William Blakes Illustrations

for Dantes Divine Comedy

A Study of the Engravings, Pencil
Sketches and Watercolors
Eric Pyle

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1702-2
2015 Eric Pyle. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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photocopyingor recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system,without permission in writing from the
publisher.
On the cover: William Blake, Capaneus the Blasphemer, pen
and ink and watercolor, 182427 (National Gallery of
Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [997-3])

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
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Table of Contents
Preface

Part I: Blake, His Masters and Rivals

1. Why Did Blake Illustrate The Divine Comedy?
2. Views of Blakes Dante, Past and Present
2. Part II: English Dante
3. The Comedy Reaches England
4. The Making of Blakes Illustrations
3. Part III: Blakes Criticism of Dante
5. Marginal Note to Boyd
6. Remarks on the Illustration to Hell, Canto 4
7. He could never have Builded Dantes Hell
8. States, Not People
Color Illustrations
4. Part IV: The Illustrations
4

9. Hell
10. Purgatory
11. Heaven

Conclusion
Chapter Notes
References
List of Names and Terms

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
Auguries of Innocence

Preface

Dear Sir
I am still far from recoverd & dare not get out in the
cold air. Yet I lose nothing by it Dante goes on the
better which is all I care aboutWilliam Blake1
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or
the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to
fulfill them.Matthew 5:17
No thing can become manifest to itself without
oppositionJacob Boehme2

Among William Blakes last works was a series of

illustrations to Dantes Divine Comedy. It was an ambitious
project for a man of 67 to begin, and he didnt live to
complete it. Even in its unfinished state, however, the series is
a rich and fascinating work of art that can add to our
understanding of Blakes philosophy and artistic goals, and be
enjoyed for its strange beauty. The seven engravings from the
set approach the same high quality as the more famous prints
depicting the Book of Job, which were finished about the time
that the Dante series was commissioned. In addition, we have
102 unique pencil sketches and watercolors, in various stages

of completion. Some are merely rough outlines, but a few are

paintings of such beauty that they rival the best of Blakes
visual work. Many of them are rich in iconographic
inventionenough to give us confidence that, true to form,
Blake was not passively depicting Dantes words, but was
engaged in intellectual and artistic dialogue with his Italian
peer.
The only full-length analysis of the Dante series was
published in 1953 by Albert S. Roe.3 Since that time,
references to Blakes Dante illustrations in the works of other
scholars have tended to rely on Roes interpretation and take
his conclusions as more or less settled.4 Although Rodney M.
Baine and David Fuller published articles in the late 1980s
questioning some of Roes opinions and calling for new
analysis, no thorough reinterpretation has appeared so far.5 It
is my hope that the present book will reopen many of the
questions about these pictures, point to new methods of
interpreting them, and help them to gain a place in lists of
William Blakes greatest accomplishments.
My analysis will focus largely on aspects of Blakes theology
that are at odds with Dantes, and that moved Blake to
illustrate the Comedy as a way of correcting or completing its
message. We will see that Dante, true to his age, conceives of
God as existing in a separate realm, far above our fallen
world. Blake does not accept the idea of a God that is apart
from mankind. Indeed, for Blake it is the false perception of
separateness from God that is at the heart of so many of our
woes.
This book also discusses Blakes views on the goals and
possibilities of art, an aesthetic theory that derives in large
8

part from his theological principle that God and man are not
divided. Whereas Dante accepts the traditional Christian view
that limited human reason is inadequate to understand God,
and that human language lacks the power to describe Heaven,
Blake sees such an admission as an unnecessary falling-short.
The true prophet, for Blake, is a poet who makes God
manifest, either in words or in pictures. Blake rejects Dantes
repeated claims that human art is inadequate to show Gods
full majesty and works to realize in fullness the message that
the Italian poet found impossible to convey.
Earlier interpretations of Blakes Dante pictures, following
Roes analysis, saw the entire series as an attempt to show
that the Comedy is false and that Dantes theology was
inherently flawed. My book, on the other hand, will show that
there are major points of agreement between the two poets. It
is primarily in Dantes final inability to manifest God that
Blake sees a failure. Blakes illustrations, then, were not made
to abolish the Comedy, but to fulfill it.
I am of course aided in my task by the 60 years of
advancement in the field of Blake studies since Roes book
appeared. Even a much abbreviated list of those who have
published since 1953 would have to include Kathleen Raine,
George Mills Harper, and Desiree Hirst, who have revealed to
us the esoteric and Neoplatonic background of Blakes
thought. The British antinomian roots of his methods have
been unveiled by E.P. Thompson. W.J.T. Mitchell showed us
the inseparable nature of Blakes visual and verbal art, while
David Erdman revealed its politics. Kathleen Lundeen
brought Blake criticism up to date in regard to the world of
semiotics and language theory. A fascinating triad of books
has helped me understand the interplay of philosophy and
9

theology that separates Blakes world from Dantes: Fischer,

Magee, and Punter have, respectively, written books about
Blake and Jacob Boehme, Jacob Boehme and Hegel, and
Hegel and Blake. Robert Essick, author and editor of many
key works of Blake scholarship, read portions of this
manuscript and rescued me from several errors. I am grateful
for his help. As much as I would like to blame any remaining
errors on Satan, I must take personal responsibility for them
here.
My goal in this book has been to discover the main artistic
and theological aspects of Blakes engagement with Dante. In
staying close to that theme, I have chosen not to attempt an
exhaustive catalog of every Dante-related work in Blakes
oeuvre. For a complete list of such works the reader is
referred
to
the
online
Blake
Archive,
at
www.blakearchive.org. This resource provides color
reproductions of all the works discussed in the present book,
as well as additional information on the provenance and
present whereabouts of each. An inexpensive collection of
reproductions is available from Dover Publications, titled
William Blakes Divine Comedy Illustrations: 102 Full-Color
Plates.
I am grateful to Professor Takao Aoki of Hiroshima
University for assistance in securing the reproduction
permissions necessary to complete this book. Sachiko and
Aiko Ohnishi supported me in ways too numerous to name. I
would also like to thank a number of pseudonymous friends
with whom I conversed on the Internet, who provided me
with moral support and valuable feedback during my years of
research. And of course this book could not have been written

10

without the patience and enthusiasmand

questionsof my students. Many thanks to all of you.

11

good

Part I: Blake, His Masters and Rivals

1. Why Did Blake Illustrate The Divine Comedy?

Disagreements with Dante

Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for
Tyrannical
Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of
All &
the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost [E 689]
In a perfect scholarly world, William Blakes life would be at
least as well documented as that of his contemporary, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. Kubla Khan and The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner gained Coleridge early fame and the
attention of admirers, with the result that we have at our
disposal numerous records of his personal and professional
life.1 His literary and political opinions are well-recorded in
the speeches he was invited to give and in the table talk that
his friends faithfully recorded. In comparison, Blake scholars
are left with very little documentary evidence from which to
glean the foundations of his thought and the development of
his work. Those of us intent on analyzing his Dante
illustrations, in particular, have little more than notes
scribbled in margins and secondhand diary entries to guide us

12

in our reconstruction of Blakes opinions about The Divine

Comedy and its author.
One criticism Blake made of Dante was penciled into a copy
of the Inferno that had most likely come to him from his
patron, William Hayley. Blake seems to have been an
inveterate annotator of other writers books, and his notes in
the margins of the Inferno express strong opinions in clear
language. Most of these broadsides, though, are directed not
against Dante but against his translator, Henry Boyd. Boyds
was one of the first complete translations of the Inferno to be
published in English, appearing in print in 1785.2 The first
183 pages of this three-volume edition contain historical notes
by Boyd and a life of Dante by Leonardo Bruni, and it is this
front matter that Blake annotated, not the poem itself. Boyd
takes a moralizing tone in his description of Dantes political
career and literary goals that Blake finds objectionable. In his
discussion of the unhappy effects of religion on politics, for
example, Boyd opines: The booted Apostles of Germany,
and the Crusards of Florence, carried their zeal to a very
guilty degree. Blake responds in the margin with a laconic:
How very Foolish all this Is (E 634). At only one point does
Blake extend his criticism from the translator to Dante. In an
angry note on the subject of translators, he does acknowledge
that Dante had rendered too much to Caesar: It appears to
Me that Men are hired to Run down Men of Genius under the
Mask of Translators, but Dante gives too much to Caesar he is
not a Republican Dante was an Emperors <a Caesars> Man
Luther also left the Priest & joind the Soldier (E 634).
I will analyze in detail the meaning of calling Dante an
Emperors <a Caesars> Man in Part III of the present book.
(The brackets indicate Blakes changes.) For now, let me note
13

that while Blake had a copy of the Inferno in one hand and a
critical pencil in the other, he reserved nearly all of his rage
for the translator and not the author of the poem. And the note
quoted above does seem to indicate that Blake considered the
Italian poet to be among the ranks of the Men of Genius.
In addition to the marginal note from the Inferno, we have
two direct criticisms of Dante penciled onto the preparatory
sketches for Blakes illustrations. Since he began these works
with rough pencil lines, gradually bringing them to clarity and
obscuring most of the sketched lines when adding color, we
may assume that these notes were never intended to be part of
the final work. In those watercolors that appear to be finished,
no such words remain, nor is there any writing (beyond a
single title) in the seven engravings. The penciled criticisms
are significant, however. In the first, Blake declares that
Dante was inspired by nature, and not by imagination or the
Holy Spirit (E 689). The other note opposes the traditional
Christian idea that God could condemn anyone to Hell for an
eternity (E 690). Blakes God is a God of forgiveness.
For additional statements Blake made on the subject of Dante,
we rely on the testimony of Henry Crabb Robinson, a friend
of Blake, who recorded some of the artists opinions in a
diary. These journal entries were made from memory after the
fact, not during the conversation,3 though they ring true to
what we know of Blakes manner of thinking. Crabb
Robinson himself found Blakes speech obscure at times.
Still, the remarks he recorded in his journal, when considered
in the light of other findings, will help us to uncover Blakes
intentions. One of the most revealing diary entries on the
subject of Dante records Blakes opinion that Dante

