned to protective custody. In Les Nuits
d 1octobre. the persona, having forgotten his papers, is
forced to spend a night in jail, a fact Which is in itself
less terrifying than the dream he has while there. None
theless, he actually finds himself in handcuffs before he is
eventually set free. It is above all in Aurelia that the
prison or madhouse experience recurs throughout the narra
tive, but it is also above all in this work that the nature
of reality— the relation between life and dream, between
physical confinement and spiritual liberty, between mental
derangement and transcendent vision— is most thoroughly and
imaginatively explored.
Along with the literal depiction of imprisonment, Ner
val also expresses the concept of confinement in terms of two
key images, that of a circle closing in upon itself and that
of an endless maze or labyrinth. In the final years of his
life, he seems to have seen himself as turning helplessly in
an ever-narrowing circle. In a letter to his father in
28
early December of 1853, he writes, "Je travaille beaucoup,
mais cela tourne un peu dans le mime cercle" (I, 1103). At
about this same period, he comments to his friend George
Bell, "Ce que j'ecris en ce moment tourne trop dans un
cercle restreint. Je me nourris de ma propre substance et
ne me renouvelle pas" (I, 1106). Toward the beginning of
Les Nuits. the same image recurs; "Le cercle se rdtr^cit de
plus en plus, se rapprochant peu a peu du foyer" (I, 79).
The circle is explicitly identified with "les cercles in-
extricables de l'enfer parisien" (1, 88); and the purgator
ial and infernal character of his experience is repeatedly
emphasized. In Aurelia. he sees himself as "abandonn^ ...
au cercle monotone de mes sensations ou de mes souffranees
morales" (I, 407). At the same time, the imagery of the
closing circle is counterpointed by that of the nightmare-
labyrinth. In Aurelia. shortly after his fatal vision pre
figuring the death of the Beloved, the poet-persona is
troubled by an ominous dream; "J'errais dans un vaste Edi
fice composd de plusieurs salles. ... Je me perdis plusieurs
fois dans les longs corridors ... " (I, 361-362). This
nightmare is strikingly similar to one described in Les
Nuits: "Des corridors,-des corridors sans finl Des esca-
liers,-des escaliers ou l'on monte, ou l'on descend, ou
29
l'on remonte. ... Monter, descendre, ou parcourlr lee corri
dors, -et cela pendant plusieurs ^ternit^s ... " (I, 104).
At last, toward the conclusion of Aurelia. in an almost
identical vision, the poet dreams that he is "dans une tour,
si profonde du c6t^ de la terre et si haute du c6t£ du ciel,
que toute mon existence semblait devoir se consumer a monter
et a descendre" (I, 408). In the same dream, however, the
Beloved-Goddess appears and tells him that through the in
tercession of his friend Saturnin, the Virgin Mary has
answered his prayers and put an end to his torment: "L'«S-
preuve a laquelle tu £tais soumis est venue a son terme;
ces escaliers sans nombre que tu te fatiguais a descendre
ou a gravir, ^taient les liens mdmes des anciennes illusions
qui embarrassaient ta pens^e ... 1 1 (I, 408). Thus, even as
in Blake and in Novalis, the terms of the confinement are
purely illusory; it follows then that the triumph over them
must be imaginative and spiritual.
Finally, for the three poets, the problem is that the
fallen world of created space-time is itself a prison, a
vast illusion of contraction and restriction. As Blake de
fines the situation in Milton: "The nature of a Female
Space is this: it shrinks the Organs / Of Life till they
become Finite & Itself seems Infinite" (p. 103). Hence even
30
"places of Thought" become "Intricate labyrinths of Times
and Spaces unknown" (p. 106). It is not simply that the
labyrinth is a rational or sensory illusion; all of mental
activity, if misdirected, can become a convoluted prison.
Blake writes:
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways.
How many have fallen there I
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others when they should be led.
(pp. 31-32)
Under such circumstances, when the totality of existence may
be seen as one gigantic intellectual error, the distinction
between slave and tyrant, prisoner and jailor, oppressed and
oppressor, ceases to retain its validity. As Novalis poses
the question: "Was sind Sklaven? Vdllig geschw&chte,
komprimierte Menschen. Was sind Sultane? Durch heftige
Reizungen inzitierte Sklaven" (p. 387). And Nerval ponders:
"Le gedlier est une autre sorte de captif.— Le gedlier est-
il jaloux des rdves de son prisonnier?" (I, 434). For
Blake, in the early prophecies, the process is cyclic: the
fiery Ore, the fallen form of the eternal Luvah, pits him
self against the rigid and reductive intellect of the op
pressive Urizen, only to become a greater tyrant in his
31
place. As Northrop Frye points out, it is impossible for
historical time to culminate in Apocalypse under these con
ditions (Fearful Symmetry, p. 320). The Ore cycle merely
exchanges the position of despot and victim: "All our
imaginative efforts are bound to a wheel of time, which in
its turn is imprisoned in a wheel of space" (p. 245). In
this regard, the whole of humanity may be considered as
reduced to the condition of the slaves described by Nerval
in "Isis," "charges de crier l'heure d'apres la clepsydre
et le cadran solaire," and who spent their lives in this
fashion (I, 295). "Clock time," states Frye, "is a mental
nightmare like all other abstract ideas" (p. 46). It is the
very nightmare from which we are trying to awaken.
And yet, in a sense, man's very imprisonment in the
fallen order of space-time is a form of salvation, however
temporary, an indispensable stage in the evolution toward
the Last Judgment. Our union with the eternal order must
not be premature. Each of the three poets experiences a
certain ambivalence in the face of the infinite. After the
fiery, magnificent vision which concludes Milton, as the
four trumpets are sounding to the four winds, Blake's per
sona, about to step forward into Apocalypse, is suddenly
recalled to himself: "Terror struck in the Vale I stood at
32
that immortal sound / My bones trembled. I fell outstretchd
upon the path / A moment, & my Soul returnd into its mortal
state / To Resurrection & Judgment in the Vegetable Body”
(p. 142). in a remarkably similar scene in Aurelia. Ner
val's persona, on the verge of uniting with the star of his
destiny, stops short at the critical instant;
Je croyais voir le lieu ou nous dtions s'Clever, et per-
dre les formes que lui donnait sa configuration urbaine—
sur une colline, entourne de vastes solitudes, cette
scene devenait le combat de deux Esprits et conme une
tentation biblique. ... La route semblait s'Clever, tou-
jours et l'dtoile s'agrandir. Puis je restai les bras
etendus, attendant le moment ou l'dme allait se sdparer
du corps, attirde magnetiquement dans le rayon de
l'dtoile. Alors, je sentis un frisson; le regret de la
terre et de ceux que j'y aimais me saisit au coeur, et
je suppliai si ardemment en moi-radme 1*Esprit qui m'atti-
rait k lui, qu'il me semble que je redescendais parmi
les hoirmes. (I, 36 3-364)
Likewise, Novalis' persona, in the third of his Hymnen. ex
periences an ecstatic vision of union with the Beloved in
which the region surrounding him is utterly transfigured;
"die Gegend hob sich sacht empor; (iber der Gegend schwebte
mein entbundner, neugeborner Geist. Zur Staubwolke wurde
der Htigel— durch die Wolke sah ich die verklttrten Ztlge der
Geliebten" (p. 55). And yet, in the following hymn, which
contains the explicit contention that he who has known the
night's bliss can never return to the realm of light,
33
nonetheless concludes with a cheerful acceptance of the
day's activities and a generous appreciation of the sun
shine's splendor and beauty. Ever true to the authenticity
of his vision, the persona still is willing to live out his
allotted time-span here below, a process which he views as
a religious pilgrimage. In other words, the soul must not
abandon the body before its time: rather, the two must go
together to judgment, for the Apocalypse is to be a total
event.
Furthermore, it is the very fact of limitation which
provides a definition and a form for human existence in the
fallen world, which otherwise would be anomic and amorphous.
Blake develops this idea in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
in terms of the symbiotic relationship between the Prolific
and the Devourer: "But the Prolific would cease to be Pro
lific unless the Devourer as a sea received the excess of
his delights" (p. 39). Victor Brombert, in his essay, "Ner
val et le prestige du lieu clos," considering the constant
and complementary temptations of strict confinement and
2
endless wandering which the poet faced, asserts, "Cette
2
“Nerval et le prestige du lieu clos," Symposium. 23
(Ffc 11-Winter 1969), 2 08.
34
id^e d'un salut dans la fermeture, d'une Evasion a travers
la metaphore carc&rale, £claire les descentes infernales de
Nerval: ce sont des quotes dont le but ultime est de
transmuer le desastre en triomphe" (p. 213). Ross Chambers,
concurring in this conclusion, maintains that Nerval came to
3
regard not travel, but prison, as his salvation. Simi
larly, in a study of spatial imagery in Novalis* Hvmnen.
Lawrence 0. Frye examines the role of "home" or "dwelling"
images, contending that these protective enclosures serve
as a refuge for the poet whenever he lacks the strength to
4
continue his spiritual voyage through the night. Frye
analyzes the pilgrim's progress mathematically in terms of
curves and vectors, the latter being associated with motion,
the former with repose. He conjectures that perhaps "at
times . . . Novalis preferred the depths of the protective
curves to the exposed openness of his heavenly goal" (pp.
590-591). Likewise, in Heinrich von Ofterdingen, especially
in the first part, the image of the cave recurs as a sort of
^G^rard de Nerval et la po^tique du voyage (Paris:
Jos£ Corti, 1969), p. 362.
^“Spatial Imagery in Novalis* ‘Hymnen an die Nacht,*"
Deutsche Vlerteliahrsschrift ftlr Literaturwissenschaft und
GeistesqeBchichte. 41, No. 4 (Dec. 1967), 590.
35
leitmotif. While it is needless to quarrel with M£hl's
assertion that the "H8hle" motif represents a symbolic
5
express ion of the "Weg nach Innen,” I should like to con
tend that it signifies a good deal more besides. In Hein
rich’s dream, which begins the narrative, in his father's
dream also, and in the story of the poet and the princess,
the cave is associated with romantic love, even with sexual
fulfillment; and in the father’s dream, with art as well.
In Heinrich's descent with the miner, in which the two
encounter the hermit, it is associated with knowledge,
including self-knowledge; in the discussions of mining, with
a knowledge which is also power and a love which is almost
religion; in the Fabel MSrchen. with the ultimate conquest
of evil and the consequent return of the Golden Age. With
out the spatial constriction expressed by means of the cave
or "Hfihle" imagery, the novel would lack not only shape but
meaning as well.
Since time and space must be seen as a continuum, as
^Hans-Joachim MXhl, Die Idee des goldenen Zeitalters im
Werk des Novalis: Studien zur Wesenbestinmung der frtih-
romantlschen Utopie und zu ihren ideenqeschichtlichen Vor-
aussetzunqen. Problems der Dichtung: Studien zur deutschen
Literaturgeschichte, Vol. VII (Heidelberg: Carl winter
UniversitMtsverlag, 1965), p. 409.
36
the two mutually supportive and mutually restrictive parts
of a single whole, what is true of fallen space is neces
sarily true of fallen time as well. Certainly, the cyclic
nature of fallen time is an impediment, a temporary negation
of the possibility of spiritual progress. "La Treizieme
revient ... C'est encor la premiere," Nerval writes in
"Artemis" (I, 5). Without the "Poetic or Prophetic charac
ter, " says Blake, the "Philosophic and Experimental would
soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to
do other than repeat the same dull round over again" (p. 1) .
Or, as Kbrff states in the case of Novalis: "Auch der Kreis
koramt sich mit seiner 'Vergangenheit' immer wieder ' ent-
gegen'— er trifft auch in ewiger Erneuerung immer nur Be-
kanntes an."*’ At a certain point, Chronos must become Kai-
ros— of this there can be no question. One day, time will
end: "Einst zeigt deine Uhr das Ende der Zeit," Novalis
asserts (p. 61). Indeed, it is B^guin's contention that the
universal tendency in all of Novalis* work is toward that
moment when time will be no more (p. 210). And, as
6H. A. Korff, Geiat der Goethezeit: Versuch einer
ideelien Entwicklung der klassisch-romantischen Literatur-
geschichte. 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel Verlag, 1949), III,
627.
37
Chambers explains in his discussion of Nerval, the abolition
of both temporal and spatial distinctions represents the
only possible escape from the nightmare-labyrinth, the fatal
circle by which we are bound (p. 162). At the conclusion of
Jerusalem, which represents the culmination, in terms of all
humanity, of the Apocalyptic vision achieved in Milton by
the poet, Blake proclaims: “Time was Finished!" (p. 252).
But, as Adams points out in his study of Yeats and Blake,
the vision must be achieved in terms of all humanity:
The communal vision is apocalypse, total resolution in
God, the assertion of reality as a single symbol. When
communal vision occurs, time ceases because there is no
longer any new analogy to be made with the present.7
As with the spatial, so with the temporal order: time must
end, but not before its time.
Indeed, even as the spatial order imposes a sort of
form upon fallen existence, the temporal order places a
certain limitation upon human sufferings. "Time," writes
Blake in one of his most startling statements, "is the mercy
of Eternity; without Times swiftness, / Which is the swift
est of all things: all were eternal torment" (p. 120).
7Hazard Adams, Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision.
Cornell Studies in English, No. 40 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1955), p. 5.
38
Undoubtedly, clock-time, frequently symbolized in Blake1 a
works by the Spectre of Urthona, represents a type of com
pulsion antithetical to the human spirit; nonetheless, as
Peter Fisher expresses it, this compulsion is perhaps neces
sary, at least provisionally: “Blake is impressed with the
compulsion underlying the natural order and the clock-work
which the deists made of it, but he is also aware that this
very compulsion is what keeps fallen man from dissolving
0
into chaos and disappearing into non-entity." G. N. Har
per, in an essay on the neo-Platonic concept of time in
Blake's prophecies, concurs in this conclusion, adding that
time is also the means by which the artist is able to
g
cleanse his imagination. "Eternity," says Blake, "is in
love with the productions of time" (p. 35). What Haering
states concerning Novalis is essentially true of all three
poets: "Fttr Novalis bilden auch Raum und Zeit untereinander
eine dialektische Einheit."^0 Space, as Freiberg explains
a
Peter Fisher, The Valley of Vision: Blake as Prophet
and Revolutionary, ed. Northrop Frye (Toronto: Univ. of
Toronto Press, 1961), p. 31.
Q
G. M. Harper, "The Neo-Platonic Concept of Time in
Blake's Prophetic Books," PM1A. 69, No. 1 (March 1954), 152.
^^Theodor Haering, Novalis ale Philosoph (Stuttgart:
Kohlhanmer Verlag, 1954), p. 534.
39
in "The Fleece-lined Clock," "is indispensable but time is
the organizing or eternizing agent.Thus time and space
are necessary, not only to each other, but also to a fallen
humanity which is awaiting the final day.
The relationship between time and eternity in the three
authors has drawn extensive critical attention. Professor
Furst, discussing the problem in the Hymnen and in Aurelia.
which she considers essentially in generic terms of the
prose-poem or lyric epic, refers to the bewilderment of
critics over the chronological confusion in the two works
("Novalis' Hvmnen an die Nacht and Nerval's Aurelia." p.
41). Much of her discussion is immediately applicable to
Milton and Blake's other major prophecies, which can cer
tainly be seen in terms of lyric-epics or prose-poems; and
a substantial portion of the critical commentary on the
problem of time in Blake can readily be extended to Novalis
and Nerval. In Milton. Beer maintains, what is achieved is
an apocalyptic myth encompassing all relations between
12
Eternity and Time; moreover, Susan Fox asserts, the action
. K. Freiberg, "The Fleece-lined Clock: Time,
Space, and the Artistic Experience in William Blake," Dal-
housie Review. 49, No. 3 (Autumn 1969), 414.
12
John Beer, Blake's Humanism (Manchester: Manchester
Univ. Press, 1968), p. 185.
40
of the poem occurs "simultaneously in three levels of real-
13
ity, Eternity, Death, and Time." Creation, Redemption,
and Judgment, says Percival, are both continuous and simul-
14
taneous. Any moment may have the character of Eternity
if error is recognized and rejected— "given bodily form," as
15
Damon expresses it. "There is a Moment in each Day that
Satan cannot find," writes Blake, "Nor can his Watch Fiends
find it" (p. 135). As Poulet states in the case of Nerval,
the ever-turning circle of time must create a unique and
eternal hour at its center. ^ Paradoxically, as Chambers
contends, the ever-increasing speed of the cycles of space-
time may eventually become so great that it abolishes itself
at a "point vertigineux ou la vitesse redeviendrait immo
bility dans une Eternity enfin retrouvye, une liberty
13Susan C. Fox, "The Structure of a Moment: Parallel
ism in the Two Books of Blake*s Milton." Blake Studies. 2,
No. 1 (Fall 1969), 33.