14

was wrong in occupying his mind about political

objects. Yet this did not appear to affect his
[Blakes] estimation of Dantes genius, or his
opinion of the truth of Dantes visions. Indeed, when
he even declared Dante to be an Atheist, it was
accompanied by expression of the high?est
admiration.4
Many pages of The Divine Comedy do contain Dantes
opinions on the politics of the day. Although these sections
are perhaps the least interesting to modern readers, they do
not overshadow the theological discussions to the point that
Dante appears to be an atheist in any conventional sense of
the word. Making sense of this unexpected evaluation will
require a close investigation of Blakes beliefs about both art
and Hell, and point us to important facts about the
illustrations.
The comments Blake made, both the penciled memos and the
remarks recorded by his friend, will provide some firm
handholds for us to enter into the meaning of Blakes
illustrations. The hints his comments provide also allow us to
look back to his earlier poetic works, in particular the
book-length poem Milton, to see why he disagreed with
Dante. Yet I also will show in this book that the critical nature
of Blakes remarks has been overvalued by previous critics,
with the result that they have been taken as the final word on
an issue that is more complicated than some suppose.
Negative comments like those mentioned above emphasize
Blakes disagreement with the system of the Comedy. This
and similar remarks have led scholars to read the entire set of
pictures as an attack on Dantes theology. Roe, for example,
sees nearly every illustration in the series as a direct criticism
15

of Dantes message, so that each picture becomes a

point-by-point refutation of the Comedys theology. In Roes
interpretation, Blakes watercolor showing Beatrice appearing
to Dante in the Earthly Paradise becomes an allegory of the
soul seduced into love of the material world. Every detail of
the painting is called into service to show that Blakes
Beatrice is reversing the direction of Dantes Beatrice and is
pulling us downwards instead of guiding us up.5 This
insistence on seeing oppositional symbolism everywhere in
the series of pictures has caused Roe to ignore the many
points of agreement between the two poets. The dramatic
forward and upward movement of the poem, an essential
element of the poems message, in Roes reading stops short
due to the fact that each scene becomes a negative critique.
Blake seems to have stalled the pilgrim Dantes progress by
making his upward movement into illusion, and his final
triumph into failure.
One begins to wonder why, if Roes interpretation is true,
Blake would devote his final years to a poem that he so
fundamentally disliked.

Blake Corrects Milton

I can draw as well a Bed as Up & perhaps better but
I cannot
Engrave I am going on with Dante & please myself
[E 774].

16

Morton Paley writes, Despite Blakes critical attitude toward

Dante, we should not assume that he approached his subject
primarily in a spirit of resentment. From the quantity and
quality of the work Blake produced, and from statements he
made in his correspondence, it is clear that Blake approached
his subject with zest, taking full advantage of the pictorial
opportunities Dante offered.6 The correspondence Paley
mentions was addressed to patron John Linnell, who had
commissioned the illustrations. Blake wrote to Linnell while
bedridden, a few months before his death, that he did not dare
to count on Futurity, but was still work?ing, because I am
too much attachd to Dante to think much of any thing else
(E 784).
Why would Blake show so much enthusiasm for illustrations
to the work of an Atheist and Caesars Man, who made his
poem for Tyrannical Purposes? Harsh words such as these
might lead us to believe that Blake considered Dante a kind of
spiritual enemy. No less a critic than W.B. Yeats came to this
conclusion, writing: As Blake sat bent over the great
drawing-book in which he made his drawings to The Divine
Comedy, he was very certain that he and Dante represented
spiritual states which face one another in an eternal enmity.7
Certainly Blake is not shy about naming individuals who, he
believes, have helped to bring about the unspiritual condition
of the modern world. In particular, Blake makes Francis
Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke into a sort of unholy
trinity in his writings, blaming them for Enlightenment
approaches to knowledge that devalue inspiration.8 Lockes
epistemology is echoed in The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
especially in the series of lectures called the Seven Discourses
on Art, which Blake condemns in clear and vehement
language (E 635662). We are left in no doubt as to whom
17

Blake considered an intellectual enemy. Yet as frequently as

he mentions his opponents names, he never devoted a major
poem to any one of them, or illustrated their books. That
honor was reserved for a writer of an earlier age with whom
he had a more complicated and respectful relationship: John
Milton.
References to Milton throughout Blakes written work show
that Blake held the earlier poet in the highest esteem. In The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake calls him a true Poet
(E 35). In one letter, Blake places Milton with Homer and
Virgil in a high rank of art (E 702), and in another includes
Milton in a list of the subjects that form Blakes delightful
study (E 714). In a paragraph on the subject of which men he
most respects, he writes that he sees the Divine countenance
in such men as Cowper and Milton more distinctly than in
any prince or hero (E 750)high praise from a man who
declares that there is no other God than the greatest men
(E 43). The clearest statement about Miltons worth comes
from Blakes Descriptive Catalogue, intended as a public
announcement of his artistic values:
Poetry as it exists now on earth, in the various
remains of ancient authors, Music as it exists in old
tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it exists
in the remains of Antiquity and in the works of more
modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be
surpassed; it is perfect and eternal. Milton,
Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Rafael, the finest
specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Painting, and
Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo and Egyptian,
are the extent of the human mind [E 544].

18

In addition, thanks to Blakes frequent visions and

conversations with famous men of earlier ages, the admiration
between the two men seems to have been mutual. Blake wrote
in a letter to his friend John Flaxman: Milton lovd me in my
childhood & shewd me his face (E 707).
Crabb Robinsons diary indicates that visionary visits from
Milton (who died 83 years before Blake was born) continued
throughout Blakes life. These conversations with Milton
himself gave Blake the confidence to correct what he
perceived as the earlier poets errors. In fact, Blake once told
Crabb Robinson that Milton had often begged him to confute
the mistakes in Paradise Lost.9 Blake undertook the
corrections not through peer-reviewed essays in little-read
literary reviews but by the more inspired medium of painting.
From 1801 to 1824 Blake made sets of illustrations for six of
Miltons poems: A Mask Presented at Ludlow-Castle,
Paradise Lost, On the Morning of Christs Nativity,
LAllegro, Il Penseroso, and Paradise Regained.
According to Bette Charlene Werner, these designs
go beyond literal rendition of words into pictures.
They represent Blakes rethinking of Miltons
themes, in which the insights that he sees as true are
isolated, while the ideas he regards as confinements
or distortions are rejected. As illustrator of Miltons
poems, Blake first discloses their errors and then
accentuates the areas where he perceives their
visionary truth to reside.10
This is the key point for any analysis of illustrations Blake did
based on the work of another writer. When he chose the
19

subject of the illustrations himself, or did so with the

cooperation of an understanding patron, the finished product
was likely to be a careful reworking of the message of the
original text. Blake illustrated Chaucers Canterbury Tales,11
Bunyans Pilgrims Progress,12 the Book of Job,13 and
several works of Milton, as, in Werners phrase, a rethinking
of themes. The truths of the written text are identified and
emphasized in the pictures, while the errors are corrected.
Persuasive scholarship has shown that in each case Blake has
undertaken his project with a more ambitious goal than mere
criticism. When we view his visual responses alongside the
texts that inspired them, our understanding is raised to a
higher plane than experience of one or the other separately
would allow. Blake had alluded to such a dialectical approach
in his early illuminated manuscript The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell. The motto Opposition is true Friendship (E 42)
includes friendship toward the reader and viewer as well as
between Blake and his subject. The aphorism Without
Contraries is no progression (E 34) shows that illustrations
contrary to their subjects aim towards progress, not just
negation.
As Werner emphasizes, our best understanding of Blakes
project to redeem the work of John Milton is found, naturally
enough, in the illuminated poem Milton, which carries the
date 1804 on its title page.14 This work is a visionary account
of Miltons return to Earth from Heaven, his visit to Blake,
and the corrections Milton wishes to make to the errors he left
behind in his poems. Though travel between spiritual worlds
is not unusual in Blakes work, Miltons return journey is
declared to be unique:

20

This mighty one is come from Eden, he is of the

Elect.
Who died from Earth & he is returnd before the
Judgment, This thing
Was never known that one of the holy dead should
willing return [E 119].
Blake respects the earlier poet so much that, rather than
dismiss his errors, he gives him a unique chance to return to
our world and correct them. And what were those errors?
Essick and Viscomi write:
Milton (in the course of Milton) becomes conscious
of those portions of himself and his culture that
inhibited his being a true Poet and struggles to
cast them out. In Blakes view, Miltons errors
infected his life and writings with classical
paganism, moral self-righteousness, and rational
materialism.15
Because the same three errorsclassical, moral, and
materialisticwill play key roles in our analysis of the Dante
pictures, let us pause here to examine more closely Blakes
accusations against Milton. This will make things clearer
when we apply the same standards to the Comedy
illustrations.