^Milton 0. Percival, William Blake *s Circle of Des
tiny (Morningside Heights, N.Y.: Columbia Univ. Press,
1938), p. 223.
15S. Foster Damon, William Blake: His Philosophy and
Symbols (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958), p. 2 33.
16Georges Poulet, The Metamorphoses of the Circle.
trans. Carley Dawson and Elliott Coleman (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1966), p. 168.
4 1
totale" (p. 34). Time and Eternity are not only here and
17
now, but one, says Marken. In SchSrer's words, both "la
resurrection du passe" and "la minute eternelle" are mira-
18
cles. Or, as Novalis so wonderfully summarizes the mat
ter: "Ewigkeit ist Allheit der Zeit" (p. 480).
Significantly, the three poets envision the fallen
order of space-time to a considerable extent in terms of
astronomy— sun, moon, earth, and stars. As the representa
tives of the natural order of the vast extent of space and
the recurrent cycles of time, the stars most especially
constitute a menace to the human imagination, unless— and
until— they come to be our own. "The starry floor / The
watry shore / Is giv'n thee till the break of day," writes
Blake (p. 18). And, in the Hymnen. Novalis asserts, "Also
nur darum, well die Nacht dir abwendig macht die Dienenden,
sKetest du in des Raumes Weiten die leuchtenden Kugeln, zu
verktlnden deine Allmacht— deine Wiederkehr— in den Zeiten
deiner Entfernung" (p. 49). For Nerval, in a gigantic dis
tortion of imaginative vision, both the heavenly bodies and
17Ronald Marken, "'Eternity in an Hour'— Blake and
Time," Discourse. 9, No. 2 (Spring 1966), 170-171.
!®Kurt SchJErer, Th&natique de Nerval ou le roonde re-
compost (Paris: Minard, 1968), p. 133.
42
all of human existence are seen as governed by the absurd
and mechanical gestures of inmates in the exercise yard of
an insane asylum:
J'imaginai d'abord que les personnes r^unies dans ce
jardin avaient toutes quelque influence sur les astres
et que celui qui tournait sans cesse dans le mdme cercle
y reglait la marche du soleil. Un veillard, que l'on
amenait a certaines heures du jour et qui faisait des
noeuds en consultant sa montre, m'apparaissait cornne
charg^ de constater la marche des heures. Je m'attri-
buai a moi-m6me une influence sur la marche de la lune.
... (I, 401-402)
Furthermore, at least implicitly, the three poets associate
the "starry floor" with the descent into the underworld.
Blake's persona in the Marriage, after having groped his way
downward through stable, church, vault, mill, and cavern,
sees the black sun of the Apocalypse in "a void boundless as
a nether sky" (p. 40). In his creation myth in Aurelia.
Nerval speaks of a race of necromancers banished to the
center of the earth, who derived their magic powers from
"1'adoration de certains astres auxquels ils correspondent
toujours" (I, 377). And, in Heinrich von Ofterdlngen. the
miner and the hermit discuss the intimate relationship be
tween the bowels of the earth and the stars of the sky,
between mining and astrology: "Ihr seid beinah verkehrte
Astrologen," the hermit tells the miner (p. 214).
4 3
The ambiguous nature of the moon and the role which it
plays for the three poets in the struggle of the creative
imagination against the rational and sensory reduction of
the natural order is also noteworthy. In the fourfold
spiritual vision of the universe— the underworld, the mun
dane realm, the lunar Beulah, and the eternal Eden of the
imagination,19 the moon represents an equivocal condition
of refuge and repose but also of temptation. The persona
of Aurelia. in the madhouse, troubled by the disturbance of
the universal harmony, sees the moon as the abode of his
kindred spirits: "La lune ^tait pour moi le refuge des £mes
fraternelles qui, d^livr^es de leurs corps mortels, tra-
vaillaient plus librement a la r4g^n£ration de l'univers"
(I, 403) . Nonetheless, as he watches the pale, ravaged
crescent fading away in the night sky, he feels his confi
dence waning with it and attempts to reassure himself:
"Cependant il me semblait que cet astre £tait le refuge de
toutes les £mes soeurs de la mienne, et je le voyais peupl4
d'ombres plaintives destinies a renaitre un jour sur la
terre ... " (I, 405). For Blake, the lunar Beulah
19
The terminology of "Eden" and "Beulah" iB Blake's
(and of course Biblical); the states described are, however,
equally applicable to all three authors.
44
represents a temporary repose from the solar splendors of
Eternity, which may become too dazzling for the weaker Ema
nations or even for the fallen Eternals to bear without
respite:
Beulah is evermore Created around Eternity; appearing
To the Inhabitants of Eden, around them on all sides.
But Beulah to its Inhabitants appears within each district
As the beloved infant in his mothers bosom round incircled
With arms of love & pity & sweet compassion. But to
The Sons of Eden the moony habitations of Beulah,
Are from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant Rest. (p. 128)
Beulah is "a place where Contrarieties are equally True”
(p. 128). But, in Blake's system, such a condition negates
the possibility of mental or spiritual progress. Indeed,
at the beginning of Milton, in his invocation to the Daugh
ters of Beulah, he explicitly identifies their realm as one
"of terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions /
Of varied beauty" (p. 95). It is, as Bloom points out, a
dreamworld, an expression of Innocence too disorganized to
withstand the incursions of Experience (p. 199) . Likewise,
for Novalis, in the Fabel Mflrchen of Ofterdinqen. the moon
is a world of repose but also of temptation and fantasy.
While Ginnistan is entertaining, pursuing, and seducing Eros
in the sheltered domains of her father, the Moon, and en
thralling the beautiful boy with an elaborate "Schauspiel,”
45
the scribe is usurping his master's position in the house
on earth, and Fabel is engaged in a battle to the end with
the ominous spinners in the underworld.
Finally, as it is spoken of the prophet, when the time
is at hand, and the day of doom is upon us, the extinction
of the heavenly bodies will signal the end of space-time:
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and,
lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became as
black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as
a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken
of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled
together; and every mountain and island were moved out
of their places. (Rev. 6:12-14)
The image of the black sun recurs throughout Blake's works,
both poetic and pictorial; perhaps one of its most famous
literary expressions is "le soleil noir" of "la M^lancholie"
in Nerval's ''El Desdichado." Indeed, Lemaitre considers the
significance of the black sun as one of the common images
which should be considered in a comparative study of the
poets' affinities (p. xxvi). In a crucial episode, at the
onset of a nervous breakdown in the second part of Aurelia■
Nerval's persona, on the verge of suicide, experiences the
Biblical vision of the Apocalypse:
Les ^toiles brillaient dans le firmament. Tout & coup
il me sembla qu'elles venaient de s'4teindre a la fois
46
comme les bougies que j'avals vuea a l'^glise. Je crus
que les temps £taient accomplis, et que nous touchions
a la fin du monde annonc4e dans 1'Apocalypse de saint
Jean. Je croyais voir un soleil noir dans le ciel de
sert et un globe rouge de sang au-dessus des Tuileries
... A travers des nuages rapidement chasses par le vent,
je vis plusieurs lunes qui passaient avec une grande
rapidit^. Je pensai que la terre £tait sortie de son
orbite et qu'elle errait dans le firmament comme un
vaisseau d&n£t^, se rapprochant ou s*£loignant des
£toiles qui grandissaient ou diminuaient tour a tour.
(I, 397)
Still obsessed by the idea that the world has come to an
end, he is taken away to a mental hospital; nonetheless, it
is difficult to believe that anything less than this awe
inspiring vision could have prevented him from drowning
himself in the Seine.
In Blake, as has been noted, the Apocalypse which is
prepared in the poet's mind in Milton is consummated in
Jerusalem for all humanity:
The Sun forgets his course like a drunken man; he
hes itates,
Upon the Chelsedan hills, thinking to sleep on the
Severn
In vain; he is hurried afar into an unknown Night
He bleeds in torrents of blood as he rolls thro heaven
above
He chokes up the paths of the sky; the Moon is leprous
as snow:
Trembling & descending down seeking to rest upon high
Mona:
Scattering her leprous snows in flakes of disease over
Albion.
The stars flee remote: the heaven is iron, the earth is
sulphur,
47
And all the mountains & hills shrink up like a withering
gourd. (p. 217)
For the moment, the Anti-Christ reigns supreme; but even as
it is always the darkest before dawn, so the bloody knives
and stony temples of the Druids must soon give way before
the River and the Tree of Life, and the epiphany of Satan
will be swallowed up and consumed in the fiery advent of the
New Jerusalem and Christ the Lamb. The most striking depic
tion of the Apocalypse in Blake’s works occurs in his un
engraved prophecy, The Four Zoas. in the concluding "Night
the Ninth," where Los, who, however fallen from his eternal
character as Urthona, nonetheless represents the poetic
spirit in space-time, suddenly begins to wrench the stars
from the sky: "... his right hand branching out in
fibrous Strength / Seizd the Sun. His left hand like dark
roots coverd the Moon / And tore them down cracking the
heavens" (p. 372). What Los and his Emanation Enitharmon
cannot know, in their fallen condition, as they struggle
against their Spectre, is that Jesus, whom they think still
dead and in the grave, has already risen and stands beside
them.
In Novalis1 Mjjrchen of Fabel and Eros in Ofterdinqen.
it is the rationalistic scribe, a figure of the Anti-Christ,
4 6
who precipitates the apocalyptic extinction of the sun by
his sacrificial burning of the mother, an act v^iich more or
less stands for the transmutation of the natural into the
eternal order:
Die Sonne stand feuerrot vor Zorn am Himmel, die gewal-
tige Flamme sog an ihren geraubten Lichte, und so heftig
sie es auch an sich zu halten schien, so ward sie es doch
immer bleicher und fleckiger. Die Flamme ward wei£er
und m&chtiger, je fahler die Sonne ward. Sie sog das
Licht immer stSrker in sich, und bald war die Glorie um
das Gestirn des Tages verzehrt, und nur aIs eine matte,
gl£nzende Scheibe stand es noch da, indem jede neue Re-
gung des Neides und der Wut den Ausbruch der entfliehen-
den Lichtwellen vermehrte. Endlich war nichts von der
Sonne mehr (Ibrig, als eine schwarze ausgebrannte Schlacke,
die herunter ins Meer fiel. Die Flamme war tlber alien
Ausdruck glltnzend geworden. (p. 265)
As Hiebel contends, however, the flame functions as a Phoe
nix or Christ-symbol, making possible the return of the
20
Golden Age. Indeed, as Haering explains, the process of
combustion permits the operation of a dialectic, in which
thesis and antithesis are consumed to give rise to a higher
synthesis (pp. 559-561). The mother, identified as the
enemy of Arctur in her natural state, assumes a hallowed
existence after her sacrifice: her ashes, mingled with the
miraculous waters of Fabel's vessel, comprise a medium of
20
Friedrich Hiebel, Novalis: Der Dichter der blauen
Blume (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1951), pp. 138-139.
49
regeneration, joyful communion, and the eternal presence of
the spirit.
Ultimately, what is true of the spatial and the tem
poral order is also true of the astronomical, which sym
bolizes and subsumes the other two: the human— and above
all the poetic— role in the redemption of fallen nature must
become the conscious and active one of repossession of what
is rightfully man's own. The stars must become ours— or
perhaps even ourselves. In Aurelia, the poet-persona, even
at the nadir of his vision, nonetheless comes to understand
that his own role in the nightmare-ridden world of the mad
house is to reestablish universal harmony, which by some
numerical error has been disturbed, thus disrupting the
order of the heavens and the course of human existence.
Novalis writes in the Hymnen. "Die Sternwelt wird zerfliefien
/ Zum goldnen Lebenswein, / Wir mtlssen sie genieBen / Und
lichte Sterne seyn" (p. 81) . The universal Sun, when seen
for what it is in an eternal poem of imagination and love,
is nothing other than "Gottes Angesicht"— the countenance of
the Lord (p. 81). What Northrop Frye states in the case of
Blake is true, not only of the other two poets, but of the
entire Apocalyptic tradition as well; "In the Apocalypse
the stars are the stones of fire, and the sun is the Messiah
who is the cornerstone of the city" (p. 2 53). Thus, for the
three poets, time, space, and the celestial bodies which
seemingly tyrannize a fallen humanity are, when correctly
viewed and rightly taken, the tools, timetables, and build
ing blocks of Eternity. Man has only to repossess the work
shops of the imagination, and labor in the Lord's service
instead of Satan's. I shall consider this topic in the
following chapter.
CHAPTER III
WHEELS WITHIN AND WITHOlfT : SATAN'S MILI£ ,
OR THE WORKSHOPS OF THE IMAGINATION
For Blake, Nova1is, and Nerval, fallen nature, in the
absence of the redemptive powers of imagination and love,
can be described in terms of the Swedenborgian image of a
vast mill, turning in an endless series of cycles, grinding
away at the substance of life, reducing the creative process
to a mechanical gesture, and churning the dark waters of the
subconscious to turbulence and to nightmare. Blake con
tends, "the bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same
dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with
complicated wheels" (p. 2). His famous lyric in the "Pref
ace" to Milton, subsequently adopted as the hymn of the
British Labour Party, which contains the verses, "And was
Jerusalem builded here, / Among these dark Satanic Mills?"
(p. 95), has frequently been discussed, but generally in its
literal sense. For the purposes of the present study, it is
51
52
unnecessary to include an examination of the broad socio
logical context of the Industrial Revolution in England at
the end of the eighteenth century: Blake's indignation at
the working conditions in the mines and factories of his
time is well-known and can be substantiated by numerous
textual references. What has been less discussed, although
not ignored entirely, is the function of the "dark Satanic
Mills" within the frame of reference of the poem itself. In
the "Bard's Song," Satan, Miller of Eternity, is told by
Los :
0 Satan my youngest born, art thou not Prince of the
Starry Hosts
And the wheels of Heaven, to turn the Mills day & night?
Art thou not Newtons Pantocrator weaving the Woof of
Locke?
To Mortals thy Mills seem every thing & the Harrow of
Shaddai
A scheme of Human conduct invisible & incomprehensible.
Get to thy Labours at the Mills & leave me to my wrath.
Thy Work is with Eternal Death, with Mills & Ovens &
Cauldrons. (p. 97)
In the second chapter of Jerusalem, the diabolic mills of
Satan's Watch-fiends are explicitly identified with "cruel
tortures" (p. 179).
For Novalis, in Die Lehrlinge zu Sais. Nature, consid
ered from the point of view of a reductive, mechanistic, and
disjunctive rationalism, is likewise a dreadful mill of
53
death:
Auch bleibe die Natur, so weit man k£me, immer eine
furchtbare MUhle des Todes; Uberall ungeheurer Umschwung,
unaufldsliche Wirbelkette, ein Reich der Gefr£Bigkeit,
des tollsten Obermuts, eine unglUcksschwangere UnermeB-
lichkeit; die wenigen lichten Punkte beleuchteten nur
eine desto grausendere Nacht, und Schrecken aHer Art
mUBten jeden Beobachter zur GefUhllosigkeit gngstigen.
(p. 115)
Under such circumstances, death itself is a kind of mercy:
it is the only alternative to insanity. The same image re
curs in Die Christenheit oder Europa. where hatred of reli
gion has become antipathy toward fantasy, feeling, ethics,
and esthetics as well, sundering man from the continuity of
past, present, and future,
. . . und machte die unendliche schiipferische Musik des
Weltalls zum einfdrmigen Klappern einer ungeheuren MUhle,
die vom Strom des Zufalls getrieben und auf ihm schwira-
mend, eine MUhle an sich, ohne Baumeister und MUller und
eigentlich ein echtes Perpetuum mobile, eine sich selbst
mahlende MUhle ... (p. 398)
The mill, untrammeled, becomes the universe; the mill, mis
apprehended, becomes a mill.