Classical Paganism
The early Age of Reason saw the birth of theories that
attempted to unify and explain vast sweeps of human
21

knowledge, but were as yet untroubled by the demands of

modern scholarship. The Baron de Montesquieus De lesprit
des lois, for example, posited that the success or failure of
cultures in the historical record could largely be accounted for
by climate. Like many such theories, Montesquieus was
more than a little chauvinistic, as he concluded triumphantly
that the climate of his native France was the ideal.16
Similarly sweeping theories were advanced to account for the
variety of cultures in the world, which, it was assumed, must
all derive from one of the Old Testament patriarchs. William
Stukeley (16871765) wrote in Stonehenge, a Temple
Restord that the dolmens still visible in England were
evidence of a patriarchal religion traceable to Abraham, and
despite little knowledge of the real religion of the Celts, he
concluded that it was extremely like Christianity.17 Edward
Davies (17561831) pushed Britains lineage farther back, to
a great--grandson of Noah.18 Others declared the British
people to be one of the lost tribes of Israel. Francis Wilford
(1761?1822) developed one of the most ambitious of the
universal histories while serving with the British military in
India. His research in Sanskrit texts allowed him to
reconstruct what he described as the first true representation
of Scriptural and Hindoo geography. He announced with
confidence that the Druids of Britain were Brahmins is
beyond the least shadow of doubt.19 Blake was not alone in
his enthusiasm for such unifying theories of history,
particularly those that allowed Britain a direct connection to
Old Testament authority. The work of Coleridge, Shelley, and
Robert Southey all show awareness of Wilford and similar
historians.20

22

Blake makes clear his acceptance of such theories in his

Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, where he mentions the author
of one of the most famous of universal histories: The
antiqui?ties of every Nation Under Heaven, is no less sacred
than that of the Jews. They are the same thing as Jacob
Bryant, and all antiquaries have proved (E 543).
Bryant (17151804) published the widely read New System,
or an Analysis, of Antient Mythology in two volumes in 1774.
It was reprinted and expanded again and again, reaching six
volumes in 1807. Illustrations in the first two editions were
created by James Basire, to whom Blake was apprenticed at
the time. (A.G.B. Russell has suggested that at least one of
the engravings in the book was produced by Blake himself.)21
Through a combination of primitive archeology, biblical
history, and creative etymology, Bryant assembled one of the
most popular surveys of history in the Britain of Blakes time.
Today such views of history seem amusingconstructed of
imagined connections and wishful thinkingbut at the time
serious people took Bryant seriously. Few in England doubted
that civilization had been founded and spread by the
patriarchs of the Old Testament and that modern cultures
could be traced directly back to biblical sources. Abraham
and Job had been of the same race as the Celts, and the
druidical monuments still visible in England were relics of
their culture. The Hebrew language was Gods language but
was corrupt in its modern form; some even posited that
English was the closest of all modern tongues to the language
that Adam spoke22an idea that sounds far-fetched to us
today but was sufficiently popular for Byron to make fun of it
in the first canto of his Don Juan.

23

In contrast to the tendency for Neoclassicists of the eighteenth

century to prefer Greco-Roman culture, some Christians
employed Old Testamentbased history to give precedence to
the Hebrews. Blake gave particular importance to the view
that Solomons temple, as described in the Bible, achieved the
peak of artistic accomplishment, and if the Greeks and
Romans seemed to have surpassed the Hebrews in sculpture,
it is only because they stole the ideas and destroyed the
evidence. He goes so far as to deny that the famous Laocon
sculpture, a cast of which he drew at the British Museum,
depicts a scene from Virgil. In his 18267 engraving of the
work, Blake renames the central figure Yahweh and the
flanking sons Adam and Satanin effect claiming that his
own reworking of Christian symbolism had come first, in the
time of Solomon, and the Hellenistic sculptors had rudely
appropriated the image to their own unrelated myth.23
Damon writes: Blakes prime objection to the Greeks was
their glorification of war. Virgil was even worse: he not
only glorified war, but empire as well.24 Blake identifies
Greek philosophy as a remnant of Druidism (E 200), which
had made human sacrifice routine until the day of Abrahams
near-sacrifice of Isaac. The total war and renewed empire in
Europe under Napoleon showed that Enlightenment thought
and liberating revolution had not done away with mens
ability to find glory in violence. As the French emperor
conquered each new territory in turn, he took many of their
greatest artworks back with him to Paris, just as Blake said
the Romans had done with the sculptures of Solomons
temple. The love of violence thus became for Blake
inseparable from Greek and Roman thought, and, in his view,
when classical models inspired later poets, it only caused
harm. The preface to Milton emphasizes this error:
24

Shakspeare & Milton were

both curbd by the general malady & infection from
the silly Greek
& Latin slaves of the Sword [E 95].
Dante, we will discover, suffers from the same illness.
Blakes view of history begins with Adam and Eve, continues
through the early biblical patriarchs identified with Druids,
and finds a true moral code only with the later prophets and
with Christ. The Greeks and Romans, he is sure, are
unfortunate offshoots of the early, unenlightened peoples,
who could only create through theft from a superior culture.
By declaring the Bible the Great Code of Art (E 274),
superior to Greek epics or philosophy, Blake roots his
aesthetics as well as his history in prophecy. His view of
history is of a piece with his view of inspiration: the New
Testament is true because it is inspired directly by God, while
classical literature is, at best, a poor imitation.

Moral Self-Righteousness
The Old Testament, from Exodus to the second book of
Kings, contains at least as much violence as the Iliad or the
Aeneid. Indeed, the body count in scripture is probably higher
than in Greek epic. So it may come as some surprise that
Blake seems to associate bloodshed exclusively with classical
works and not with the Bible. Solving this puzzle will provide
us with a clearer view of the reasoning he uses to condemn
both Moses morality and Miltons.

25

The following lines from Milton hint at how Old Testament

morality and Greek thought are associated in Blakes mind
with Miltons Puritanism as causes of destruction:
Heaven as a Punisher & Hell as One under
Punishment:
With Laws from Plato & his Greeks to renew the
Trojan Gods,
In Albion; & to deny the value of the Saviours blood
[E 118].
The idea that Heaven could be a punisher, and Hell could be
created for eternal punishment, is fundamentally opposed to
Blakes religion. For him, Christ does not punish; laws of
condemnation are mistakes, attributable to the preChristian
systems of the fallen world, including the Druids, the Greeks,
and those who follow Mosaic law. Milton, like Moses, has
erred by assuming that God would give laws to man and
punish transgressors.
Exactly how the world fell will become one of the main
themes of this book. That the Fall of Man was not, for Blake,
a consequence of disobeying Gods commands is something
we can establish with confidence from the early illuminated
works. In those books, responsibility for the Fall rests not
with Adam and Eve, but with Blakes character Urizen. This
figure is first mentioned by name in the 1793 book Visions of
the Daughters of Albion, where he is introduced with the
address Creator of men! mistaken Demon of heaven (E 48).
His name is thought to derive from a pun on Your Reason,
or perhaps from the Greek , meaning to limitthe
root of the English word horizon.25 He plays a major role in
all of Blakes prophetic books. Though not mentioned by
26

name, characters with Urizens appearance also may be seen

in the illustrations for the Book of Job and for The Divine
Comedy. As the eponymous Book of Urizen describes, this
character is a dark power in Eternity, abstracted /
Brooding secret. Though he strives in battles dire and
spends his time Brooding shut in the deep, even this
character is not portrayed as evil or unforgivable. When he
does act it is in a desperate bid for stability. He declares, I
have sought for a joy without pain, / For a solid without
fluctuation. To avoid the endless changes and Mental
Fight of Eternity, he issues
Laws of peace, of love, of unity:
Of pity, compassion, forgiveness.
Let each chuse one habitation:
His ancient infinite mansion:
One command, one joy, one desire.
One curse, one weight, one measure
One King, one God, one Law [E 72].
It is this well-meant but mistaken strictness that brings about
the fallen world. The Fall is not a literal fall from a high
place, as Miltons Lucifer falls from Heaven, but a closing of
pos?sibilities and perceptions in favor of single vision: one
law and one king for everyone. Instead of the infinite
perceptions of Eternity, the senses close down to our present
limited five. Unable to view the eternal changes that
frightened Urizen, man is reduced to a poor state in which
All the myriads of Eternity:
All the wisdom & joy of life:
Roll like a sea around him,