The mill image is less dominant and less recurrent in
the works of Nerval; but when it occurs, it is invariably in
a sinister context. In Lea Nuits d'octobre. for instance,
the nightmare of corridors and staircases is defined by the
presence of an immense mill, whose wheels are constantly
54
stirring the murky water at the foot of the stairs. The
next morning, the persona, obsessed by his dream and begin
ning to question his sanity, decides to take a walk along
the banks of the river in an effort to reassure himself:
Allons errer sur les bords de la Marne et le long de ces
terribles moulins a eau dont le souvenir a trouble mon
sommeil.
Ces moulins, £caill^s d'ardoises, si sombres et si
bruyants au clair de lune, doivent gtre pleins de charmes
aux rayons du soleil levant. (I, 107-108)
It is significant, however, that in the passages which fol
low, the poet evokes the charms, not of the mills, but of
the landscape, village, and river "au d^la des moulins" (I,
108) .
Again, in the Voyage en Orient, the mills of Syra,
which Gerard finds a bizarre decoration for the landscapes
of the Greek isles, prove to be the scene of a rather sad
misadventure. The mills, although less terrifying than
those in northern France, nonetheless constitute a desecra
tion of the homeland of Apollo and Artemis:
Un moulin k vent k six ailes qui battent joyeusement
l'air, comme les longues ailes membraneuses des cigales,
cela g£te beaucoup moins la perspective que nos affreux
moulins de Picardie; pourtant cela ne fait qu'une figure
mediocre aupres des ruines solennelles de l'antiquit^.
N'est-il pas triste de songer que la cdte de Delos en
est couverte? Les moulins sont le seul ombrage de ces
lieux st£riles, autrefois couverts de bois sacr^s.
(II, 86)
55
Most of the mills have a double function: the ground floor
serves as a tavern. It is in one of these taverns that the
persona is bothered by a hideous old woman, who works as a
go-between for the local call-girls. When she whistles for
a young peasant, he is reminded of the serpent's hiss be
neath the Tree of Knowledge in Eden. He simply pays the
girl without insisting on her services, which he was not
seeking in the first place.
Above all, the mill image represents the turning of
mighty wheels, of wheels in the midst of wheels, as in the
vision in the Book of Ezekiel. In this respect, the image
is ambiguous, for whoever— or whatever— controls the wheels
controls the mills. Eden, too, has its wheels, but they are
not as those of Satan. Blake writes in Jerusalem:
I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose woof rages dire
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton, black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs
tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden:
which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace.
(p. 157)
Northrop Frye finds it paradoxical that the wheel, a tool
invented by man for practical use probably long before the
beginnings of cosmological speculation, should come to
56
symbolize the concept of fate in the mythological expression
of the female spinners hostile or indifferent to the human
beings whose lives they control (Frye, p. 266), such as the
Greek Clotho, Laches is, and Atropos— she with the shears who
cannot be moved. But, as Frye insists, "there is no image
of an inscrutable fate which may not also be an image of
creative power" (p. 290) . It follows, then, that the role
of man— and preeminently the role of the artist— is to seize
control of the wheels and to make them turn for his own
purposes. Ultimately, then, the dark satanic mills must
become the workshops of the human imagination. For the
three poets, the productive activities involved in the func
tioning of the mills can and do serve as metaphors for the
creative process .
For William Blake, engraver and printer, the imagery of
the workshop takes four general forms: that of printing and
engraving; that of the harvest and the vintage, including
the winepress and the mill; that of metalwork— the forge,
the foundry, and the furnace; and that of weaving— and, by
extension, of clothing in general. In one of the "Memorable
Fancies" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake de
scribes the methods by which knowledge is transmitted in the
six-chambered Printing house in hell, and the operations of
57
the Dragon -Man, the Dragons, the Viper, the Eagle, the
Eagle-Men, the Lions, the Unnam'd forms, and the Men. The
passage has received considerable conmentary and explication
from the host of Blake scholars and critics; it is unneces
sary to recapitulate the greater portion of their discus
sion. What is especially noteworthy in the description of
the processes involved is that the molten metals are trans
formed into living fluids and that the end-products— books —
are received by human hands. For Blake, the printing
presses of Hell are to serve as a means of cleansing the
"doors of perception," the necessary first step in the
“improvement of sensual enjoyment’ which will culminate in
the expulsion of the Covering Cherub who guards the Tree of
Life and stands between man and Paradise (pp. 38-39). Blake
speaks of reading the Bible in "its infernal or diabolical
sense which the world will have if they behave well" and
also of "The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no" (p. 43). That Bible is in a sense
the totality of his engraved corpus.
At the same time, the Biblical and Apocalyptic images
of the implements of harvest and vintage recur throughout
Blake's prophecies, especially The Four Zoas. Milton, and
Jerusalem. The complex allegory of the "Bard’s Song" in
58
Milton is conveyed largely in terms of such instruments and
their functions. The "Reprobate" Rintrah, symbol of pro
phetic wrath, is associated with the plow; the "Redeemed"
Palambron, spirit of civilized poetry, with the harrow; and
the "Elect" Satan, representative of rationalistic error,
with the Mills of Eternal Death.^ When Los, in an act of
misguided pity, allows Satan to assume the harrow of Palam-
bron and assigns Palambron to work instead in Satan's mills,
the results are so disastrous that the following day must
become a "blank in Nature" (p. 101). Palambron's horses,
maddened by Satan's attempts to subdue them, have become
impossible to control; meanwhile, the workers at the Mill,
drunk on wine even though it is the middle of the day, are
singing, shouting, and dancing on the green. The situation
is so desperate that Palambron calls for a solemn assembly
in Eden, thus precipitating the events which constitute the
rest of the "Song," in which the devil comes to be revealed
as Urizen. The "Song" has often been interpreted in terms
of Blake's unhappy experience at Felpham, where the poetas
ter Satan-Hayley attempted to usurp the position of the poet
*The antinomian character of this rhetoric has been
recognized by most major modern critics. The "redeemed"
Palambron is in fact sorely in need of redemption.
59
Palambron-Blake, in relegating him to the position of a
pampered hireling. In a broader sense, as Northrop Frye
points out, the vintage and harvest symbolism evokes the
sacrifice, the "sparagmos," of the Man-God who dies, de
scends into hell, and is resurrected, in order that humanity
or perhaps the earth itself may have new— or even eternal—
life (p. 289): Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, Tammuz,
Jesus Christ. The mill produces the bread vfrich is his
flesh; the winepress, the wine which is his blood (p. 289).
In the Book of Revelation, the winepress is associated also
with the wrath of the Lord:
And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth,
and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into
the great winepress of the wrath of God.
And the winepress was trodden without the city, and
blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse
bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred
furlongs. (Rev. 14:19-20)
For Blake as well, the winepress is associated with war on
earth, with the all-consuming violence which heralds the
Apocalypse. In Milton, the winepress is also identified
with the printing press of Los: "The Wine-press is call'd
War on Earth, it is the Printing-Press / Of Los; and here he
lays his words in order above the mortal brain / As cogs are
formd in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel"
60
(p. 12 3) . Eve Teitelbaum sees the Blakean winepress as a
"grandiose metaphor of a great intellectual converter of
2
rational thought to inspiration." It is Luvah, "naked &
drunk with wine," who works at the winepresses, along with
his sadistic sons and daughters. "But in the Wine-presses
the Human grapes sing not, nor dance / They howl & writhe
in shoals of torment; in fierce flames consuming" (p. 12 3).
This is the fallen world of the Ore cycles— of war, revo
lution, exploitation, and hypocrisy— ripe and overripe for
the Second Coming and the day of reckoning. One is reminded
of the Apocalyptic and diabolic instrument of torture of
Kafka's In der Strafkolonie. where the cruel needles work
constantly to inscribe the law which the victim has violated
in his naked flesh. Another key image in Blake's corpus is
that of the forge or foundry, of heating and hammering
metals and of casting them into shape. The furnace image,
adumbrated in "The Tyger," has implications of both crea
tivity and terror: "What the hammer / what the chain, / In
what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil? what dread
grasp, / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?" (p. 24). In
2
"Form as Meaning in Blake's Milton." Blake Studies. 2,
No. 1 (Fall 1969), 57.
61
Blake*s mythological system, the work of the blacksmith is
typically associated with the poet-figure Los, "Lord of the
Furnaces"; much of the action of Jerusalem consists of his
efforts to subdue his Spectre and to force the Spectre to
labor with him at the forge: "Take thou this Hammer," he
commands, "& in patience heave the thundering Bellows / Take
thou these Tongs: strike thou alternate with me: labour
obedient" (p. 150). Standing in the fallen London, Los
knows that he must work day and night at his furnaces to
construct the foundations of the New Jerusalem, which Blake
calls Golgonooza and identifies with "the spiritual Four
fold London eternal" (p. 98). Thus engaged in a deadly
contest with his Spectre— who is, strictly speaking, the
Spectre of Urthona and who represents the tyranny of clock
time in the fallen natural order, Los plays a part of cru
cial importance in the preparation of the Last Vintage and
Harvest. It is here that he differs from the tradition of
Romantic poet-heroes who follow him across the pages of
English literature, as Bloom indicates, for his main role
3
is active rather than passive, to do rather than to suffer.
3
Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company: A Reading of
English Romantic Poetry (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and
Co•, 1961), p. 76.
62
Even as Los is identified with the forge, so his Ema
nation Enitharmon is associated with the loom. Character
istically, her function is to work beside Los, to attend to
the weaving while he operates the foundry:
Loud sounds the Hammer of Los, loud turn the Wheels of
Enitharmon
Her Looms vibrate with soft affections, weaving the Web
of Life
Out from the ashes of the Dead: Los lifts his iron
Ladles
With molten ore: he heaves the iron cliffs in his rat
tling chains
From Hyde Park to the Alms-houses of Mile-end & old Bow
Here the Three Classes of Mortal Men take their fixd
destinations
And hence they overspread the Nations of the whole Earth
& hence
The web of Life is woven: & the tender sinews of life
created
And the Three Classes of Men regulated by Lo'„ 's Hammer.
(P. 99)
Her loom is called Cathedron. It is appropriate that Los,
Enitharmon, and the Spectre of Urthona should labor together
to build the New Jerusalem since the three were originally
one in the Eternal Urthona; their separation is a result of
the fall. It is the active Los who compels his malevolent
Spectre and well-meaning but weak-willed Emanation to carry
out their tasks; nonetheless, he also is still fallible— he
is only Los and not Urthona, as he all too clearly demon
strates in The Book of Urizen when he forges chains to bind
63
the already petrified Urizen. Likewise, the operations of
spinning, weaving, and knitting can be perverted into the
very functions which they should serve to oppose— and per
haps a good deal more easily, inasmuch as Enitharmon is a
far weaker creatre than Los. In "The Human Abstract,"
"Cruelty knits a snare" (p. 27); and in "The Golden Net,"
the helpless youth in search of love and beauty is entrapped
by this artifact of female handicraft (pp. 474-475). Uri-
zen's cold shadowy spiderweb, "The Net of Religion,” already
mentioned in another context, is referred to as a "Female in
embrio" (p. 61). Even the Eternals can misuse these proc
esses, as they do in The Book of Urizen. where they weave
"curtains of darkness" to separate themselves from the sight
of fallen and divided man, thus worsening the conditions of
the fall (p. 77). Ultimately, the loom of Enitharmon, vftiich
should weave the web of life, in the hands of Rahab and
Tirzah can become a "dreadful Loom of Death" (p. 134).
The same ambivalence, the same mental reservations
which are associated with weaving and the loom are also
expressed in the pattern of garment imagery in the prophe
cies. Man must be clad, man must be shod, but in what7 In
one of Blake's most striking images, in Milton, the descend
ing Milton enters the left foot of the poet-persona, "And
64
all this Vegetable World appeard on my left Foot, / As a
bright sandal formd immortal of precious stones & gold: /
I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro1 Eternity"
(p. 114). Depending on its use, Blake's garment imagery can
have either positive or negative connotations. When the
Shadowy Female sees Milton descending, she howls, "I will
lament over Milton in the lamentations of the afflicted /
My Garments shall be woven of sighs & heart broken lamenta
tions" (p. 110). Ore replies, "Wherefore dost thou Create &
Weave this Satan for a Covering? . . . When wilt thou put on
the Female Form as in times of old / With a Garment of Pity
& Compassion like the Garments of God" (p. Ill) . For Blake,
as for Carlyle, the operation involved is essentially one
of the "Sartor Resartus," as is shown at the conclusion of
Milton, where the triumphant poet, now the incarnation of
the Poetical Character, promises
To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the
Saviour
To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration
To cast off Bacon, Locke, and Newton from Albions
cover ing
To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with
Imagination
s e e s #
These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of
Desolation
Hiding the Human Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains
65
Which Jesus rent: & now shall wholly purge away with
Fire. (p. 141)
In one of the most dramatic passages in the poem, the Starry
Eight— the Seven Angels of the Presence and Milton as the
Poetical Character— become "One Man Jesus the Saviour,"
robed in the clouds of Milton's Emanation Ololon "folded as
a Garment dipped in blood / Written within & without in
woven letters" (p. 142). In a very real sense, the clothing
and the body, the flesh and the spirit, have become one. In
the remarkable encounter between Milton and Urizen on the
banks of the Arnon and the Jordan, Milton, his feet bleeding
from the cold marble of Urizen, takes up the red clay of
Succoth, molds it, and begins to cover the frigid limbs of
his grim adversary, "Creating new flesh on the Demon cold,
and building him, / As with new clay a Human form ..."
(p. Ill). As Northrop Frye so aptly states, "from the
skeleton's point of view it is rather difficult to say
whether the flesh is body or clothing" (p. 267).
For Novalis, mining engineer, the imagery of the work
shop is depicted primarily in terms of mining and of spin
ning, especially in Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Despite the
recurrent theme of the artisan and of handicrafts in the
novel, frequently related to the concept of the poet, either
66
by comparison or by contrast, this motif is not explicitly
elaborated by means of detailed images. Nor does the ima
gery of harvest or vintage seem to play a very significant
role in his works, although the "Weinlied" which Klingsohr
sings for Heinrich’s father's guests in Augsburg specifi
cally develops the symbolism of the dying and reviving wine-
god. Even the theme of mining, which the author eulogizes
in the fifth chapter of Ofterdingen, is discussed more in
philosophical than in technical terms. The mine is cer
tainly one of the central images of the workshop in Novalis,
involving, as it does, not only the productive activity
carried out, but also the underground descent with all that
this implies. Unlike Blake and Nerval, however, Novalis
does not seem especially concerned with the foundry or the
forge, with the potential use of the metals once they are
extracted from the earth. Another image of considerable
importance in Ofterdingen is that of spinning, which in the
Fabel Mflrchen generally represents the artist's role in
overcoming the powers of darkness and preparing the world
for the return of the Golden Age. Novalis does not appear
to have been particularly disposed toward an extensive sym
bolic development of garment imagery, but is rather inclined
toward a more figurative expression, as in the first of the
67
Hvmnen: "Fernen der Erinnerung, WUnsche der Jugend, der
Kindheit Trfiume, das ganzen langen Lebens kurze Freuden und
vergebliche Hoffnungen konunen in grauen Kleidern, wie Abend-
nebel nach der Sonne Untergang" (p. 47). The image of the
veil, recurrent in his prose works, normally functions in a
negative sense, as at the temple of Isis in Die Lehrlinge
zu Sais. where it comes between man and the object of his
quest, the reality which is self-knowledge and knowledge of
the world.
The role of mining in the fifth chapter of Ofterdingen
is largely conveyed by the narration of the old miner— the
1 1 Schatzgrfiber" or "Bergmann”— encountered by Heinrich's
party on their journey to Augsburg, tdio later takes the
youth, the merchants, and some of the local peasants to
explore the caves near the village. Walter Rehm considers
4
the miner as a poet symbol; and a case can surely be made
for his contention, not only in terms of the allegorical
songs which the old man sings for the assembled company in
the tavern, but also because of the miner's symbolic func
tion of delving into the dross of gross physical appearances
^Orpheus: Der Dichter und die Tpten: Selbstdeutung
und Totenkult bei Novalis. Hdlderlin. Rilke (DUsseldorf:
Verlag Schwann, 1950), p. 135.
68
in order to sort out the gold of a higher spiritual reality.
The old man considers his work as an act of liberation, as
the restoration of an imprisoned king to his rightful
throne:
Mit welcher Andacht sah ich zum erstenmal in meinem
Leben . . . den K6nig der Meta lie in zarten Bl&ttchen
zwischen den Spalten des Gesteins. Es kam mir vor, als
sei es hier wie in festen GefKngnissen eingesperrt, und
glXnze freundlich dem Bergmann entgegen, der mit soviel
Gefahren und Mtihseligkeiten sich den Weg zu ihm durch
die starken Mauern gebrochen, um ihn an das Licht des
Tages zu ffirdern, damit er an kdniglichen Kronen und
Gef£Ben und an heiligen Reliquien zu Ehren gelangen,
und in geachteten und wohlverwahrten Mtinzen, mit Bild-
nissen geziert, die Welt beherrschen und leiten mdge.
(pp. 195-196)
It is significant that the old man, as a youthful novice in
the Eula mines, discovered not only his vocation but also
his bride in the daughter of his master, the father-figure
Werner. Certainly, in Ofterdinqen. the descent into the
mines is strongly suggestive of sexual union, a theme de
veloped in one of the miner’s songs:
Der ist der Herr der Erde,
Wer ihre Tiefen mifit,
Und jeglicher Beschwerde
In ihrem SchoB vergiBt.
Er ist mit ihr verbtlndet
Und inniglich vertraut,
Und wird von ihr entzttndet,
Als wSr sie seine Braut.
(p. 200)
69
It also suggests the return to the womb, the maternal earth,
the seeking after the Universal Mother. At the same time,
the relationship between the miner’s mission and religious
reverence is explicitly elaborated in several passages. The
putative connection between the stars of the sky and the
hollows of the earth has already been mentioned. In a
sense, the poet-miner is seeking not only the Universal
Mother, but God as well: the Universal Father and Heavenly
King .
It is noteworthy that in the Fabel M&rchen. which con
tains Novalis' most extensive development of the spinning
motif, the metallurgical and mineralogical imagery of the
mines is continued in the allegorical roles of Gold, Zink,
Eisen, Turmalin, the compass-snake, the magnetic armor, the
spinners' shears, and the alchemical phttnix. By far the
most important part, however, is played by the poet-figure
Fabel, whose victory over the scribe and the three spinners
involves, once again, a descent into the underworld. The
grotesque reversal of light and dark imagery, in which the
"schwarzbrennende Lampe1 1 drives the threatening light away
and casts darkness upon the spinners1 work, suggests the
inappropriateness of their possession of the spindles.
Nevertheless, Fabel, undismayed, realizes that she will have
70
to entrap the three sisters by means of their own machinery,
to entangle them in the web of their own weaving. This,
essentially, is what happens: the scribe and the three
sisters, anxious to get rid of what they consider as an
irritating little pest, tell Fabel to go away and find them
some tarantulas. When she returns to the house, the scribe
and his cohorts, who try to attack her, are caught in the
tarantula web and bitten mercilessly until they begin to
leap up and down in a frenetic "Totentanz." Merrily leaving
her victims behind, Fabel proceeds to the spinners* under
ground den. upon her arrival, the sisters, brandishing
their shears at her, unwittingly step on the tarantulas and
are stung to madness. As they cavort wildly about in their
"danse macabre," they scream for Fabel to spin them light
dancing clothes, which, in a striking coalescence of mineral
and textile imagery, are to contain flowers raised in fire.
Fabel does as she is told; the dresses that she acquires
are, however, the airy webs of garden-spiders, %£iich are
more than happy to fall upon and consume their prey without
further hesitation. Ultimately, once the forces of evil
have been overcome and the spinning vfoeels have reverted
into Fabel's hands, the spinning image becomes not only
positive but Apocalyptic. "Noch einmal bitte ich, dann
71
spinne Ich Tage der Ewigkeit," Fabel tells Arctur (p. 268).
"Die alten Zeiten kehren zurtlck," she proclaims. "Ich will
dir frdhliche Tage spinnen ..." (p. 269). Once again, the
wheel is only a wheel: it works for whoever turns it.
For Gerard de Nerval, journalist, critic, and vagabond,
the imagery of the workshop is expressed essentially in
terms of three major processes: printing and lithography;
the furnace; and textile operations, especially their end-
product, clothing. The implements of harvest and vintage do
not in themselves play a very great part in his works, al
though the symbolism of Bacchus— of wine, the vine, and the
"ivresse" which is also poetic inspiration— does occur, most
notably in Les Chimeres. especially in "Myrtho." in one of
his notebooks, the poet identifies "les boissons dont on
s'enivre" with the blood of the rebellious fallen angels,
and writes, "Les bouteilles gue tu vides, tu les remplis de
ton esprit" (I, 432). It is significant that Gerard, not
particularly an artisan or technician, at one point applied
for a license or patent for a printing device he had in
vented, described as a "st^r^ographe, appareil a rang^es
alphabitigues mobiles” (Richer, Nerval: Experience et crea
tion, p. 136) . In one of the more amusing episodes where
printing is involved in his works, in "Le Roi de BicCtre,"
72
the insane poet Claude Vigny, confined in the asylum with
Spifame, invents a mini-printing-press for the decrees of
his "royal master": "II parvint a tailler, avec une pati
ence infinie, vingt-cinq lettres de bois, dont il se servit,
pour marquer, lettre a lettre, les ordonnances, rendues fort
courtes a dessein: l'huile et la fum^e de sa lampe lui
fournissant l'encre necessaire" (II, 961). The theme of
printing and lithography recurs in L'Imagier de Haarlem. A
Propos de 11 imprinterie. and Une Lithographe mystique . For
Gerard, a certain ambivalence, a certain ambiguity is in
volved in the operation of printing, which on the one hand
is never entirely dissociated from the works of the devil
but on the other hand nonetheless maintains a relationship,
however attenuated, with the primal "Verbe"— the Logos which
was with God and which was God. In a general sense, this
same ambivalence attaches itself to the other major expres
sions of workshop imagery in Nerval, whose failure to re
solve his dilemma— the mutually opposed impulses toward and
away from Christianity— produced an ever-increasing tension
in his life and works. As Douglas Radcliff-Urnstead con
tends, "These were the two sides of Nerval's beliefs: Cain
and Christ. There was a danger of insanity in trying to
73
5
reconcile them and in being divided by them."
The imagery of the furnace— of the molten metals of the
earth and the forms they may assume— is directly related to
the theme of vulcanism as elaborated in several of the
Chimeres♦ and is explicitly linked to the infernal character
of the "tentation Cainite," which is not— as in Blake's
case— simply a fiery exercise in antinomian rhetoric. In
an often-cited passage from Aurelia. when the persona is in
the madhouse, he has a dream in which he suddenly falls to
the earth's center:
Je me sentais emport^ sans souffrance par un courant de
m£tal fondu, et mille fleuves pareils, dont les teintes
indiquaient les differences chimiques, sillonnaient le
sein de la terre comme les vaisseaux et les veines qui
serpentent parmi les lobes du cerveau. Tous coulaient,
circulaient et vibraient ainsi, et j'eus le sentiment
que ces courants etaient composes d'&mes vivantes, a
l*etat mol^culaire, que la rapidite de ce voyage m'em-
pdchait seule de distinguer. (1, 366-367)
As has frequently been indicated, by far the most extensive
development of this motif is in the tale of Adoniram in the
Histoire de la Reine du Matin et de Sollman Prince dee Ge
nies from the Voyage en Orient. Adoniram, Soliroan's master
builder, a somber and solitary genius, supervises by day
C
"Cainism and Gerard de Nerval," Philological Quarterly.
45, No. 2 (April 1966), 404.
74
the labors of over a hundred thousand workmen in the forges
and foundries of the king, and broods by night in the sha
dowy seclusion of his underground factories, formulating the
scret plans for his vast enterprises. He is not, however,
particularly satisfied with the results of his workmanship—
the lions, tigers, dragons, Cherubim, and other decorative
masterpieces produced by his furnaces— which he considers as
the derivative imitations of an inferior art. Betrayed by
jealous workmen even as he is trying to realize the project
of a lifetime— an immense sea of brass, he is summoned by
his ancestor Tubal-KaXn and taken on a fiery journey into
the underworld, where the metals, minerals, and jewels of
the earth are prepared in the molten currents at its center,
and through the gardens of metallic flowers formed— as in
the Nova1is M£rchen--by fire, where he converses with the
spirits of his ancestors. The contrast between the descend
ants of the Elohim, "les enfants du feu," and the creatures
of AdonaX, "les enfants du limon," is explained in detail in
these passages. It is here that Adoniram hears the curse of
his fate, the fate of all the children of fire: "Grants de
1'intelligence, flambeaux du savoir, organes du progrfes,
lumieres des arts, instruments de la liberty, eux seuls
resteront esclaves, d£daign6s, solitaires. Coeurs tendres,
75
ils seront en butte a l'envie; £mes ^nergiques, ils seront
paralyses pour le bien ... Ils se m^connaltront entre eux"
(II, 563). It is none other than the poet's fate. In
Aurelia. in another feverish and deranged dream, the per
sona descends once again into the realm of fire and arrives
in a large city. Entering a building, he discovers a work
shop where the artisans are forming lifelike monsters from
the "feu primitif" of the earth and marvelous ornaments from
unknown metals. Astounded, he asks, "Ne cr^erait-on pas
aussi des hommes?" But the worker replies,
"les hommes viennent d'en haut et non d'en bas: pouvons-
nous cr^er nous-nftnes? Ici, l'on ne fait que formuler
par les progres successifs de nos industries une matiere
plus subtile que celle qui compose la crotite terrestre.
Ces fleurs qui vous paraisBent naturelles, cet animal
qui semblera vivre, ne seront que des produits de l'art
£lev£ au plus haut point de nos connaissances, et chacun
les jugera ainsi." (I, 383)
Man cannot create himself; the poet cannot create man. Thus
the poet, a veritable god among men, still is not God: only
God is God. Hence the poet's despair.
The theme of clothing and of clothmaking, of fabrics,
textiles, and garments in Nerval conveys the same basic
ambivalence and ambiguity, the same fundamental possibili
ties for good vitiated by their potential corruptibility.
Clothing may simply function as a disguise, a concealment
or a distortion of reality* on the other hand, it may also
serve as a means of transforming that reality into something
different. In the latter case, however, it can transfigure
the daily world around us into the realm of saints and
fairies, dissolving our perceptual boundaries of time,
space, and reductive materialism; or by contrast, it can
taint and pervert normal human relationships into a parody
of a masquerade party. In "Le Roi de Bic&tre," Spifame,
whose initial appearance in black before Henri II recalls
the superstition of the mourning "double1 * as a portent of
death, later convinces the populace that he is king, not
only because of the physical resemblance between the two,
but also because he is appropriately attired in royal garb.
The dramatic encounter immediately following between the two
"sovereigns" is not without an element of comedy: " ...
plusieurs criaient au miracle, car il y avait bien la devant
eux deux rois de France; p£les l'un comme 1'autre, fiers
tous les deux, vdtus a peu prfes de mdme; seulement, le bon
roi briliait moins” (II, 967). Clothes, it would seem, make
the man— or else they unmake him.
The imagery of clothing and clothmaking can, of course,
have an essentially positive connotation, as it generally
does, for example, in Svlvie. Still, even here, it may
77
serve to underline, however lightly, the cruel deception of
appearances. In a charming episode, the two adolescents —
Sylvie and the persona— break into her old aunt's drawer and
dress themselves in the anachronistic finery of another
generation. Delighted at the sight of his young friend, he
thinks, "La fde des legendes eternellement jeunel" (I, 255).
As for himself, "je me transformai en marid de l1autre
siecle" (1, 255). The two go downstairs to the old aunt,
who bursts into tears at "1'image de 3a jeunesse,— cruelle
et charmante apparition!" (I, 256). On another occasion,
at the performance of a religious allegory, he sees Adrienne
acting out a Biblical scene with the other nuns of her con
vent: "Cet esprit, c'dtait Adrienne transfigurde par son
costume, comme elle l'dtait deja par sa vocation. Le nimbe
de carton dord qui ceignait sa tdte angdlique nous parais -
sait bien naturellement un cercle de lumiere. ... " (I,
257). Ieter, he wonders whether this occurrence actually
took place as he recalls it, or whether he simply dreamed
the details; in any case, he is haunted by the image. Even
the lacework of Sylvie, which operates more or less as a
leitmotif in the narrative, bears a double significance:
on the one hand, it seems to suggest her delicacy, her
femininity, her fairy-like quality; on the other hand, it
78
is the effective practical means by which she advances her
self beyond the socioeconomic status of her parents.
In Aurdlia. in several instances, the garment imagery
seems to function in approximately this same manner. De
spite its aura of beauty— perhaps even of unearthly beauty-
clothing may represent the blurring of distinctions between
reality and appearances, or worse, the almost hallucinated
metaphysical vision of a reality which is constantly chang
ing before one's very eyes. For instance, in one of his
more extended dreams or delusions, the persona feels himself
transported to a paradisiacal city, where all the inhabi
tants, people of an exceptional grace and charm, appear to
be dressed in white. He learns, however, that this impres
sion is purely illusory:
Je m'^tonnais de les voir tous vdtus de blanc; mais il
parait que c'dtait une illusion de ma vue; pour la ren-
dre sensible, mon guide se mit a dessiner leur costume
qu'il teignit de couleurs vives, me faisant comprendre
qu’ils 4taient ainsi en rdalit^. Ia blancheur qui
m ’^tonnait provenait peut-dtre d'un £clat particulier,
d'un jeu de lumiere ou se confondaient les teintes ordi-
naires du prisme. (I, 371)
It is significant that before entering the room where he
encounters these people, he is threatened by an armed man
clothed in white. later, the same Spirit reappears before
him, still armed, now dressed as an Oriental prince. For
79
the first time, he recognizes the apparition for what it is:
his "double." In yet another dream, the persona finds him
self in his ancestral home, where three women are at work.
The three apparently represent the ever-changing aspects of
a single woman, since minute by minute they exchange their
physical attributes: hair, eyes, voice, smile, size, or
gestures. The eldest of the three speaks to her guest, who
suddenly finds himself clothed by his hostesses:
... je me vis v£tu d'un petit habit brun de forme anci-
enne, entierement tiss£ a 1'aiguille de fils t^nus comme
ceux des toiles d'araign^es. II £tait coquet, gracieux,
et impr£gn^ de douces odeurs. Je me sentais tout rajeuni
et tout pimpant dans ce v£tement qui sortait de leurs
doigts de f£e, et je les remerciais en rougissant, comme
si je n'eusse £t£ qu'un petit enfant devant de grandes
belles dames. (I, 373)
One of the ladies leads him away into the garden. Suddenly,
however, she starts to expand beneath a ray of light; the
garden itself begins to assume her form, the trees and
flowerbeds become the patterns and decorations of her cloth
ing, and her face and arms dissolve into the purple clouds
of the sky. The persona, helpless, is in despair. In a
sense, the woman has become the natural world around him;
but to him, that nature appears to be dead. The image is
strikingly Blakean.