27

Except what his little orbs

Of sight by degrees unfold [E 77].
Because mans perception is reduced to what his eyeshis
little orbsand the other passive sense-receptors of his
body can take in, he is blind to nearly all of the universe. And
we see that the closing of the senses is directly followed by
the creation of moral law:
The Eye of Man a little narrow orb closd up & dark
Scarcely beholding the great light conversing with
the Void
The Ear, a little shell in small volutions shutting out
All melodies & comprehending only Discord and
Harmony
The Tongue a little moisture fills, a little food it
cloys
A little sound it utters & its cries are faintly heard
Then brings forth Moral Virtue the cruel Virgin
Babylon [E 99]
It is a key point in all of Blakes work, and a key
disagreement with Milton and with Dante, that the Fall is
brought about through perceptual changes, not through the
breaking of moral taboos. The moral code that creates the
possibility of sin is a result of this perceptual change, not the
cause. Our fallen condition is not punishment but error. And
even the error did not occur through evil intention.
To emphasize his disagreement with the theology of Paradise
Lost, Blake retells his own version of the Fall in the first
section of Milton. In this instance, after Urizen has brought

28

about the perceptual narrowing, it is Satan himself who

creates the concept of morality:
He [Satan] created Seven deadly Sins drawing out
his infernal scroll,
Of Moral laws and cruel punishments upon the
clouds of Jehovah
To pervert the Divine voice in its entrance to the
earth
With thunder of war & trumpets sound, with armies
of disease
Punishments & deaths musterd & numberd; Saying
I am God alone
There is no other! [E 103]
The creation of the Seven Deadly Sins, of all moral laws and
the punishments for breaking them, comes from Satan and is
a perversion of the real divine voice. When Miltons
emanation and female counterpart asks, in Milton, Is Virtue
a Punisher? (E 116), she knows that both Moses and Milton
would answer with a confident Yes! This is their error,
which Blake has recalled Milton to overcome. Urizen or
Satan, in giving moral law to our world, also proclaims
himself to be the only God of this world. Blake believes that
most Christians and Deists have been taken in by this
mistake, and are obeying the demiurge of this fallen world
instead of the true God. Such errors are addressed directly in
Jerusalem:
Every Religion that Preaches Vengeance for Sin is
the Religion
of the Enemy & Avenger; and not the Forgiver of

29

Sin, and their

God is Satan, Named by the Divine Name [E 201].

Rational Materialism
Near the end of Milton, the title character declares:
I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of
Inspiration
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 & Newton from Albions
covering
To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with
Imagination
To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration
[E 142]
The returned, corrected Milton has rejected the kind of
reasoned argument that Blake associates with his trio of
Enlightenment devils: Bacon, Locke, and Newton. A rational
explanation of the ways of God to man, Milton has
discovered, is a paradox, since God himself operates through
inspiration and not reason, Johannine revelation and not
Lockean memory. Rational Demonstration, of the type used
by scientists and plodding scholars, is here juxtaposed with
faith in Christ; memory is contrasted with inspiration. Blake
has no patience for those thinkers who rely only on
sense-experience for data, and construct reasonable systems

30

from the memories of repeatable events. Such empiricists

must abstract generalities from actual cases, and they value
the dead theory over the living embodiment. Paradoxically,
then, those who base their systems solely on observation of
nature are the ones who see the least. Because God is
immanent in every speck and particle of the universe, a
refusal to see beyond the passively observable qualities of the
world is a choice to ignore the higher world. Abstractions
such as natural laws, rules of logic, and chains of
cause-and-effect are all derived from such observations.
These rules do not bind God, nor must they restrict people
who see God in the world.
Bacon, Locke, and Newton were careful to confirm in their
writings that they were Christians, but Blake sees their
Enlightenment methods as leading to the shutting-down of
nearly all a persons potential perception, and with it the
chance for salvation. Addressing the Deists in Jerusalem,
Blake writes: the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation to the
intire abrogation of Experimental Theory and many believed
what they saw, and Prophecied of Jesus (E 200). Prophecy
sees through the natural world to God. Empiricism sees only
dead theories.
When Blake called Milton a sort of classical Atheist26 this
is what he was talking about. An Atheist, for Blake, is
someone guilty of worshiping the natural world.27 Such a
person may claim also to be a Christian, but Blake will not
allow this. Blake declares that the natural world we perceive
is only a tiny fraction of the real universe, and the rules of
logic and demonstration are mere abstractions derived from it.
Therefore any poet hoping to explain Gods ways who
employs logical argument rather than direct revelation is
31

using the wrong method. The truth of religion is shown

through embodying Godincarnationand not through
reason.
To review these important points, then: Blakes objections to
Miltons earthly works may be summarized as, first, reliance
on preChristian values derived more from the Greeks than
from Christ; second, the idea that God would ever condemn
anyone to eternal punishment; and third, over-reliance on
reason, with a concomitant undervaluing of inspiration.
It is almost exactly the same list of flaws that Blake wished to
correct in The Divine Comedy. Blake considers Dante, like
Milton, far too significant a poet to dismiss. The greater part
of the Comedy, like the greater part of Paradise Lost, is
inspired poetry of grandeur, and with Blakes help the areas
in which it falls short may be corrected and fulfilled. How
exactly Dante is guilty of these errors will be the subject of
Part III in the present book.
Having once written a poem, Milton, in which he corrects the
work of a great epic poet, Blake does not feel the need to spell
out for us the same corrections in the case of Dante. With
Milton safely in his collected works, Blake can undertake the
task of fulfilling the Comedy through purely visual
meansillustrations without text. The pictures he made to
accompany Dantes poem will accomplish the task of undoing
the classicism, morality, and rational demonstration.

32

2. Views of Blakes Dante, Past and Present

Albert S. Roe published Blakes Illustrations to the Divine

Comedy in 1953. The book was based on his Harvard doctoral
dissertation.
Roe recognized that, like Milton and the illustrations made for
Paradise Lost, Blakes Dante pictures were intended to
interpret or correct the Comedy and not merely illustrate it.
Although he warned that Blakes symbols may have multiple
meanings,28 he went on to regard Blakes system in these
illustrations as more inflexible than it really is. David Fuller
wrote that Roes book makes Blake seem a more formulaic
artist, and a more formulaic thinker, than he actually is.29
One example of a formulaic approach is Roes insistence
that Blake invariably depicted the world in four spiritual
levels. In some written works, Blake does divide the world
into four levels that one may inhabit, depending on ones
spiritual state. These levels are Eden, Beulah, Generation, and
Ulro, with the last of these being the worst, most hellish
condition.30 Roe was on the lookout for indications of this
strict division when he looked at the Dante pictures, to the
point that, when the illustrations fail to make the entire
Comedy fit the scheme that Roe believed they are attempting
to follow, he saw this as a failure on Blakes part: Dantes
progress through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise does not
altogether fit into the Circle of Destiny of Ulro, Generation,
Beulah, and Eden, in spite of all that Blake could do to seek
for correspondence.31

33

A close reading of Blakes collected poetry, however, shows

that he does not insist on strict obedience to this fourfold
system. In Milton, for example, there seem to be at least five
levels or states of humanity. In addition to Eden, Blake names
Beulah, Alla, Al-Ulro, and Or-Ulro (E 134). Nor is Ulro the
only name that Blake gives to the underworld. Lower regions
of torment are named Udan-Anan (E 115) or Benython (E
127) in Milton, and in the unfinished manuscript for The Four
Zoas, the underworld is called Entuthon Benithon (E 330). In
later chapters of the present book I will show that movement
from an upper world to a lower world is a theme that Blake
used throughout his career, but that he never restricted
himself to a single version of the levels involved or method of
how this fall was achieved. His early Book of Thel, and his
series of illustrations for the Book of Job, both address the
movement between higher and lower spiritual states, but
neither insists on the strict adherence to the fourfold cycle that
Roe wished to see in the Dante pictures. One of the key points
I wish to make is that Blakes themes are worked out in living
variations; that the events and locations of his vision occur as
constellations of concepts and not as formulas that we can use
as an invariable roadmap for interpretation. Seeing his system
as fixed throughout his work goes against the fluid spirit of
his philosophy, in which changes of state are necessary
events.
Despite his sharp eye for evidence of Blakes system in the
illustrations, Roe did overlook cases in which the artist has
introduced meaningful differences from Dantes text. The
watercolor for the first canto of the Inferno, for example, is
one in which Blake has changed the setting in such an
obvious fashion that we are clearly alerted to changes in the
message. Whereas Dantes description of the opening scene
34

describes a tangled forest in a valley so deep the rising sun

cant penetrate it, Blake has shown a park-like setting opening
onto the ocean. Inexplicably, Roe wrote that this complete
transformation of the scene follows very closely the
description given in the poem.32
I differ most from Roe in my view of Blakes overall goal in
making the illustrations. Where Roe saw Blake motivated
only by the urge to criticize, I see a partnership, which Blake
has kindly offered Dante in order to complete the mission
that, in Blakes view, has not quite been achieved. In Milton,
Blake allows the eponymous poet to correct his errors and
return to Eden in good stead. With generosity and
forgiveness, Blake has fulfilled the promise that (he felt)
Milton didnt live up to in life, and undone the threat that a
great work such as Paradise Lost might lead the reader astray.
In Roes interpretation, Blake does not allow Dante the same
victory:
The series which begins with man running from the
terrors of the Fallen World to find aid in the person
of the Divine Humanity, ends with the Female Will
enthroned on the vegetated world. The fact that,
while Dante concludes on a note of triumph, Blake
does not do so, is significant evidence of Blakes
disagreement with Dantes vision.33
In Roes view, the illustrations to the Comedy serve only as
negation. Blake leaves Dante, and his readers, in a fallen and
unfulfilled condition. The great journey of the poem becomes
a series of missteps and aimlessness:

35

In Blakes opinion, as we may reconstruct it from

the designs, Dante set out upon the pathway leading
from the Fall, through regeneration, to salvation, but
never reached his goal. He wandered around in Ulro
and Generation for a considerable time, eventually
he obtained a tentative foothold in Beulah and even
seemed at times about to achieve the illumination of
Eden, only to slip backward. [F]or a time
regeneration seems imminent, but at the critical
point error reasserts itself and the circle has to start
over again.34
My own analysis of Blakes work allows us to see that his
version of the Comedy does, in fact, end in triumph. We will
see that Blake has undertaken this great work precisely for the
purpose of giving Dante the salvation he couldnt quite reach
by himself.
In the late 1980s two essays appeared calling for a rethinking
of Roes analysis. David Fuller and Rodney M. Baine felt that
Blakes relation to Dantes thought was more subtle than the
full-scale rejection Roe perceived, and suggested that we take
another look. Fuller, in particular, went against the
mainstream by writing: Modern Blake scholarship has taken
these illustrations to be more highly and continuously
interpretative. They are, in my view, much more literal than
the modern reading allows.35
Roes thesis was that the illustrations are almost entirely
critical. Fuller offered the antithesisthat they are for the
most part literal. I hope that I may reach a synthesis from
their views, and posit that the majority of the pictures are both
literal and interpretative. Unlike Roe, I do not think that we
36

must rename the characters in the illustrations after the

figures in Blakes earlier work. We may see Beatrice, for
example, as Beatrice, and not force her to become Vala in
order to read Blakes meaning. I agree with Fuller that the
events and characters remain those of Dantes narrative. Yet
this does not preclude their becoming interpretative as well,
visually remade in such a way as to add new and Blakean
messages.
It is instructive to note that early viewers of Blakes
engravings for the Book of Job saw them as faithful
illustrations, with none of Blakes own philosophy inserted. It
took decades for careful observers to note that the artist had
indeed remade the story. Without adding or subtracting any
significant event, Blake had made the ancient narrative his
own. Wicksteed, Damon, Lindberg, and Raine have all made
it clear that the Job pictures use the events of the biblical
narrative to tell a story that is faithful to Blakes own views.36
The artist has taken advantage of the fact that his viewers
already know the tale to show them the real meaning, as
only he has seen it. The fact that the character Job is widely
known to begin in one condition, to fall, and to gain
restoration through direct vision of God, means that the
structure of the story needs no revision from Blake. The
characters, too, remain themselvesJob is Job, the false
friends are false friends. It is the why and the how of the story
that Blake amends. It is exactly this approach that we will
discover in the Dante pictures as well.
In Blakes version, Job begins his story in a comfortable and
(he believes) godly position. The first illustration shows Job
and his family seated reverently, praising Jehovah. The
viewer of the scene has no way to know that Jobs state here
37

is far from ideal. Like Job himself, we require an education

before we can see how Job is in error and what true worship
consists of. In The Divine Comedy, Dantes story begins more
abruptly than Jobs, with his complacency behind him and his
fall already underway. When the poem opens, the pilgrim
Dante has already lost the confidence he had in his earlier
state and has woken to the danger of his ways. Like Job, and
like the viewer, he requires the direct experience of a fall and
the vision of God before he may recover, but when he finally
rises again he is in a new statea true vita nuova.
Blake used a number of methods to tell Jobs story in a way
that is both faithful to the events of the text and original in its
interpretation. Uniquely in his career, he designed elaborate
borders surrounding the illustrations, in the manner of
medieval books of hours, with symbolic objects and with text.
The words he has chosen are all from the Bible, but not all
from the Book of Jobthe selection of Bible verses shows
that we are to see a Christian message in the story. The story
has also been reset into a landscape that bears little
resemblance to the ancient Near East. The presence of a
Gothic cathedral and Stonehenge-like dolmens have provided
clues to scholars as to Blakes purpose in these pictures.37
Equally important perhaps, and so far little noticed by
scholars, is an overall graphic composition that gives
symbolic meaning to the design of the pictures themselves.
More than half of the 21 engravings have a triangular
composition that refers to the completeness of the Trinity, a
symbol that was common in the work of Neoplatonic or
alchemical writers such as Robert Fludd.38 Jacob Boehme
and Paracelsus, two of the very few writers whom Blake
names as influences, also used triangles as religious signs.39
In the Job prints, the triangular composition appears at the
38

beginning of the series, is seen crumbling away as Jobs life

falls apart, and is restored in the final engravings with an
important difference: the later triangles in each case are
superimposed with extended arms, like those of Jesus on the
cross. These prove that Jobs restored religion is the true one
(fig. 1).
The Dante illustrations use fewer methods to remake the
message of the pictures. Blake employed no border on the
engravings. The words that remain on the pencil sketches, as I
mentioned, seem destined to disappearnone remain in the
engraved illustrations. Nor do I detect any overall
compositional schemes, like the triangles in the Job series, at
work in the illustrations for the Comedy. It may be that
following the completion of the Job pictures and several sets
of illustrations to works of Milton, Blake felt confident he
could accomplish his reinterpretive goal in a simpler manner.
As we will see in the fourth part of the present book, only a
few of the pictures include elements that are not mentioned in
Dantes text. These added signs will provide important clues
to our reading of Blakes message, but for the most part Blake
makes his points through subtle changes in emphasis or
unexpected visual decisions. His depiction of the pilgrim
Dante as young and androgynous, for example, completely
unlike the traditional appearance of the poet (which Blake
knew) makes clear the new role that Blake has imagined for
the author.
To bring the Comedy into line with his own religious beliefs,
then, Blake leaves the events of the story almost entirely the
same and employs the same characters. He does not, pace
Roe, force the settings or the individuals depicted into strict
conformity with his own earlier work. Nonetheless, through
39

purely visual means, he does manage to join in partnership

with his Italian peer to give Dantes great poem a message
that was impossible to imagine in the early fourteenth
century. To my knowledge, my book is the first to offer an
original interpretation of Blakes intentions in the entire series
since Roe published in 1953.
My explications of the illustrations will be based for the most
part on two related points, one theological and one literary.
Blakes theology explained Gods presence in the universe in
a way that Christians of Dantes time could not have
imagined. God, in The Divine Comedy, exists in relation to
the world very much like the One does for Plotinus. God is
the sum of all ideals, and from him emanates first the
aetherial space of the stars and planets, and, through them, the
material world of the earth. Though the existence of our
world is dependent on God, we are, in our imperfection, far
from Heaven and Gods ideal. Beginning with Nicholas of
Cusa in the fifteenth century, a school of thought grew up that
emphasized Gods immanence in the universe far more than
would have been acceptable to St. Augustine or Thomas
Aquinas. Whereas the earlier theologians had been careful to
show Gods transcendence from our world, the new approach
claimed that the world of time and space is not a separate
realm from Gods presence. God is present in his entirety in
every point of space. This way of thinking about immanence
continued, sometimes in spite of official condemnation,
through the century between Cusanus and Jacob Boehme,
who included this concept in his own visionary Christian
theology. William Blake, we know, read and admired
Boehme.

40

Blake, who famously saw a World in a Grain of Sand (E

490), rejected Dantes detailed theological explanations of the
ontological separateness of God and our world. It is a central
tenet for Blake that God exists in the human breast (E 38)
and that our separation from him is due only to the narrowed
state of our perceptions. This is the first of the basic errors in
the Comedy that he worked to correct in his illustrations.

41

Figure 1. Jobs Sacrifice, from the Illustrations of the Book

of Job, 1825; engraving, design: 19.1 14.7 cm, leaf size:
42.1 32.5 cm (collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013
William Blake Archive; used by permission).

42

The second error that Blake perceived derives from the first.
Dante makes extensive use of the inexpressibility topos, the
literary convention of describing something by saying that it
is indescribable. Over and over, especially in the Paradiso,
Dante can only write of the wonders of Heaven that they
cannot be written about, that they are far beyond the powers
of humans to understand or even, after his trip through
Heaven, to remember properly. The use of this topos was, for
Blake, in need of correction, if the Comedy was to become a
truly prophetic work. As I will describe in the third part of
this book, Blake believed that it is not only possible for us to
view God, but that art is precisely for that purpose. A true
poet, he writes, is one who makes God manifest for others.
Where Dante falls short, through his more traditional view of
God as above and beyond human perception, Blake will
kindly supply the missing vision, making the Comedy into the
living prophecy he knows it should be. Through his
collaboration, or dialectic, with Dante, the immanent nature
of God with us is shown to the viewer, who thereby
reenacts the trip of the pilgrim Dante, and achieves the goal
that readers have been falling short of since the fourteenth
century. As the final work of a dying visionary, one could
imagine nothing more triumphant.