Indeed, to a certain extent, clothing imagery in Nerval
80
may represent the Blakean concept of entrapment and en
tanglement, especially as an instrument of feminine manipu
lation or— in a more extended sense— of what Blake would
call the Female Will. In Corilia. for example, the famous
opera singer disguises herself as a flower girl in order to
give her two suitors a good lesson. Although the two cer
tainly deserve their comeuppance, the implications of this
kind of manipulation can readily become extremely unpleas
ant. One has only to think of Gerard*s own infatuations
with the stars of the stage, with all their attendant com
plications. In La Pandora. the actress humiliates the per
sona by refusing to receive his visits unless he is dressed
in black rather than in the more fashionable and more ele
gant colors of the nobles, diplomats, and officers of Vi
enna. He feels himself reduced to nothing more than the
clothes he is wearing: " ... je rougis d'humiliation en
sentant que je n'^tais aira^ qu'a cause d'un certain petit
air eccl^siastique que me donnaient mon air timide et non
habit noir" (I, 348-349). Ultimately, the concept of cloth
ing as entrapment achieves its most literal expression in
Aurelia, in the form of the "camisole de force" from vriiich
the persona manages once to break free, only to be recap
tured and thrust into another straitjacket. Under such
81
circumstances, the connotations of the image have become
completely negative; clothing is something from which one
must escape. In a passage already cited, early in the nar
rative, as the poet steps forward to unite with the star of
his destiny, he begins to strip himself of his "habits ter-
restres" and to scatter them along his path. This gesture
evidently signifies his intent to free himself from the
confinement and constriction of the earth and all it repre
sents and to clothe himself in the raiment of heaven, to
envelop himself in the star's luminosity. In the Biblical
vision of Apocalypse, the apostle sees a miraculous woman
robed by the celestial bodies: "And there appeared a great
wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the
moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars" (Rev. 12;1). Gerard, however, is unable to attain
his goal: rather, he falls back to earth, a naked and a
helpless animal. The moment is premature; the time is not
yet ripe. In order for the poet— or for any man— to seize
control of Satan's mills and to make them over into the
workshops of the imagination, he must first come to know
himself, in all the multiplicity of his identity. I shall
discuss this problem in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV
THE MASTERY OF THE "OTHER":
A DIVORCE DECREED IN HELL, AND
A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN
All of Romanticism is permeated with the desire to be
at home, to find a home in the universe. Novalis writes,
"Die Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh— Trieb Uberall zu
Hause zu sein" (p. 422). This quest is often expressed
literally in terms of travel, of physical and geographical
displacement: the themes of voyage and exile recur through
out Romantic and post-Romantic literature. Another mani
festation of this same preoccupation is a sort of time-
travel, a fascination with the past and a tendency to for
mulate Utopian schemes for the future. Yet another is the
seeking after the origins, often mythic and legendary, of
one's race or ancestry, an idealization, even a glorifica
tion of one's homeland, of one's spiritual and cultural
heritage. The boundaries of the time-space continuum must
82
83
be established, penetrated, reestablished, and shattered
once again. At the same time, the search for home and home
land is in a sense a guest for intellectual certainty, for
ideological assurance, for emotional security. It is also,
as Walter Rehm explains, a profoundly mystical impulse to
ward "something far more deeply interfused":
Oberall lSSt sich in der romantischen Dichtung der leise,
nie verstummende innere Ruf in die Heimat, nach Hause,
zur Urversaramlung vernehmen, Uberall ist die geheime, nie
zu stillende Sehnsucht, das unbeschreibliche Heimweh
nicht nur nach den G£rten und Bergen der realen Heimat
zu spUren, sondern nach einer viel ferneren, tieferen
Heimat, vom welcher jene nur ein lieblicher Wiederschein
ist. (p. 20)
Perhaps this great universal homecoming can take place no
where on earth; perhaps it is for the hereafter. Perhaps it
is in the mind of man.
The theme of homesickness and of homecoming is fre
quently coupled with the need to discover one's family
relationships— by extension, to establish one's familial,
ancestral, or even racial identity. Above all, it is mani
fested in the drive to unite with a beloved feminine
"other," especially for Blake, Novalis, and Nerval. As
Professor Abrams indicates, this conception of homecoming
as marital union is by no means uncommon in Romantic
thought:
84
The beginning and end of the journey is man's ancestral
home, which is often linked with a female contrary from
whom he has, upon setting out, been disparted. The goal
of this long inner quest is to be reached by a gradual
ascent, or else by a sudden breakthrough of imagination
or cognition; in either case, however, the achievement
of the goal is pictured as a scene of recognition and
reconciliation, and is often signalized by a loving union
with the feminine other, upon which man finds himself
thoroughly at home with himself, his milieu, and his
family of fellow men. (Natural Supernaturalism, p. 154)
In this regard, as many scholars have noted, the idea of
consummation both as a sacred marriage and as an immense
holocaust vdiich will utterly envelop the fallen world is
Biblical and Apocalyptic. The marital metaphor is also
related to the occultist concept of the original androgyny
of the human race, whose fall into sexual and material
division preceded the Biblical fall of man. In attempting
to unite with the mystical figure of the Beloved, the poet
is seeking an anterior— indeed even a primal— unity; he is
questing after a part of his own self.
Standing between man and his goal— of homecoming, of
regaining the paradise he has lost, of achieving the primor
dial integrity of his personality and being— is a menacing
figure which the Bible calls the Covering Cherub, placed by
God in the Garden after the act of original sin: "So he
drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden
of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every
85
way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Gen. 3:24). But,
as tradition has it, the dominion of the Covering Cherub is
not without its term; in the Marriage, Blake notes that
after 6,000 years, the Cherub will be ordered to leave his
station (p. 38). In the Book of Ezekiel, God commands the
prophet to convey this behest:
Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I
have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of
God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the
stones of fire.
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou
wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled
the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned:
therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the moun
tain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub,
from the midst of the stones of fire. (Ezekiel 28:14-16)
The Covering Cherub must be overcome, must be driven out of
Paradise even as sinful man was before him. In a general
sense, since it is the poet who in a secularized and hetero-
cosmic version of the same schema is to play a prime role in
the expulsion of the Cherub, it follows then that a major
aspect of the poet's task is to recognize and identify the
nature of his adversary.
For many Romantics, and most certainly for Blake, No
va 1 is, and Nerval, even as the Kingdom is within, so the
Covering Cherub is within; or rather, the distinction is
86
not particularly meaningful, since the universe is seen as
an extension of the self— or ultimately, rather, since the
abolition of any distinction between the self and the uni
verse is the necessary condition of reestablishing the
primordial oneness of all things. In this respect, any
portion of the human personality dissociated from its total
ity may assume the character of the Covering Cherub, an idea
developed by Blake in the figures of his Emanations, Spec
tres, and Shadows. Thus as Richer indicates in the case of
Nerval, the dramatic conflict between the "self" and the
inimical "double" is conditioned by the fact that the
"other" is the "same" (Nerval: Experience et creation, p.
479): the destruction of the "double" entails the death of
the "self"— hence the pathetic scene in la rue de la
Vieille-Lanterne, vhere the forty-six-year-old poet was
found dead at the end of a rope. It is not by an act of
destruction but rather by one of transcendence that the
"other"— the part of the divided "self" that stands between
the human being and all that he desires--must be overcome.
In a remarkable anticipation of Rimbaud's renowned "Je est
un autre" of the "Voyant" letter, Novalis writes, "Ich
gleich Nicht-Ich— hdchster Satz aller Wissenschaft und
Kunst. Ich bin Du” (p. 419). This conception of the self
87
as another helps to clarify the signal importance of dreams
and dreaming for the three poets, for as Professor Winifred
Weier asserts, "Diese tiefe Erwartung des Zusammenfalls von
Ich, Du und Nicht-Ich in den Tiefen des GemUts, diese Offen-
barung des 'tranzendentalen Selbst' vollzieht sich im
Traume."^ The dream is an epistemological as well as a
psychological phenomenon: it is a way of understanding the
self and hence the world. In the words of Edgar Hederer,
"Die Grenzen des SelbstverstSndnisses waren die Grenzen der
2
Philosophic." From one standpoint, the conclusion to be
drawn is one of joyful expectation, that in due time all
will be known; therefore, perfection is not only possible
but inevitable. The radical solipsism of this Weltanschau
ung is only too evident. From another standpoint, however,
and considerably less congenial to the general temper of
Romanticism, the implications are fundamentally pessimistic:
man can understand nothing more than himself; the poet can
comprehend nothing other than his own being. For Blake,
Novalis, and Nerval, and in fact for a significant number of
1"Die Verwandlung der idealistischen Abstraktion in die
Emotion bei Novalis," Etudes Germaniaues. 23, No. 4 (Oct.-
Dec. 1968), 559.
^Nova1is (Wien: Amandus Verlag, 1949), p. 183.
88
Romantic and post-Romantic poets, the victory over the
"other," the wedding with the Beloved, and the discovery of
the homeland are one and the same process, because the
struggle with the "other" is a struggle with the "self";
the union with the Beloved is a union within the personal
ity; and the quest for the homeland is a quest for one's own
identity. The fragility of this metaphysical position is
constantly challenged by the possibility of the objective
existence of an alien and intrinsically "other" universe
beyond the boundaries of the "self" and its perceptions.
Forever lurking just behind the optimistic and even ecstatic
expressions of Apocalyptic consummation in the three poets
is the Spectre of an independent and unknowable reality,
silently mocking the attempt to banish him from a cosmos
which may perhaps be his own. It is a conflict ultimately
impossible to resolve.
For William Blake, the problem of the family— of family
love and family unity— is complex and many-faceted. Cer
tainly, the poet's fascination with children, with the
child's way of seeing things, in the Songs of Innocence and
of Experience is at times almost Wordsworthian, although the
element of undercutting irony is considerably harsher and
stronger. Nonetheless, in Jerusalem, he bitterly attacks
89
"soft Family-love" and maintains that "A mans worst enemies
are those / Of his own house and family" (p. 172). Else-
where, he writes, "You must leave Fathers & Mothers & Houses
& Lands if they stand in the way of Art" (p. 272). This
indeed is the crux of the matter: the conflict between the
destiny of the poetic and prophetic genius and the duties
imposed by marital and other conventional relationships.
"Soft Family-love" may be the weak point in the artist's
line of defenses against societal exploitation and repres
sion. In her article, Professor Furst notes the parallel
sources of Novalis' Hymnen and Nerval's Aurelia in the
deaths of Sophie von Ktlhn and Jenny Colon ("Novalis* Hymnen
an die Nacht and Nerval's Aurelia." p. 33); indeed, the
biographical importance of these works has undoubtedly been
overemphasized by many critics at the expense of a more
thorough consideration of their literary significance. The
role of Blake's wife during his unhappy experience at
Felpham is not exactly known, but apparently the poet con
sidered that Hayley was attempting to manipulate her; and he
deeply resented his patron's conduct:
When H y finds out what you cannot do
That is the very thing hell set you to
If you break not your Neck tis not his fault
But pecks of poison are not pecks of salt
90
And when he could not act upon my wife
Hired a Villain to bereave my Life.
(p. 497)
Catherine Blake has been identified as Elynittria, the Ema
nation of Palambron, in Milton: still, what Professor Furst
contends regarding Aurelia and the Hymnen is essentially
true of Milton: "... these works are alike as chapters
of inner autobiography, documents of a turning-point in the
lives of their authors. . . . however, the personal material
is the occasion rather than the subject matter" (p. 33). In
any case, the theme of unhappy marriage is one that recurs
in Blake; the mutually sadistic and parasitic element alto
gether too common in the family relationship, explicitly
elaborated in "The Mental Traveller," appears almost as a
leitmotif throughout his works. Nor is the topic always
treated from a masculine point of view; in the Visions of
the Daughters of Albion. Oothoon laments :
. . . she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot;
is bound
In spells of law to one she loathes: and must she drag
the chain
Of life, in weary lustl must chilling murderous thoughts,
obscure
The clear heaven of her eternal spring? to bear the
wintry rage
Of a harsh terror driv'n to madness, bound to hold a rod
Over her shrinking shoulders all the day; & all the night
To turn the \riieel of false desire: and longings that
wake her womb
91
To the abhorred birth of cherubs in the human form
That live a pestilence & die a meteor & are no more.
Till the child dwell with one he hates. and do the
deed he loathes
And the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe
birth
E’er yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day.
(p. 48)
Indeed, Blake's attitude toward women is a subject that
has attracted considerable critical commentary and inspired
a good deal of controversy. On a superficial level, Blake
would certainly appear to be a confirmed misogynist; how
ever, the jealously possessive Female Hill of the fallen
natural world is, as Northrop Frye indicates, more a sym-
3
bolie construct than a literal depiction of human women.
In his article, "Epic Irony in Milton," Brian Wilkie main
tains that a significant aspect of the poet's purpose is to
redefine the role of women in epics, traditionally anti-
4
feminine in their perspective, and that "Blake both rejects
this antifeminine tradition of epic and endorses it in his
inimitably ironic way" (pp. 367-368). Northrop Frye even
3
"Notes for a Commentary on Milton." The Divine Vision:
Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake, ed. Vivian
de Sola Pinto (London: Victor Gollancz, 1957), p. 116.
A
"Epic Irony in Milton." Blake's Visionary Forms Dra
matic . ed. David Erdman and John Grant (Princeton; Prince
ton Univ. Press, 1970), p. 365.
92
contends that in writing Milton, Blake felt a compelling
need to incorporate the image of the Emanation, whose vir
tual absence in Milton’s works constituted, for Blake, "a
radical defect in his vision" (Fearful Symmetry, p. 352).
For Blake, the giant Albion, the masculine portion of a
fallen and divided humanity, cold and unconscious on the
Rock of Ages, must awake and unite with his feminine Emana
tion Jerusalem. The role of the Emanation is, however, by
no means altogether passive, as Blake makeB perfectly clear
in the parallel descent of Milton and Ololon in Milton. In
fact, Altizer considers Blake to be at the furthest possible
extreme from antifeminism:
. . . Blake's ecstatic celebration of Jerusalem, the
universal emanation of Jesus, is surely the most pro
found and the most comprehensive vision of the savior
goddess that has thus far been evolved in the West.
Blake is probably the only major prophet and mystic
in the world whose vision has been integrally related
to and in large measure even a product of an intimate
experience with a woman. (pp. 96-97)
It is certainly evident that this subject, like any other in
Blake, should be considered on every possible level, and
must not be reduced to the literalistic "single vision" of
the "corporeal" or "vegetative" eye.
The conception of the Emanation in Blake is integrally
related to that of the Spectre, for--as it has been
93
indicated— the two represent various aspects of a single
personality. The formation of the Emanation and the Spec
tre, the creation which is also a fall, is described in
several places in Blake's corpus. including the Book of
Urizen. These descriptions are on the whole fairly consis
tent . In Milton, the process of separation is conveyed in
the usual terms of the red globe, the blue fluid, pallor,
and darkness:
Terrified Los stood in the Abyss & his immortal limbs
Grew deadly pale; he became what he beheld: for a red
Round Globe sunk down from his Bosom into the Deep in
pangs
He hoverd over it trembling & weeping, suspended it
shook
The nether Abyss in tremblings. he wept over it, he
cherish'd it
In deadly sickening pain: till separated into a Female
pale
As the cloud that brings the snow: all the while from
his Back
A blue fluid exuded in Sinews hardening in the Abyss
Till it separated into a Male Form howling in Jealousy.
(p. 96)
The female is of course Enitharmon; the male, strictly
speaking, the Spectre of Urthona. The role of Los in sub
duing his malevolent Spectre and in controlling his some
times wayward Emanation in order to construct the New Jeru
salem has already been considered in the preceding chapter.
In the fallen natural world, the Emanation, like the spatial
94
and temporal order itself, is a necessary precondition of
the final union of all humanity. In Jerusalem. Los, who has
already learned that he is Urthona, contends that "Man can
not unite with Man but by their Emanations” (p. 244). The
problem with the Emanations is essentially that in their
weakness and confusion, they often strive to maintain an
existence independent from the beings with whom they should
unite if paradise is to be regained. The Spectre, a con
siderably more ominous figure, in a general sense represents
cold lifeless abstraction, the rationally reductive intel
lect, the paralysis of negativity, and a selfish cruelty
cloaked in the hypocritical guise of false pity. He who is
unable to subdue his Spectre is subject to constant perse
cution and harassment, a condition depicted by Blake in his
lyric, "My Spectre around me night and day" (pp. 467-468).
The image of the Spectre has undoubtedly already received
sufficient definition and explication from the host of Blake
scholars; for my purposes, suffice it to say, in Damon's
words, that "he is a machine which has lost its controls and
5
is running wild," wreaking intellectual havoc and
^S. Poster Damon, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and
Symbols of William Blake (Providence, R.I.: Brown Univ.
Press, 1965), p. 381.
95
broadcasting disorder, confusion, and despair. It is in
this respect that the Spectre, along with the parallel
figure of the Shadow, who sleeps while the Spectre wakes,
may arrogate the role of the Covering Cherub. In Milton.
the Covering Cherub is variously identified as the “Spectre
of Albion" (p. 119) and as "Miltons Shadow" (p. 136); the
point is that the Shadow or Spectre of any man, as a dis
sociated and antagonistic portion of his own personality,
can play the same part. It is in these terms that the
problem is posed; it is in these terms that it must be re
solved .
In Milton, the movement toward union is precipitated
by the Bard's Song, which is misunderstood by most of the
Eternals but correctly interpreted by Milton. At the con
clusion of the Song, as the very foundations of the solid
earth begin to tremble, the Bard takes refuge in the bosom
of Milton, who proclaims his intention to descend into
Eternal Death:
The Lamb of God is seen thro* mists & shadows, hov'ring
Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of
Elohim
A disk of blood, distant; & heav'ns & earth's roll dark
between
What do I here before the Judgment? without my Emanation?
With the daughters of memory, & not with the daughters
of inspiration!?]