43

Part II: English Dante

3. The Comedy Reaches England

German art historian Johann Winckelmann (17171768),

having read in Montesquieus De lesprit des lois that climate
determines culture, claimed that while British weather could
produce a Shakespeare, it could never come up with a
Michelangelo.1 British art lovers, under?standably, were less
than eager to embrace this idea. Already from the middle of
the seventeenth century, when a relatively peaceful period
began in Europe, those Britons who could afford it were
beginning to look outward to the continent, and especially to
Italy, with the declared goal of raising the artistic culture of
the British Isles. The Grand Tour, even when it was enjoyed
as an extended vacation before the responsibilities of
adulthood began, was conducted with the stated purpose of
educating ones taste and manners.
Those who took the tournearly always aristocratic, English
and maleemphasized the goal of self-improvement. Edward
Gibbon, for instance, in his memoirs, wrote, According to
the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel
completes the education of an English gentleman.2 That the
skeptical Gibbon would tentatively offer reason as
justi?fication for the tour probably results from the influence
of John Locke, whose theories of knowledge had been called

44

into service as a theoretical underpinning for the trip. If, as

the philosopher argued, all knowledge is the result of sense
experience, then direct experience of the atmospheres and
artifacts of the classical and Renaissance eras would have a
more beneficial effect than an Oxford or Cambridge
education alone. Though it might be impossible to improve
Englands grey weather, the young man who spent a year or
two in the cultural climate of Rome and Florence could
escape Winckelmanns bleak forecast.
The application of Lockes epistemology to the benefits of
travel encouraged the painter Jonathan Richardson
(16651745) to publish two books that became popular
companion volumes for Grand Tourists. Two Discourses
(1719) and An Account of Some of the Statues, Bas-Reliefs,
Drawings, and Pictures in Italy (1722), weighing down the
luggage of many British gentlemen in Italy, influenced the
taste and buying patterns of art collectors for years to come.3
The first of these volumes became most educated Britons
introduction to the work of Dante Alighieri.
Two Discourses included selections from the Inferno and
compared Dante to the already famous Michelangelo. From
the beginning, then, British interest in the Comedy was linked
to the visual arts. Richardson also described a sculpture, at
that time attributed to Michelangelo, that depicted the story of
Ugolino and his sons from canto 33 of the Inferno. The
association of Michelangelo with Dante contributed to later
interest in the poet by Flaxman, Fuseli, and others. Blake,
who considered Michelangelo to be among the finest of all
artists,4 may well have felt the same. The idea that
Michelangelo had illustrated a manuscript of the Comedy,

45

which had only recently been lost at sea, also prompted

artistic imaginations.
The episode that Richardson chose to translate is one of the
most horrifying in the Comedy. In canto 33, Dante tells the
story of an Italian nobleman, Ugolino, who is imprisoned in a
tower with his children. Left to die in the sealed tower and
overcome by hunger, Ugolino resorts to cannibalism. The
horror and pathos of this episode appealed to the type of
British taste that later gave rise to the Gothic novel, in which
stories of doomed noblemen and Ital?ian castles figure
prominently. Richardsons decision to translate the Ugolino
episode, rather than a more cheerful narrative from the
Purgatorio, or a theological discourse from the Paradiso,
seems to have determined the image that British people had of
Dante for years to come. Decades before the full Comedy was
translated, British painters were exhibiting paintings of
Ugolino and his doomed children to public acclaim. No less a
light than Joshua Rey?nolds, founder of the Royal Academy
of Painting, showed his version of the Ugolino scene at the
Academy in 1773.5 This work was reproduced in mezzotint
and published by ambitious businessman John Boydell,
ensuring its popularity throughout England.
The only other scene from the Comedy to make an impression
on the public at this time was from canto 5 of the Inferno, in
which the lovers Paolo and Francesca are shown caught in the
whirlwinds that symbolize their overwhelming passion.
Blakes friend Henry Fuseli was making drawings of
Dante-related themes as early as the 1770s, including views
of the doomed lovers. He exhibited paintings at the Royal
Academy based either on canto 5 or canto 33 in three

46

different years, and at least one of these works was made

widely known through its engraved version.6
Despite growing interest in selected scenes of the Comedy,
translations into English were slow in coming. William
Huggins (c. 16961761) is said to have completed a full
translation of the Comedy in 1760, but only 21 lines of it were
published, and the rest was lost. Huggins did succeed in
communicating the enthusiasm for Dante to his friend Tobias
Smollet, as well as to the artist William Hogarth. At least one
critic claims to see the influence of the Inferno in Hogarths
late work.7
Writer and patron William Hayley (17451820) probably
learned of Dante through Richardsons Discourses. He
translated the first three cantos of the Inferno in his Essay on
Epic Poetry and composed a Dantesque poem called The
Triumphs of Temper.8 Hayley encouraged John Flaxmans
enthusiasm for the Comedy and later became a patron of
William Blake, with famously mixed results.
In 1782 Charles Rogers published the first English translation
of the entire Inferno. This version was in blank verse and was
dedicated to Sir Edward Walpole, the elder brother of Horace
Walpole. Though Rogers wrote that his intention was to
translate Dante as faithfully and as exactly as possible, his
critics felt that he did not succeed in this goal. Toynbee later
judged that the Rogers version while entirely devoid of any
spark of poetry, has not even the merit of being faithful. It
seems not to have found a wide readership.9
Finally in 1802 the Rev. Henry Boyd published the first
translation of the complete Comedy, along with historical
47

notes on Dantes life and times. Boyds version was criticized

by Toynbee as a paraphrase, in which it is often difficult to
recognise Dante at all, but it did serve to widen the poets
popularity in the British world of letters. Blake took it
seriously enough to annotate William Hayleys copy with the
caustic comments that I referred to above.
The Rev. Henry Francis Cary published his translation of the
Inferno in two volumes in 1805 and 1806. Though the
Monthly Review praised it as the best of the Englished Dantes,
it didnt sell well, so that when Cary was ready to publish the
remaining parts of the Comedy, in 1814, he did so at his own
expense. For financial reasons he chose to publish the book in
three volumes but in tiny print. The text block on each page
measures only 75 by 48 millimeters. This caused the Monthly
Review to grumble: Those of our readers who value their
eyes more than their purse will scarcely thank Mr. Cary for
the microscopical typography with which he has been pleased
to afflict them.10 Again, the book did not sell well, and the
translation only gained popularity a few years later due to a
chance meeting. In September 1817 Cary was in
Littlehampton, on the south coast of England, while Samuel
Taylor Cole?ridge was stay?ing with friends nearby. On one
of his long walks along the seaside, Coleridge saw Cary
striding toward him on the same path, reciting Homer to his
young son. Coleridge, intrigued by this cultured apparition,
said, Sir, yours is a face I should know, and introduced
himself. As Rich?ard Holmes tells the story: Both father and
son were amazed the following morning when Coleridge
appeared on the beach, miraculously able to recite long
passages from the trans?lation by heart, and what was more,
recalling the parallel sections of the Italian original.11

48

The meeting became a turning point for the history of Dante

in England. Coleridge persuaded publishers Taylor and
Hessey to reissue Carys translation in a larger, more readable
edition, which became the standard British Dante for the next
fifty years. The poet also praised Dante and Carys translation
in his popular lecture series in 1818. Newspaper reviewers
picked up the theme, and henceforth the claims of the
translator of Dante to literary distinction were universally
admitted.12 Keats carried the miniature three-volume set
with him on his walking tour of Scotland that summer, the
only books he made room for in his travellers sack.13 He
may have chosen them in part for their portability, as he wrote
to a friend that they will go into the aptest corner of his
luggage, but he also apparently read with attention, because
the copy he carried, now in the Yale University Library, is
full of his notes and underlinings.14 Shelley had Carys
Inferno as early as 1805, and he had the next two volumes
delivered to him in Italy.15
Like Reynolds and Fuseli, William Blake became aware of
scenes from the Inferno before the entire work was available
in English. His earliest Dante-related work is a design in the
top margin of a page in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
made in 1790. This design is clearly based on the episode of
Ugolino, showing the chained nobleman flanked by his
children.
The text of the Marriage doesnt mention Ugolino
specifically, so it seems likely, as Paley suggests, that Blake
has borrowed the motif to reflect the printed line The Giants
who formed this world into its sensual existence and now
seem to live in it in chains.16 Using the character of
Ugolino to represent The Giants who formed this world
49

indicates that Blake was not concerned with the episode as

Dante relates it, beyond its obvious pathos. In fact all the
artists who painted Ugolino around this time in England seem
to have portrayed the nobleman solely as a victim, and
ignored the ambiguity that is clear in Dantes telling of the
story. Dante does, after all, put Ugolino in Hell for his own
sins, not those of his captors.
Paley writes: At that time, Ugolino was seen as a victim of
clerical and political tyranny, Bastilled in the Hunger Tower
like more recent victims. The fact that the nobleman was
perhaps not deserving of our sympathy was not pointed out
until 1824, by Hazlitt.17
Blake again used Ugolino as a motif portraying undeserved
suffering in his collection of emblems, For Children: The
Gates of Paradise (1793). Plate 12 of this work shows a
grouping of figures almost identical to the decoration in the
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and bears the inscription:
Does thy God O Priest take such vengeance as this? (fig. 2).
It may be that, even before he was well acquainted with the
Inferno, Blake was anticipating one of the main criticisms he
would level at Dante in the future: that God in fact does not
require vengeance.18

50

Figure 2. Does thy God O Priest take such vengeance as

this? from For Children: The Gates of Paradise, 1793;
etching and engraving, leaf size: 12.7 10.2 cm (Lessing J.
Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress; 2013
William Blake Archive; used by permission).

Blake probably became acquainted with the whole Comedy

through Boyds 1785 translation, several years after it was

51

published. Keynes calculates that Blake read and annotated

the book in about 1800.19 Paley surmises that it was Hayley
who introduced Blake to the parts of the Comedy that werent
already well-knownthat is, nearly all of it except the
Ugolino episode.20 Despite their later falling-out, Hayley in
this instance seems to have provided an important inspiration
to Blakes work.
Hayley, in addition to providing material support and advice
(mostly welcome) to Flaxman, William Cowper, Blake, and
other artists and poets, was himself a widely read writer. He
had published several essays and epistles before his 1781
Triumphs of Temper made him famous throughout England.21
This book-length poem owed a great deal to the influence of
Dante,22 so it comes as no surprise to learn that when he
commissioned Blake to paint a series of portraits of famous
writers for his study, he included Dante among their number.
The portrait of Dante that Blake produced for his patron is
based on an engraving of Raphaels fresco portrait in the
Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.23 It shows Dante with
his familiar laurel crown, Florentine cap, and prominent nose
(figs. 3, 4, 5). He also wears a severe expression, suitable to a
moralist. Blake added to the right of the Dante portrait, on the
same panel, a painting of Ugolino and four children, chained
under a heavy stone arch. We can be confident, therefore, that
Blake was fully aware of traditional depictions of Dantes
appearance. In Part IV I will address in detail how Blake
departed from this traditional view of Dantes appearance
when he undertook his original illustrations.
Other than paintings and engravings of Ugolino, did Blake
know of other illustrations to the Comedy? It seems that few
52

were available to him. In its obituary of Blake, dated August

18, 1827, the Literary Gazette reports that despite his poverty,
Blake owned a copy of The Divine Comedy in Italian,
published by Alessandro Vellutello. This publisher issued six
editions of the work from 1544 to 1596. Four of these editions
are folio-sized, and all include anonymously produced
engravings for each canto. It is not known which edition
Blake owned, or where that copy is today.

Figure 5. Dante Alighieri, detail, c. 18003; pen and ink

and tempera on canvas (City of Manchester Art Galleries,
Manchester, England).

53

Figure 3. Raphael, portrait of Dante, detail of The

Disputa, fresco, c. 150910 (Stanza della Segnatura,
Vatican Palace, Scala/Art Resource, New York).

54

Figure 4. Anonymous, Dantes Aligherius, after Raphael,

16001699; engraving, 20.6 14.3 cm (British Museum,
The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, New
York).

Other illustrated sets existed but were unavailable to Blake.

Botticellis drawings of the story, now divided between
Berlin and the Vatican, were in the Duke of Hamiltons
collection until 1819, and it is possible that Fuseli saw them
there, but there is no record of Blakes having such an
opportunity. The Botticelli pictures were not reproduced until
1887.24 The only other fully illustrated printed edition, with
engravings attributed to Bacco Baldini, dates from 1481 and
55

is a very rare book. A reproduction of one of the Baldini

illustrations was printed in William Young Ottleys Inquiry
into the Origin and Early History of Engraving (two vols.,
London, 1816), but its design bears no resemblance to
Blakes picture of the same scene. Numerous unique
hand-illuminated manuscripts of the Comedy also exist, but
there is no record of Blakes having seen any of them. Paley
concludes that Blake no doubt consulted Vellutello from
time to time, but his main source must have been the Cary
translation.25 For an artist who placed supreme importance
on his own imagination, a lack of visual models was no
hindrance.
Only one contemporary set of illustrations was available to
Blake. One of his closest friends, the sculptor John Flaxman
(17551826), after working for Josiah Wedgwood as a
modeler, set out for Italy in 1787 and began a series of
illustrations for works of epic poetry. His neoclassical style
was well suited to pictures of the Iliad and the Odyssey, being
more than a little reminiscent of ancient Greek ceramics. One
wonders what Blake thought of such a classical approach
being applied to Dante. If Milton, in Blakes view, had been
wrong to adopt a Greek or Roman style, Flaxman seems
equally guilty in forcing the style of Greek red-figure vases
onto the medieval poet.
It may be that friendship made Blake refrain from expressing
such criticism. In his private notebook, unknown to Flaxman,
Blake did write that his friend had stolen from him when
creating these designs: how much of his Homer & Dante he
will allow to be mine I do not know as he went far enough off
to publish them even to Italy. but the Public will know &
Posterity will know (E 572).
56

Flaxman drew his set of over 100 illustrations in Italy, and

they were published in 1793, seven years before Blake could
have read the complete Comedy. It is therefore difficult to see
how Flaxman could have plagiarized from Blake. The details
of this issue lie outside the scope of the present study, but the
existence of Flaxmans prints shows that one set of
illustrations to the full Comedy was known to Blake when he
began his own project.
Multiple sources show that Blake used Carys translation of
the Comedy, and found it superior to all others.26 The
Literary Gazette states that Carys book was open on Blakes
table at the time of his death. At some point Blake met Cary
and may have learned more about Dante in conversation,
although no records remain of their talks. Its clear that the
eccentric artist made a positive impression on the translator,
however, because Cary later bought a watercolor from
Blakes widow, when she was in financial difficulty.27

4. The Making of Blakes Illustrations

Blake had troubled relationships with his patrons. The clarity

of his artistic vision could easily be interpreted as
stubbornness, particularly when the man commissioning the
work felt that Blake ought to change his manner of working
for practical, financial reasons. No such difficulties occurred
with John Linnell, who became Blakes last and best support.

57

Linnell was a young painter, the son of a Bloomsbury

picture-dealer and print-seller.28 This background perhaps
allowed him to feel sympathy for the creative artist in Blake,
while also having a more solid grasp of the means of making
money from ones art. He first encountered Blake in 1818,
when Linnell was 35 years old, and soon commissioned the
older artist to assist him in preparing an engraving. It is not
clear how much of the work Blake did on this print, but
Linnell seems to have paid him generously. Soon the two
were visiting picture galleries and theaters together. The
appearance in Blakes life of this younger artist must have
been invigorating. Blakes career as an engraver had
stagnated, partly as a result of changing fashions in the art
that called for new, less linear techniques, of a type Blake
disliked. It was thanks to Linnell that he suddenly discovered
new buyers for his older work and found himself being
introduced to some of the most famous artists of the day,
including John Constable and Sir Thomas Lawrence. We can
imagine that Blake was less impressed by these lumi?naries
than he was pleased to be the center of attention of a group of
young artists, who regarded Blake as a sort of prophet and
named themselves The Antients. Several of this group went
on to become well-known artists, including George
Richmond, who was present at Blakes death. Richmonds
son William Blake Richmond became a successful painter
and professor at the Royal Academy.
Linnells assistance didnt always lead to untroubled projects.
When in 1819 he persuaded Robert John Thorton to
commission illustrations for an edition of Virgils Eclogues,
Thorton was unhappy with Blakes wood engravings,
considering them too rough. In the end he was persuaded to
include the prints in his book, but did so with a disclaimer
58

making it clear that he didnt like them. Fortunately other

kind acts had less troubled results, as when Linnell
per?suaded the Royal Academy to make a payment of 25
pounds to Blake as an act of charity.
The commissions that Linnell himself made were tailored to
suit the older artists eccentricities, and resulted in some of
Blakes finest work. After seeing the watercolor illustrations
to the Book of Job that Blake had made for Thomas Butts,
Linnell proposed to commission an engraved set of the same
designs. The two artists drew up a Memorandum of
Agreement for the project on March 25, 1823. Blake was left
to proceed with the work as he saw fit.
In 1824, with the Book of Job illustrations complete, artist
and patron considered their next project. Linnells biographer
wrote that it was the younger man who suggested Dante as
the subject:
The way it came about was this. Although the Job
had been paid for, Linnell continued to give him
money weekly. Blake said: I do not know how I
shall ever repay you. Linnell replied: I do not
want you to repay me. I am only too glad to be able
to serve you. What I would like, however, if you do
anything for me, is that you should make some
designs for Dantes Inferno, Purgatorio, and
Paradiso.29
Although this conversation is given as reported speech, we
should note that it was published 68 years after the event, and,
as G.E. Bentley notes, This dialogue sounds invented. It
would be interesting to know how the two men settled on the
59