I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One!
96
He is my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him from my
Hells
To claim my Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death.
(P- 107)
Milton, descending into Eternal Death— the hell of mundane,
material existence— enters the left tarsus of the poet-
persona, in a very real sense Blake himself, and becomes one
man with him. Still attended by the Seven Angels of the
Presence, he plunges through the heart of the sleeping giant
Albion, who feels his descent as an electrical impulse.
Meanwhile, recognizing the significance of Milton's downward
journey through the vortex, the Family Divine, as One Man,
weeps over his Emanation Ololon. She, having realized that
she too must descend into Ulro, unites with Jesus into a
single being. Suddenly, Blake-Milton, the persona in the
process of becoming the Poetical character, is disturbed by
an unknown presence in his pilgrimage through Eternity:
And Los behind me stood; a terrible flaming Sun; just
close
Behind my back; I turned round in terror, and behold.
Los stood in that fierce glowing fire; he also stoop'd
down
And bound my sandals on in Udan-Adan; trembling I stood
Exceedingly with fear & terror, standing in the Vale
Of Lambeth: but he kissed me, and wishd me health,
And I became One Man with him arising in my strength:
Twas too late now to recede. Los had enterd into my soul:
His terrors now posses'd me whole! I arose in fury and
strength.
(p. 116)
97
Ololon, attended by her "mighty Hosts," appears as One
Female, a twelve-year-oId Virgin, who must be purified of
her virginity even as Milton must be separated from his
Spectre and his Shadow. The two confront one another in the
Vale of Felpham, ready to unite in the consummation which
will prepare the Apocalpyse, the all-encompassing union of
Albion and Jerusalem:
Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felphams Vale
In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful
thunder ings
Into the Fires of Intellect that rejoic'd in Felphams
Vale
Around the Starry Eight: with one accord the Starry
Eight became
One Man Jesus the Saviour, wonderfull round his limbs
The Clouds of Ololon folded as a Garment dipped in blood.
(p. 142)
Jesus then walks forth, weeping, "clothed in Clouds of
blood, to enter into / Albions Bosom," surrounded by the
Four Zoas, who are sounding the final blast of the trumpet:
the time is at hand. It is at this point that the persona,
whose soul has soared into the realms of Eternity, falls
back into his mortal state, no longer the Poetical Character
but now only a mere human being, prostrate with terror.
Suddenly the Vale is alive with the beauty of the green and
purple hills surrounding it, the wild thyme, and the lark's
song.
98
It is significant that Milton, whose central theme is
the parallel descent of the poet and his Emanation from
Eternity into the hell of history, space-time, the natural
world, and life itself, should contain passages of the most
sensitive appreciation of natural beauty, virtually unique
in Blake's corpus. What is curious, at the conclusion of
the poem, is not the reintegration of the body and soul of
the persona, which in the Christian tradition are to stand
together before the Judgment Seat, but rather the immediate
evocation of the soft winds, the rolling clouds, the hills,
the lark, and the thyme which he perceives around him after
the supramundane magnificence of his Apocalyptic vision.
Blake's Milton, in his crucial decision not to establish a
new sect, not to continue the dreary pattern of repression,
revolution, and the new repression, overcomes not only
Urizen but himself as well; and in so doing, he breaks the
cycles of history and puts an end to time. Still, the de
scription of natural beauty toward the end of the poem is
closely followed by a most enthusiastic forecast of the
violence which is to come, of the war on earth which is to
precede the final Harvest and Vintage. Here again, Blake is
in accordance with the tradition; what is noteworthy is the
exultation— one might almost say ecstasy— which the poet
99
seems to experience in the face of the impending holocaust.
Milton is, as many critics have noted, undoubtedly by
far the most personal document among all of Blake's works;
the Apocalypse which it prefigures is prepared, not simply
in the mind of a poet, but to a very great extent in the
mind of William Blake himself. The peculiarly mental action
of the poem has frequently been remarked upon; Harold Fisch
contends that Milton does not constitute a dialogue but
rather an extended monologue, in which the principal per
sonae blend, fuse, and lose their identity in one another.6
It is incontestably an interior monologue. The inner nature
of the experience is not, however, peculiar to Milton: in
deed, it is more or less characteristic of the major prophe
cies. As Professor Hirst has stated, "the characteristics
of William Blake's own psychology are curious and interest
ing, and as the first epic poet who dared to set the scene
of action purely in the human mind, he anticipated, in an
amazing way, the great discoveries of Freud, Jung, and
Adler1 ' (p. 317). Still, the question that remains is, if
the action unfolds solely in the mind of man, how can it be
6"Blake's Miltonic Movement," William Blake: Essavs
for S. Foster Damon, ed. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (Providence,
R.I.: Brown Univ. Press, 1969), p. 53.
100
extended to the external world, if in fact there is an ex
ternal world which exists independently of the mind of man?
Blake's "idiot Questioner who is always questioning, / But
never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin / Si
lent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave" (p.
141) may await his answer throughout all of eternity.
For Nova1is, the subject of home and family— of the
relationship between man, woman, and child— is a problem of
particular importance. In Glauben und Liebe. oder Per Kflnig
und die Kdnigen. he analyzes the political state in terms of
familial structures, roles, and functions. Along with many
Romantics, he associates childhood with paradise: "Wo
Kinder sind, da ist ein goldnes Zeitalter," he writes (p.
362). Like Wordsworth, however, he tends to see the heaven
that lies about us in our infancy as all too readily menaced
by the shades of the prison-house which is adult society.
In Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Sylvester tells the pilgrim
Heinrich that the latter was fortunate to have had parents
who did not stunt his psychological development, "denn die
meisten Menschen sind nur Oberbleibsel eines vollen Gast-
mahls, das Menschen von verschiedenem Appetit und Geschmack
gepltlndert haben" (p. 284). Above all, in Novalis' major
works, the theme of death and separation from one's loved
101
ones— especially the beloved female "other"— recurs as a
leitmotif, frequently counterpointed by the expression of
hope, whether explicit or implicit, of an eventual restora
tion and reunion. When Heinrich leaves his home and father
for the first time, the author comments upon the leave-
taking :
Eine erste Anktindigung des Todes, bleibt die erste
Trennung unvergefllich, und wird, nachdem sie lange wie
ein nflchtliches Gesicht den Menschen be&ngstigt hat,
endlich bei abnehmender Freude an den Erscheinungen des
Tages, und zunehmender Sehnsucht nach einer bleibenden
sichern Welt, zu einem freundlichen Wegweiser und einer
trdstenden Bekanntschaft. (pp. 154-155)
In the novel, the merchant’s tale of the king, the princess,
and the poet, the story of Zulima, and that of the Count of
Hohenzollern all function together, along with numerous
other elements, to prefigure the separation of Heinrich,
not only from Mathilde, but also from their homuncular or
sidereal child Astralis and from the father-figure of
Klingsohr. As a pilgrim, Heinrich must seek not only Ma
thilde but himself as well, as is manifest by the appearance
of his own image in the mysterious book of his life which
the hermit shows him in the cave, from which— significantly
— the conclusion is missing— and which— also significantly—
is written in Provengal, an unknown language. His quest is
102
confused and complicated by the multiplicity of identity of
the various personae and by the implicit operation of metem
psychosis. The colloquy between Heinrich and Cyane is in
dicative of the terms of his dilemma: "Wer war dein Vater?"
— "Der Graf von Hohenzollern."— "Den kenne ich auch.M— "Wohl
mufit du ihn kennen, denn er ist auch dein Vater."— "Ich habe
ja meinen Vater in Eisenach."— "Du hast mehr Eltern."— "Wo
gehn wir denn hin?"— "Immer nach Hause" {pp. 282-283).
Heinrich finds some consolation in his subsequent conversa
tion with the fatherly Sylvester, but his despairing ques
tion, "Aber mu&te die Mutter Bterben, daS die Kinder ge-
deihen kdnnen, und bleibt der Vater zu ewigen TrSnen allein
an ihrem Grabe sitzen?" (p. 285) is answered neither by the
kindly old man nor by the fragmentary Ktlnstlerroman.
Similarly, in the Ffebel Mflrchen. the narrative is per
vaded by the themes of separation and a confusion of roles
and identity. In the household, the scribe competes with
the father for power; and the mother and Ginnistan are
rivals for the father's sexual attention and affection.
Later, Ginnistan seduces Eros, an incestuous act which
changes both of them almost beyond recognition, depriving
her of her natural authority and transforming him into an
uncontrollable force. It is only through Fabel's descent
into the Underworld that harmony is reestablished in the
mythical kingdom of Klingsohr's tale. Especially in the
light of Milton, it is difficult not to interpret Fabel's
victory over her adversaries as a triumph of the poetic
psyche over all those elements in the human personality
which are antipathetic to artistic creation, the Covering
Cherubim of the imagination. According to this conception,
the Urizenic scribe may be seen as the rational portion of
the intellect— and here there can be no doubt regarding
authorial intent— unenlightened by the daughters of inspi
ration; the Female-Wili spinners, as the capacity of amoral
practicality in the service of a literal-minded materialism
and the Spectre-like Sphinx, as the aspect of one's con
sciousness which is constantly questioning, deriding, for
bidding, and denying. Fabel, like Blake's Milton, must not
succumb to the temptation merely to overcome her enemies or
even to supplant them; rather, along with Sophie, Arctur,
and her other allies, she must work to institute the new,
the eternal order in the “MKrchenwelt." It is significant
that this new order should be expressed in terms of wedded
union, the marriage of the father and Ginnistan as well as
of Eros and Freya, who are to rule the kingdom. The asso
ciation of the political and the sexual realm is symbolized
104
by the metamorphosis of the throne into "ein prKchtiges
Hochzeitbett" (p. 2 74). Nonetheless, despite Sophie's con
tention that "die Mutter ist unter uns, ihre Gegenwart wird
uns ewig beglUcken" {p. 274), the fact remains that she—
Eros' mother— is now only ashes. Once again, one is re
minded of the mourning Heinrich's anguished, “Must the
mother always die?1 '; and one is tempted to add another ques
tion, "Why must the mother always die?"
The Hymnen an die Nacht. occasioned by the death of
Novalis' cherished Sophie, not surprisingly have as a cen
tral theme the death of the Beloved and the bereaved lover's
desire to rejoin her in the hereafter, a union prefigured by
the all-embracing darkness of the night:
. . . zarte Geliebte— liebliche Sonne der Nacht,— nun
wach ich— denn ich bin Dein und Mein— du hast die Nacht
mir zum Leben verktlndet— mi oh zum Menschen gemacht —
zehre mit Geisterglut meinen Leib, daB ich luftig mit
dir inniger mich mische und dann ewig die Brautnacht
wtfhrt. (p. 51)
This central concern of the Hymnen has undoubtedly received
more than enough critical commentary; what seems excep
tionally striking in the passage cited is the almost maso
chistic joy the poet evidently feels at the prospect of his
body's utter destruction— one might even say "sparagmos."
In the third hymn, in the most ecstatic expression of his
105
union with the Beloved, vrtiere the region surrounding her
grave seems to dissolve and disappear into nothingness, the
experience of their ethereal embrace is conveyed in the
imagery of tears:
In ihren Augen ruhte die Ewigkeit— ich faftte ihre HSnde,
und die ThrSnen wurden ein funkelndes, unzerrei&liches
Band. Jahrtausende zogen abw&rts in die Ferne, wie Un-
gewitter. An ihrem Halse weint ich dem neuen Leben ent-
ztickende Thrfinen. Es war der erste, einzige Traum— und
erst seitdem fCihl ich ewigen, unwandelbaren Glauben an
den Himmel der Nacht und sein Licht, die Geliebte. (p.
55)
The fundamentally ambivalent character of this lacrimal
imagery, whose positive denotation is subtly undermined by
its generally negative connotation, helps to prepare the
consummation of the marriage in the fifth hymn, which is
expressed in terms of death; "Zur Hochzeit ruft der Tod"
(p. 80). The union with the Beloved is simply not possible
under any other conditions. If the woman must always die,
then the man must die too in order t . oe with her. In what
is considerably more than a mere literary convention, Thana-
tos and Eros have become one and the same.
It is noteworthy that the Hvmnen encompass not only the
man-woman relationship but also the family relationship in a
broader sense. The figure of the Beloved blends and merges
with the image of the mother: "Mutter" and "mtltterlich" are
106
words which recur throughout the text. The recurrence of
the word "SchooB" also seems to point to the mother motif,
to the concept of the return to the womb. Night itself is
seen as essentially maternal, as a sort of universal "Ur-
mutter ." The incarnation of the spirit of motherhood occurs
in the Virgin-Mary figure of the fifth hymn, in a trans
posed, secularized, and poeticized version of the Christian
gospel: "In der Armuth dichterischer Htltte— Ein Sohn der
ersten Jungfrau und Mutter— GeheimniBvoller Umarmung unend-
liche Frucht" (p. 71). Here, of course, it is the son who
is doomed to die, leaving the mother to mourn until his
resurrection. This concern with the family extends, as one
might expect, to the quest for home and homeland, a subject
which has already been adumbrated in the second chapter of
this study. In the sixth hymn, the "Sehnsucht nach dem
Tode," the lines "Zum Vater wollen wir nach Haus" and "Wir
mils sen nach der Heymath gehn" (p. 82) underscore the sig
nificance of this theme; but there can be no question re
garding the whereabouts of the "Urheimat" which the poet is
seeking: as Walter Rehm has indicated, for Novalis, death
is the way home (pp. 69-70). The "SHnger" who comes to
adore the newborn child in the fifth hymn concludes his song
of praise for the "Wunderkind," who is to save the world
107
from death, with these verses: "Im Tode war das ewge Leben
kund, / Du bist der Tod und macht uns erst gesund" (p. 75) .
The cure is curiously homeopathic.
It is above all in the Die Lehrlinge zu Sais that the
search for knowledge, identity, love, and immortality is
revealed as a single quest, expressed chiefly in terms of
the lifting of the veil in the temple of Isis at Sais. In
the words of Hiebel: "Das Heben des Schleiers der Jungfrau
ist verbunden mit der geheimnisvollen Selbstforderung nach
Unsterblichkeit. Die Unsterblichkeit liegt aber in der
Entdeckung des h&heren Ichs, dieses wunders des Wunders.
Dies ist die letzte Liebe" (p. 113). The "notes" for Ofter-
dingen associate the temple of Isis with Jesus Christ:
"JesuB der Held . . . Jesus in Sais" (p. 319). In the open
ing chapter of Die Lehrlinge. Nova1is writes: "Auch ich
will also meine Figur beschreiben, und wenn kein Sterbli-
cher, nach jener Inschrift dort, den Schleier hebt, so
mtfssen wir Unsterbliche zu werden suchen; wer ihn nicht
heben will, ist kein echter Lehrling Sais" (p. 100). The
Mflrchen of Hyazinth and Rosenbltitchen in Die Lehrlinge de
picts the pilgrimage of the youth Hyazinth, who leaves his
family and his beloved RosenblUtchen behind in order to seek
the temple of the holy virgin. After years of wandering, he
108
finally arrives at the object of his quest in a dream vi
sion: ". . . er stand vor der himmlischen Jungfrau, da hob
er den leichten, glSnzenden Schleier, und RosenbKitchen sank
in seine Arme“ (p. 122). He spends the rest of his long and
happy life with her, his parents, his former friends, and
his numerous children and grandchildren. Hence, in the
M&rchen. the discovery of the highest truth entails the
restoration of all the loved ones whom the pilgrim has left
in order to undertake his journey. The dialectic at work
seems strangely tautological. In the "notes'* for Die Lehr
linge. in an often-quoted distichon, Nova1is writes, "Einem
gelang es— er hob den Schleier der G6ttin zu Sais— / Aber
was sah er? Er sah— Wunder des Wunders— sich selbst" (p.
139). If only the self— the higher self— or even the high
est self can be the wonder of wonders, the miracle of mira
cles, then the metaphysical foundations of the solipsistic
world-view are secure. One is somehow reminded, however, of
the bizarre and pathetic madhouse scene in Nerval's "Le Roi
de Bicdtre," where Spifame and his mirror-image bow to, cry
for, and smile at one another in an expression of mutual
sympathy and affection, until their attempt to clasp hands
suddenly knocks the mirror to the floor with a rude and
terrible clatter.
109
For Gerard de Nerval, the quest for home and family is
a recurrent preoccupation, not only in his works but in his
life as well. The psychologica1 torment, conflict, and
trauma of his unhappy relationships with women was certainly
preceded and perhaps occasioned by the early loss of his
mother, whom he never knew and with whom his only physical
link was the periodic onset of the same fever that deprived
her of her life: "La fievre dont elle est morte m'a saisi
trois fois, a des ^poques qui forment dans ma vie des divi
sions singulieres, periodiques. Toujours, a ces epoques,
je me suis senti 1'esprit frapp^ des images de deuil et de
desolation qui ont entoure mon berceau" (I, 135). His
earliest memory of his father is of a rough soldier, come
with two companions directly from the siege of Strasbourg,
who embraces him with such force that he cries : "Mon pere
... tu me fais mall" (I, 135). More than enough has already
been written on the subject of Nerval's mother-fixation, his
male rivalry with the threatening authority figure of his
father, and his imputed sexual impotence. Norma Rinsler
contends that Nerval's "conception of the universe is de-
7
rived from his image of the family," mainly determined by
7“Gerard de Nerval's Celestial City and the Chain of
110
the absence of normal family relationships during the forma
tive period of his life. In any case, the poet's obsession
with the mythical genealogies of his family tree and his
extraordinary Wanderlust certainly attest to the strength of
his drive to experience a sense of belonging, to retrace the
origins of his race and being, to participate in the spiri
tual, universal homecoming— in Rehm's terms, the "Urversamm-
lung." His search extends beyond the bounds of the immedi
ate family relationship into a quest for solidarity with the
totality of his ancestry and posterity: in Aurelia. his
oneiric uncle affirms, "Notre passe et notre avenir sont
solidaires. Nous vivons dans notre race, et notre race vit
en nous" (I, 368).
Above all, it is the figure of the woman, the principle
of the Eternal Feminine, which dominates the Nervalian quest
for personal, familial, and racial identity. The image of
the female Beloved is generally exalted into the realm of
immortality and divinity, into the Savior-goddess whose
presence is everything and whose absence signifies death and
desolation. In Aurelia, the eternal Isis appears to the
persona sometimes in the form of the classical Venus, some-
Souls," Studies in Romanticism. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1963), 103.
Ill
times in the form of the Christian Virgin, a syncretic con
ception which Nerval develops in some detail in Isis. In
Aurelia. the goddess comes before the poet in a dream, say
ing, "Je suis la m€me que Marie, la m£me que ta mere, la
m&ne que sous toutes les formes tu as toujours aim£e. A
chacune de tea epreuves, j'ai quitte 1'un des masques dont
je voile mes traits, et bientdt tu me verras telle que je
suis ... J * (I, 399). As for Blake, as for Novalis, so for
Nerval the female Emanation figure is ineluctably involved
in the concept of sacrifice, whether of herself or of her
male counterpart. In Is is. he writes, "Une femme divinis^e,
mere, Spouse, ou amante, baigne de ses larmes ce corps
saignant et d^figur^, victime d*un principe hostile qui
triomphe par sa mort, mais qui sera vaincu un jouri” (I,
303). The image of the sorrowing Universal Mother is one
that recurs in Aurelia. In this context, it would appear
that Heinrich von Ofterdingen's question, Must the woman
die, leaving the man to mourn for her?, can be transposed
into these terms: Must the man die, leaving the woman to
mourn for him? For Blake, Novalis, and Nerval, the answers
to both questions are identical: the man and the woman must
die, must descend into hell, Ulro, or Eternal Death. In
deed, according to Richer's analysis of the scene where the
112
persona is convinced that either his death or that of
Aurelia is presaged by the apparition of her phantom, what
is actually involved is the physical or spiritual death of
a single person, since the anima is an image of the soul
(Nerval: Experience et creation, pp. 465-466). The two
questions, like the answers to them, may be considered as
one and the same.
Along with the image of the female Beloved, the figure
of the masculine "double" recurs throughout the Nervalian
corpus. To a certain extent, the "double" is simply one of
the many expressions of the "aspect double" which life be
gins to assume for the persona in Aurelia: he is, however,
like the Blakean Spectre, almost consistently represented as
an ominous and forbidding figure, an augury of evil, and
above all, a rival who stands between the persona and all
that he loves and desires. In a well-known and often-cited
passage of Aurelia. Nerval writes:
N'avais-je pas £t4 frapp^ de 1*histoire de ce chevalier
qui combattit toute une nuit dans une fordt contre un
inconnu qui £tait lui-m£me? ...
Une id^e terrible me vint: "L'homme est double," me
dis-je. "je sens deux hommes en raoi," a 6crit un Pere
de l'Gglise.— ... II y a dans tout homnte un spectateur
et un acteur, celui qui parle et celui qui r^pond. Les
Orientaux ont vu la deux ennemis: le bon et le mauvais
g^nie. "Suis-je le bon? suis-je le mauvais? me disais-
je. En tout cas, 1*autre m'est hostile. ... (I, 381)
113
In “Le Roi de Bicdtre," Henri II and his “double" Spifame
are rivals for the royal authority; in the Histoire du Ca-
life Hakem, Hakem and his "double" Yousouf compete not only
for power but for love as well— that of Hakem's sister. In
a sense, these two objects are essentially the same, a con
ception developed by Novalis in the symbol of the throne
metamorphosed into a marriage bed. The initial appearance
of the "double" in Aurelia occurs as the persona, lying on a
cot in a state of delirium, surrounded by the soldiers who
have arrested him, is waiting for his friends to come and
take him in charge. Suddenly, he hears his own voice re
verberating in his chest; but the words are spoken by an
other, whose face he dares not look upon because of the
Germanic folk tale of the “double" whose appearance is an
augury of impending death. To his considerable consterna
tion, his friends arrive to claim him, only to depart with
the "other," leaving him still under arrest. It is, of
course, a hallucination; but the theme of the inimical
"double" recurs throughout the narrative, culminating in the
dream-revelation that the "double," taking advantage of the
confusion which he has caused, intends to wed Aurelia. The
figure clad in white who threatens the persona in the para
disiacal city and who later reappears before him,
114
recognizably his "double," now clad as an Oriental prince,
has already been mentioned. Both apparitions are armed with
a weapon whose exact nature is not specified. It is sig
nificant that at the very instant when the persona, con
vinced that the "double" is about to consummate the marriage
with the Beloved, is attempting to prevent this catastrophe,
he is threatened by an artisan from the infernal workshop,
"tenant une longue barre, dont l'extr&nit£ se composait
d'une boule rougie au feu" (I, 384). These three figures
would appear to be various manifestations of a single
spirit: the Covering Cherub, who stands with the flaming
sword "to keep the way of the tree of life." But if the
"other" is the "same," then the "self" is the "enemy";
hence, as Richer says, Nerval's despair (Nerva1: Exp^rience
et creation, p. 479), and hence the hanging in the dingy
Paris side street. To destroy the "other" is to put an end
to the "self." It is only too evident, then, that the dual
ity of the split personality must be overcome, not by an act
of destruction but rather through the process of psychic
reintegration, of spiritual communion between the two frag
ments of the dissociated being.
Much has already been written on the importance of the
persona's compassionate friendship with the unfortunate
1X5
Saturnin in the asylum, a cataleptic soldier who refuses to
speak, eat, drink, or open his eyes because he is convinced
that he is dead and in purgatory, expiating his sins. It
is certainly the crucial episode in the "dialectique de la
culpability et de la charity” \diich Lemaitre sees as con
stituting the central structure of the novel (I, 751) . For
the persona, Saturnin represents a mysterious, sphinx-like
being as well as a fellow sufferer and a spiritual brother:
”11 me semblait, place ainsi entre la mort et la vie, conme
un interprets sublime, comme un confesseur prydestine a
entendre ces secrets de l'&me que la parole n'oserait trans-
mettre ou ne reussirait pas a rendre. C'ytait l'oreille de
Dieu sans le myiange de la pensye d'un autre” {I, 407-408).
Because of the persona's patient attention and constant
affection, the cataleptic finally opens his eyes, begins to
talk, and even asks for a glass of water, although he is
unable to swallow it. It is directly after the soldier
utters his first word that the persona, in a "rdve dyii-
cieux," in a passage which has already been cited and dis
cussed, experiences the epiphany of the Beloved-Goddess, who
assures him that his ordeal is now at its end because of
Saturnin, whose saintlike simplicity has attained for him
what all the esoteric erudition and cabalistic necromancy
116
on earth could never have gained: the mercy of God through
the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. In the “M^morables"
immediately following the description of this incident, the
poet develops an ecstatic vision of personal salvation and
universal redemption in which mortals, divinities, concepts,
and images blend, merge, and fuse with one another in a
manner strikingly reminiscent of the concluding pages of
Blake's Milton.
The significance of the pope's experience in Aurelia.
which Nerval explicitly identifies with "l'id^e d'une des-
cente aux enfers" (I, 414), is perhaps best explained by
Richer, in an explication of "El Desdichado," who considers
the poet's guest in terms of Jungian psychology:
Or, l'entreprise de Nerval fut a la fois celle d'Or-
ph^e et celle de Pollux: dans la descente aux enfers,
il recherchait son Eurydice (I1image de son £me) ou bien,
en vrai Dioscure, l1autre moiti4 de lui-mfene. son double.
Mais n'est-ce pas dire que les deux descentes dans les
profondeurs ont le m&ne but: 1'unification du moi?
(Nerval: Experience et creation, p. 570)
The descent into the “profondeurs" is in a very real sense
a descent into the self. This is the essence of the Blakean
Spectres and Emanations; this is the essence of Novalis'
thought in Die Lehrlinge zu Sais. where Hyazinth finds
Rosenbltitchen behind the veil and the disciple discovers
117
himself. Arriving at the brink of the abyss which is the
human mind, reaching the point of no return in the journey
into hell, standing before the goddess who is all that was,
all that is, and all that will be, and whose veil of mystery
can be rent by the hand of no mortal man, the poet, in his
guest for knowledge, love, identity, immortality, and divin
ity, must either forsake his sacred mission or els* 3 step
forward courageously into the unknown. And what if, after
all, that which lies beyond is only nothingness, or the
obdurate and impenetrable reality of an objective "Ding an
sich"? Nerval, in his own terminology, formulates what is
basically the same question in Isis:
Ainsi p^rissait, sous I1effort de la raison moderne, le
Christ lui-m6me, ce dernier des r^v^lateurs, qui, au nom
d'une raison plus haute, avait autrefois d^peupl£ les
cieux. 0 nature 1 6 mere ^ternellel £tait-ce la vraiment
le sort r^serv^ au dernier de tes fils celestes? Les
mortels en sont-ils venus a repousser toute esp^rance et
tout prestige, et, levant ton voile sacr£, d^esse de
SaXsl le plus hardi de tes adeptes s'est-il done trouv^
face a face avec 1*image de la Jtort? (I, 300)
But, as in Les Chimeres. no answer is forthcoming: the ora
cles remain silent. The "leap of faith" may finally only be
a plunge into death. The problem of this possibility, not
only for the three poets, but in a more general sense as
well, will constitute the subject of the following— and
concluding— chapter of this study.
CHAPTER V
ORPHEUS OUT OF HADES: THE
ANT I-TRAGIC VISION
Ultimately, for Blake, Novalis, and Nerval, the uni
verse is to be seen in terms of two concepts promulgated by
Swedenborg and certain other mystics: that the cosmos not
only has but is a human form; and that of the correspon
dences which exist among and between all things, the "Cor
respondences” of Baudelaire's famous sonnet. Moreover, for
the three poets, the universe and all that is in it is not
only human but holy, when man embraces it with imagination,
charity, and love. As Yeats writes in "A Dialogue of Self
and Soul,”
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
In the words of Novalis, "Die Welt mufi romantisiert werden"
118
119
(p. 424). Furthermore, for Blake, Nova1is, and Nerval, as
for many other Romantics, the acceptance of the cosmos and
everything it contains as a sacred living being is the in
dispensable first principle in achieving personal salvation,
an idea developed by Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner. where the Mariner's unconscious act of blessing the
"happy living things" frees him of the Albatross and permits
him to pray. Unlike the Mariner, however, who "hath penance
done, / And penance more will do" throughout the rest of his
life, the personae of Blake, Novalis, and Nerval, once hav
ing descended into hell, do not seem to feel compelled to
remain in purgatory forever thereafter. What Altizer says
of Blake holds true for the other two poets as well: ". . .
Blake was incapable of a tragic vision; his comprehensive
vision of fallenness ... is never dissociated from both
the possibility and the reality of regeneration . . ." (p.
161) .
Throughout the corpus of William Blake, the concept of
the sacredness of all things is not only explicit but em
phatic. In three different contexts, he reiterates, "every
thing that lives is Holy" (pp. 44, 50, 53). The idea of the
correspondences which exist throughout the universe is de
veloped in detail in the "Auguries of Innocence," where the
120
poet is able to "see a World in a Grain of Sand / and a
Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of [the]
hand / And Eternity in an hour" (pp. 481, 484) . Every mis
treated animal, every crushed insect, every beaten child,
every neglected beggar— even these the least of our breth
ren— strikes terror throughout the universe and portends
doom in the world to come. “The Harlots cry from Street to
Street / Shall weave Old Englands winding sheet" (pp. 483,
486). In one of Blake's most frequently cited letters, the
whole phenomenal— one is almost tempted to say phenomeno
logical— world is expressed in human terms, where the par
ticles of light are revealed to the poet as men "human-
form’d."
Saying: "Each grain of sand,
Every Stone on the Land,
Each rock & each hill,
Each fountain & rill,
Each herb & each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, Meteor, and Star,
Are Men seen Afar . "
(Letters. pp. 62-83)
This indeed is the culminating Apocalyptic vision of Jeru
salem. where "All Human Forms identified even Tree Metal
Earth & Stone, all / Human Forms identified, living going
forth . . . /" (p. 256). They are all Albion, and all of
121
their Emanations are named Jerusalem. They are all part of
the universe ssen as a single human being, at one with Jesus
Christ: the Eternal Great Humanity Divine.
Basically the same Weltanschauung is present in No-
valis, who writes, “Die Welt ist der Makroanthropos. Es ist
ein Weltgeist, wie es eine Weltseele gibt. Die Seele soil
Geist— der KSrper Welt werden" (p. 510) . Elsewhere, he
poses the question, “Wir trSumen von Reisen durch d^is Welt-
all: ist denn das Weltall nicht in uns?" (p. 342). The
theme of a cosmos both human and divine from which man has
become alienated until he no longer perceives it as a sacred
living form and with which he must reunite in an all-
encompassing Apocalyptic embrace recurs throughout the Hym-
nen an die Nacht. Die Lehrlinge zu Sais. and Heinrich von
Ofterdingen. In the dialogue between Heinrich and Sylvester
in Ofterdingen. the latter states, “Alie Sinne sind am Ende
ein Sinn. Ein Sinn ftihrt wie eine Welt allm&hlich zu alien
Welten. . . . Nur die Person des Weltalls vermag das Ver-
hitltnis unsrer Welt einzusehen" (p. 289). In the ecstatic
vision of the return of the Golden Age in the Fabel M&rchen.
the regenerated universe participates joyfully in the cere
mony of its own recreation: “Die Blumen und B&ume wuchsen
und grtinten mit Macht. Alles schien beseelt. A lies sprach
122
und sang" (p. 271). The fundamental identity of all things
is indicated in Novalis' "notes" for a conclusion to Ofter
dingen. in which Heinrich undergoes a metamorphic and metem-
psychotic evolution through every form of existence, at each
stage catalyzed by the Emanation figure. First, he plucks
the blue flower and turns into a stone. The Oriental or
Edda (who is "die eigentliche blaue Blume") sacrifices her
self upon the stone, and he becomes a tree which emits
sounds. The shepherdess cuts down the tree and burns her
self along with it. He then turns into a golden ram, which
Edda or Mathilde must sacrifice; now at last he can become
a person once again (p. 318).
Similarly, for Gerard de Nerval, "la terre est elle-
m&me un corps materiel dont la soitsne des esprits est l'Stne"
(I, 368) . The idea of the sentient, mysterious universe of
correspondences is developed in the Pythagorean sonnet,
"Vers dor^s," where the poet attacks the egoistic and ego
tistic anthropocentrism of his fellows; "Homme, libre
penseur— te crois-tu seul pensant / Dans ce monde ou la vie
delate en toute chose? / Des forces que tu tiens ta liberty
dispose, / Mais de tous tes conseiIs l'univers est absent"
(1, 8). As in Blake and Novalis, not only plants and ani
mals but supposedly inanimate objects as well are depicted
12 3
as endowed with feeling, life, and power: "'Tout est sen-
siblel' Gt tout sur ton #tre est puissant" (I, 8). In Aure
lia , the persona, laboring to reestablish the universal
harmony even in the soul's dark night of his insanity, sud
denly experiences a cosmic vision identical to that of the
"Vers dores" :
Tout vit, tout agit, tout se correspond; les rayons
magn£tiques &nan£s de moi-m€me ou des autres traversent
sans obstacle la chafne infinie des choses cr^es; c'est
un r^seau transparent qui couvre le monde, et dont les
fils d^li^s se communiquent de proche en proche aux pla-
netes et aux ^toiles. ... rien n'est indifferent, rien
n'est impuissant dans l'univers; un atome peut tout
dissoudre, un atome peut tout sauver. (I, 403-404)
In the story of Soliman, Adoniram, and the Queen, it is the
forgotten mite who destroys the throne and causes the death
of the King of Kings. Ultimately, in the Apocalyptic vision
of Gerard's "M&norables," as in the Fabel M&rchen of Nova
lis, the whole of creation rejoices at the festival of its
rebirth: "Les monts le chantent aux valines, les sources
aux rivieres, les rivieres aux fleuves, et les fleuves a
1’Oc^an ... ' * (I, 410). Flowers, men, beasts, mountains,
the many waters, and all things are finally at one with each
other in the sweet reign of peace on earth.
124
The transcendental, "esemplastic," and indeed omnipo
tent character of the creative imagination, constructing its
heterocosms, projecting its inner visions upon the universe,
and abolishing all distinctions between the self and the
world surrounding it, poses metaphysical and epistemological
problems of a very real complexity, not only for a consid
eration of Blake, Novalis, and Nerval, but for much of
Romantic and post-Romantic poetry as well. It is a problem
which the poets themselves have frequently recognized. In
the Prelude. Wordsworth writes of the shaping power
That through the growing faculties of sense
Doth like the agent of the one great Mind
Create, creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds.— Such verily is the first
Poetic spirit of our human life . . .
In the "Lines" of Tintern Abbey, he speaks of "all that we
behold . . . / . . . of all the mighty world / Of eye and
ear— both what they half create, / And what perceive ..."
Thus, according to his conception, reality consists of the
working-out of a dialectic between the mind of man in the
process of creation and an external order objectively per
ceived. If, however, there is no external order, the Words
worthian compromise is merely an esthetic solution. If, on
12 5
the other hand, there Is an external order Which exists
independently of human knowledge and perception, the poetic
utopianism of Blake, Novalis, and Nerval is only a vast
delusion. In his "Dejection: An Ode," Coleridge exclaims:
0 Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth—
And from the soul itself roust there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element.
But, despite the poet's exultation at the onset of the
storm and despite the exalted benediction rfiich he bestows
upon his Emanation, he nonetheless recognizes that his
"genial spirits fail,” that he is no longer capable of par
ticipating in the process which he so beautifully describes.
In the end, one is left with a sense of weariness, of empti
ness, of nothingness. Perhaps there is nothing within and
nothing without: perhaps there is simply nothing.
This, indeed, is the "darkling plain" of much of later
Romantic and post-Romantic literature, which seems to sense
a void at the heart of all things: "Mi hueco sin ti, ciu-
dad, sin tus muertes que comen," as Lorca expresses it in
126
his "Nocturno del hueco." It is the typically modern cosmos
of the "Deus Absconditus," already prefigured by Jean-Paul
Richter, by Vigny in "Le Mont des Oliviers" and "Le Si
lence, " indeed by Nerval himself in "Le Christ aux Oli
viers," where Jesus cries, "Abfmei abimel ablmej / Le dieu
manque a l'autel ou je suis la victime ... Dieu n'est pas 1
Dieu n'est plus I" (I, 6). To sing the praises of an empty
heaven is merely a waste of breath; in the words of Lorca
in "Navidad en el Hudson," "El mundo solo por el cielo solo
/ ... y todos cantaban aleluya, / aleluya. Cielo desierto.
/ Es lo mismo, Ilo mismol, aleluya." Beckett's Godot never
comes, or perhaps he came once but went away, never to re
turn again. "Aber Freund 1 wir kommen zu spilt. Zwar leben
die Gdtter, / Aber Uber dem Haupt droben in anderer Welt,"
Holder1in laments in "Brot und Wein." For Haiderlin, as for
many twentieth-century poets, the reality of that lateness
is irrevocable, irredeemable, absolute. "Wie mein Gltlck,
ist mein Lied," he writes in "Die KUrze." "Willst du im
Abendrot / Froh dich baden? hinweg istsl und die Erde ist
kalt, / Und der Vogel der Nacht schwirrt / Unbequem vor das
Auge dir . ” The sensation is considerably more than one of
mere discomfort: it is the existential Angst. In this
sense, Hdlderlin, caught between the suicidal impulses of
12 7
his persona Empedokles and the compulsion of his own insan
ity, is a much more modern poet than his contemporaries
Blake and Novalis. Rilke, at the beginning of his first
Duino elegy, poses the question, "Wer, wenn ich schriee,
hfirte mich denn aus der Engel / Qrdnungen?" Perhaps, he
admits, it is better in the end if none hears and none re
plies; he is aware that he would only be consumed in the
consummation of the terrible angelic presence, as Semele
before the full glory of Zeus. And what if, after all, the
universe and whatever gods might inhabit it are not anthro
pomorphic but theriomorphic? What if it is not Christ but
the "rough beast" of Yeats's "Second Coming" who is slouch
ing "towards Bethlehem to be born"? The universe of silence
and absence, of the absconded God or gods, may in the final
analysis be less uncomfortable, less impossible for humanity
to bear.
Clearly, under such circumstances, the concept of the
regeneration of the fallen natural order is not only im
possible but meaningless. The descent into hell is merely
that and nothing more: it leads nowhere. The world around
us is not the "paradiso" but the "inferno." "L'enfer, c'est
les autres," Sartre writes in Huis clos. There is literally
no exit to be taken. "No es el infierno, es la calle,"
128
Lorca protests in "New York: Oficina y denuncia." "No es
la muerte, es la tienda de frutas." But the river of deli
cate blood still gushes beneath the numerical calculations
of the financial speculatorsj and the polluted Hudson flows
on, drunk with oil. Ultimately, this world-view culminates
in the so-called excremental vision, Yeats's "the fury and
the mire of human veins" and "the foul rag-and-bone shop of
the heart," Lorca's landscapes of the vomiting and urinating
multitudes, Jarry's "Merdrel" Wordsworth anticipates this
vision in his description of St. Bartholomew's fair in the
Prelude, where he portrays the assembled masses of the
freaks and sports of nature,
All jumbled up together, to compose
A Parliament of Monsters. Tents and Booths
Meanwhile, as if the whole were one vast mill,
Are vomiting, receiving on all sides,
Men, Women, three-years' Children, Babes in arms.
This grotesque conception of the created universe in terms
of dung, spittle, urine, vomit, slime, and putrefaction un
doubtedly achieves its most complete literary expression in
Brecht's Baal. where the world is defined as the excrement
of God, and man, as "ein Bursch, der auf dem Abort frifit."
But, as Virgil would have it, "Paulo maiora canamus."
If the clocks of Urthona's Spectre and Satan's Watch fiends
129
seem constantly to be ticking away the seconds of our mor
tality, as in the countdown before the final cataclysm; if
the surfaces of the fallen Enitharmon's "Female Space" yet
appear to constrict us even as the walls of a claustrophobic
nightmare close in upon and collapse about the victim's
head; if the wheels of the dark Satanic mills turn forever
as instruments of diabolic torture in a world which appar
ently cannot conceive them in any other capacity; and if the
militant and unvanquished Spectres of neurotic dissociation
and rational abstraction still seem to prowl around us,
night and day— if, in a word, the poets, Shelley's "un
acknowledged legislators of the world," have not succeeded
in saving us, have not been able either to precipitate
Apocalypse or to institute Utopia in the here-and-now, then
the very least that can be 3aid is that no one else has
managed, either. Blake, Novalis, and Nerval, in their quest
for truth and for beauty— which, as Keats contends, may
finally be one and the same— have arrived at a sacramental
vision of the universe and all things in it, a conception
of considerable power, significance, and charm. They have,
moreover, succeeded in creating a body of literature of the
first order, an achievement virtually independent of one's
Weltanschauung. a matter not subject in any case to rational
130
demonstration or proof. Who, finally, is to say whether the
sacramental vision is any more false or meaningless than the
excremental vision which opposes it? All too often, the
literary critic, in his anxiety to impose his own schema
upon everything with which he comes into contact, feels a
compulsion to attack or defend the philosophical assumptions
of the authors with whom he is dealing. In so doing, he
runs the risk of revealing more about his own personality,
prejudices, and values than about the works he is attempting
to analyze. In concluding, I must admit that I, too, am
subject to this same temptation; but I recognize that such
an attempt would constitute an exercise in futility. In the
final analysis, what the critic should feel compelled to
justify is not the literature under consideration, nor even
the world-view which it incorporates, but rather his own
purposes in undertaking his study. It is a frightening and
a sobering thought. I do not, however, propose to add in
sult to injury; for, as Blake has noted, "the tygers of
wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." The prob-
lem--again in Blake's words— is that "you never know what is
enough unless you know what is more than enough." There are
not many authors— and far fewer critics— who have managed to
understand and to heed this precept, who have known how to
131
extricate themselves from the entanglement of their own
prolixity; and I regret to say that I am certainly not among
those happy few. So be it: "Enough! or Too Much." The
rest is silence: let it be.
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
132
BIBLIOGRAPHY
General and Comparative
Books
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____________ . Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revo
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Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company; A Reading of English
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Closs, August. The Genius of the German Lyric: An Histori
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133
134
D^d^yan, Charles. Gerard de Nerval et 1' Allemagne. 2 vols.
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1957 .
Dubruck, Alfred. Gerard de Nerval and the German Heritage.
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Furst, Lillian. Romanticism in Perspective: A Comparative
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Hartman, Geoffrey. The Unmediated Vision: An Interpreta
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Korff, H. A. Geist der Goethezeit: Versuch einer ideelien
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Peckham, Morse. Beyond the Tragic Vision: A Quest for
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Poulet, Georges. The Metamorphoses of the Circle. Trans.
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Rehm, Walter. Orpheus: Der Dichter und die Toten: Selbst-
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Roos, Jacques. Aspects litt^raires du mysticisme philoso-
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Senior, John. The Way Down and Out: The Occult, in Sym
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1959.
Tymms, Ralph. Doubles in Literary Psychology. Cambridge,
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____________ . German Romantic Literature. London: Methuen
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Van Tieghem, Paul. La Poesie de la nuit et des tombeaux en
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Vordtriede, Werner. Novalis und die franzfisischen Symbo-
listen: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des dichterischen
Symbols . Sprache und Literature, Vol. 8. Stuttgart:
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Articles
Bays, Gwendolyn. "The Orphic Vision of Nerval, Baudelaire,
and Rimbaud.1 1 Comparative Literature Studies, 4, Nos.
1-2 (1967), 17-26.
De Groot, H. B. "The Ouroboros and the Romantic Poets: A
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1969), 31-46.
Hiebel, Frederick. "Goethe's Maerchen in the Light of No
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William Blake
Books
Altizer, Thomas J. The New Apocalypse: The Radical Chris
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State Univ. Press, 1967.
136
Beer, John. Blake’s Humanism. Manchester, England: Man
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Bentley, G. E., and M. K. Nurmi. A Blake Bibliography:
Annotated Lists of Works. Studies, and Blakeana.
Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1964.
Blake, William. The Letters of William Blake. Together
with a Life by Frederick Tatham. Ed. Archibald Rus
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______________ . The Poetry and Prose of William Blake.
Ed. David Erdman, commentary by Harold Bloom. Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1965.
Bloom, Harold. Blake's Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argu
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Bronowski, Jacob. William Blake: A Man without a Mask.
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Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Sym
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________________ . William Blake: His Philosophy and Sym
bols . Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958.
Davies, J. G. The Theology of William Blake. Hamden,
Conn.: Archon Books, 1966.
Erdman, David. Blake: Prophet against Empire: A Poet's
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_____________ , and John Grant, eds . Blake's Visionary Forms
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Fisher, Peter. The Valiev of Vision: Blake as Prophet and
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Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William
Blake. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1947.
137
Gardner, Charles. Vision and Vesture: A Study of William
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________________ . William Blake: The Man. London: J. M.
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Gardner, Stanley. Literature in Perspective: Blake. Lon
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Gleckner, Robert. The Piper and the Bard: A Study of Wil
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Harper, G. M. The Neoplatonism of William Blake. Chapel
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Hirst, D^sir^e. Hidden Riches: Traditional Symbolism from
the Renaissance to Blake. London: Eyre and Spottis-
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Keynes, Geoffrey. Blake Studies: Essays on His Life and
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Paley, Morton. Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the
Development of Blake’s Thought. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1970.
Percival, Milton 0. William Blake's Circle of Destiny.
Morningside Heights, N.Y.: Columbia Univ. Press, 1938.
Pinto, Vivian, ed. The Divine Vision: Studies in the
Poetry and Art of William Blake. London: Victor Gol-
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Raine, Kathleen. Blake and Tradition. 2 vols. Bo11ingen
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Rosenfeld, Alvin, ed. William Blake: Essays for S. Foster
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Schorer, Mark. William Blake: The Politics of Vision. New
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Singer, June K. The Unholy Bible: A Psychological Inter
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Swinburne, Algernon. William Blake: A Critical Essay.
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Symons, Arthur. William Blake. London: Archibald Consta
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White, Helen. The Mysticism of William Blake. Univ. of
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Wilson, Mona. The Life of William Blake. Ed. Geoffrey
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Articles
Adlard, John. "Drunkenness at the Mills in Blake's Milton."
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____________ . "A 'Triumphing Joyfulness': Blake, Boehme
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1969), 109-122.
Alper, Benedict. "The Mysticism of William Blake: A Psy
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Altizer, Thomas J. "William Blake and the Role of Myth in
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Bentley, G. E. "Blake and Swedenborg." Notes and Queries.
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Crutwell, Patrick. "Blake, Tradition, and Miss Raine." The
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Erdman, David. “Blake's Early Swedenborgianism: A Twen
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Fox, Susan C. "The Structure of a Moment: Parallelism in
the Two Books of Blake's Milton." Blake Studies. 2,
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Freiberg, S. k . "The Fleece-lined Clock: Time, Space, and
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Frye, Northrop. "Notes for a Commentary on Milton." The
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Harper, G. M. "The Neo—Platonic Concept of Time in Blake's
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Kiralis, Karl. "A Guide to the Intellectual Symbolism of
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Le Breton, Georges. "William Blake et le ndo-platonisme."
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_______________ . "Blake Revisited." Etudes Ancrlaises. 12,
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Marken, Ronald. "'Eternity in an Hour'— Blake and Time."
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1 40
Pierce, Frederick. "The Genesis and the General Meaning of
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Rose, E. J. "Blake's Fourfold Art." philological Quarterly.
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__________ . "Blake's Milton: The Poet as Poem." Blake
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_________. "Mythology (For the Study of William
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_____________ . "Swedenborg and Blake." Modern Philology.
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_____________ . "William Blake and the Cosmic Nadir."
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Gerard de Nerval
Books
Audiat, Pierre. L'Aurelia de Gerard de Nerval. Paris:
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Aunos y Perez, Eduardo. Gerard de Nerval et ses eniqmea.
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141
B^guin, Albert. Gerard de Nerval. Paris: Jose Corti,
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Cellier, Leon. Gerard de Nerval: L*Homme et 1'oeuvre.
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Chambers, Ross. Gerard de Nerval et la poetigue du voyage.
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Dddeyan, Christian. Nerval: Pelerin de la nuit. Essai.
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142
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____________ . Nerval: Experience et creation. Paris:
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Art icles
Brion, Marcel. "Gerard de Nerval, romantique allemand."
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143
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_. "Nerval et ses fantdmes." Mercure de France.
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_. "Une Page inddite d ’'Aurelia': La reine de
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Blake, Novalis, and Nerval: the poetics of the apocalypse. A study of Blake's Milton, Novalis' Hymnen an die Nacht and Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Nerval's Aurelia
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