subject; given Linnells closeness to Blake at this time, it

seems unlikely that he would suggest a project about which
Blake was not enthusiastic. And since the terms of the
agreement virtually guarantee that the patron would see no
financial return on his investment,30 we can be reasonably
certain that the Comedy was not chosen as a subject for
commercial reasons. We also know that the two men spent a
great deal of time together in the mid1820s, sometimes
discussing art and literature with other members of the
Antients until late at night.31 Linnell, therefore, would have
had a clear idea of what was on Blakes mind and what he
would be choosing to work on even if he hadnt been under
contract. Even if the idea to illustrate Dante did come from
Linnell, then, there is no reason for us to regard the
commission as something for which Blake felt less than full
enthusiasm.
The terms Linnell gave Blake were characteristically
generous. He arranged to pay 21. or 31. a week, as he
wanted money, Blake doing as little or as much as he liked in
return. Most importantly for the continued good relations of
patron and artist, Linnell requested the set of pictures without
imposing any iconographic guidelines, so that Blake was free
to interpret Dantes story as he wished. Linnell gave Blake a
folio volume of drawing paper and complete freedom.32
Blake seems to have begun the project with enormous
ambition. The engravings he completed were more than twice
the size of the Job prints and more than four times larger than
Flaxmans Dante pictures. They are also more elaborately
cross-hatched than Flaxmans, with a detail that would have
been expensive to engrave and expensive to print.33 Only
seven of the engravings were begun, however, and even these
60

were left in an incomplete state. The artist gave far more time
and attention to the watercolor illustrations, which were not
mentioned in the contract with Linnell. Did Blake intend to
translate all of these paintings into prints? Its not possible to
say. Some of the more finished paintings are colored far
beyond what would be required for a preparatory sketch or
study. In comparison, the watercolor and ink sketches that he
had made some years earlier, as preparation to an engraved
set of illustrations for Robert Blairs The Grave, are pale, and
would have lost much less by being translated into black and
white. The Grave pictures were commissioned by a far more
businesslike publisher, however, and it appears that Blake
was enjoying the more relaxed relationship he had with
Linnell to create unique and beautiful paintings that were not
exactly a part of his contractual obligation.
Whether he chose to concentrate on watercolors as fully
colored studies, or whether he was painting because the
carving of copper plates was too strenuous for his weakened
physical state, his choice allowed him to produce a few works
that are as vibrant as anything he ever painted. Anthony Blunt
compares the rare technique of the more finished watercolors,
which builds up touches of unmixed color, to Czannes late
watercolor paintings.34 Paley notes that even in his final
months, Blake was still extending his extraordinary technical
mastery.35
One member of the Antients, Samuel Palmer, records finding
him working in bed, and provides us with a moving portrait of
the artist:
On Saturday, 9th October 1824, Mr. Linnell called
and went with me to Mr. Blake. We found him lame
61

in bed, of a scalded foot (or leg). There, not inactive,

though sixty-seven years old, but hard working on a
bed covered with books sat he up like one of the
Antique patriarchs, or a dying Michael Angelo. Thus
and there was he making in the leaves of a great
book (folio) the sublimest designs from his (not
superior) Dante.36

62

Part III: Blakes Criticism of Dante

5. Marginal Note to Boyd

Let us now examine in detail Blakes critical statements about

Dante. It is possible to give too much weight to these
comments, especially because we have so few recorded
statements from Blake on this subject. Still, I believe that
using each of these criticisms as a point from which to
explicate the poets differences will shine light on the
question of why Blake chose to illustrate the Comedy. In the
long run, such an analysis will allow us to see their many
points of agreement, as well.
Of the criticisms known to us that Blake made of Dante, the
earliest and perhaps most frequently quoted is this:
Dante was a Fool or his Translator was Not That is
Dante was Hired or Tr was Not It appears to Me that
Men are hired to Run down Men of Genius under
the Mask of Translators, but Dante gives too much
to Caesar he is not a Republican Dante was an
Emperors <a Caesars> Man Luther also left the
Priest & joind the Soldier [E 634]
We find this note penciled into the margin of volume 1 of
Henry Boyds translation of The Divine Comedy. The strong

63

language (Dante was a Fool) and overall negative tone may

lead us to believe that Blake is here mounting an all-out
attack on Dante and the Comedy. A careful examination of
the context and content of the note, however, will show that
the criticism is carefully measured. Most of it is not aimed at
Dante but at his translator. In fact, it seems clear that in the
battle of Hired men versus Men of Genius, Blake
includes Dante among the geniuses. We must also keep in
mind the historical moment at which this comment was made.
Blakes ideas about politics and the possibilities of earthly
revolution changed over time, and it may be that in 1825,
when he began the series of illustrations to Dante, he would
not have written the note in the same terms.

An Emperors <a Caesars> Man

In or about 1800, a quarter-century before he began his final
series of illustrations, Blake held in his hands a copy of
volume 1 of Henry Boyds translation of The Divine Comedy.
He crossed out several phrases in the long introductory essay,
intending to reverse Boyds meaning in those paragraphs. He
also wrote several brief but expressive notes in the margins.
These few emendations contain points that are useful to our
present purpose. They remind us that throughout his early
career Blake grappled with issues of patronage and of an
artists duty to the world of politics. His strong opinions about
a true poets way of writing and duties to the world were an
integral part of his poetic message. We shall see in this
chapter that Blake was very aware of Dantes history with
patronage, politics, and the processes of poetry.

64

When we examine Blakes marginal notes we must be careful

to remember their context. However applicable they may be
to our wider analysis, each was written as a rejoinder to
specific words in a specific text. Blakes words form an
antithesis that occurs in the terms of the thesis it follows. In
the case of the memos written in the margins of Boyds
translation, we should note first that they were not written
next to the words of Dante himself, but on the pages of the
long introductory essay written by Boyd. If we imagine
picking up the volume that Blake annotated, opening the
cover and beginning at the beginning, we will see that almost
the first thing to confront us is the following dedication:
FREDERICK, LORD BISHOP OF DERRY, AND
EARL OF BRISTOL.
My Lord,
YOUR Lordships great condescension, in offering
your Patronage to the ensuing Work, stamps it with
a value, which, otherwise, I am afraid, it would
hardly possess. Consonant to your Lordships
EPISCOPAL conduct, it proves your attention even
to the humblest claims of industry and application.
To enlightened eyes, it even marks the extensive
views of the PATRIOT; however minute the present
object of your attention may seem to vulgar
observation. The minds of the multitude are very
inadequate to comprehend the liberality of your
Lordships motives: they cannot see, what to you is
so evident, that public spirit depends upon the
enlargement of sentiment, which can neither be
acquired, nor preserved, unless by a due attention to
65

the interests of Learning, and particularly to the

Belles Lettres.
However unworthy of your Lordships Patronage
the following Work may appear, I hope the
INSTANCE at least may awaken other competitors,
far better entitled to your protection, than
YOUR LORDSHIPS
Most obedient,
And grateful
Humble Servant,
HENRY BOYD1
The obsequiousness of this opening seems almost designed to
raise Blakes ire. Boyd here implies that the worth of The
Divine Comedy (or at least of its translation) depends on the
patronage of the aristocrat who paid for it, not the talents of
the poet who produced it. At this early stage Blake bites his
tongueor penciland makes no marks on the page. By
page 35, though, he is crossing out phrases he disagrees with,
and on page 37 he begins writing contrary opinions in the
margins. On page 118 he opens fire on the translator, in the
note I quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
I will return to this memo in my discussion of Dantes
political views. For now, Id like to take note of Blakes use
of the term Hired, a word that highlights the problems of
patronagethe means by which Dante, Boyd, and Blake were
all forced to make their livings.
Blake acquired the book in which he wrote this note from
William Hayley (17451820), who at that time was Blakes
66

sole patron. We have met Hayley before, in Part II, in which

we saw that he had done his part to popularize Dantes work
in England. He was a successful writer and a patron of the
arts,2 and his first public success was a mixture of the two
pursuitshe wrote his Epistle on Painting as moral support
for the artist George Romney. He gave generous financial
assistance and advicemuch of it welcometo Romney, the
poet William Cowper, and the sculptor Flaxman, Blakes
friend. When Hayley met Blake, probably through Flaxman,
and offered his patronage, it seemed at first to promise a
happy arrangement for everyone. Blake was relieved of
having to work as a journeyman engraver in London, and he
hoped to have the freedom to pursue his vision. He moved to
Felpham, a seaside village, to be near his patron. Perhaps it
was Hayleys greater worldly success that made him feel free
to dispense well-meant advice to Blake concerning how he
could live more comfortably from his art. Blake, never a
person to follow another mans artistic system, quickly felt
that he was being pressured to become a less inspired, more
conventional painter, and fell into difficulties with the
generous Hayley.
Blakes work from this period and shortly after makes clear
how much he was troubled by the relationship with his
patron. It was probably with Hayley in mind that he penned
the aphorism Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies (E
98). And at this time he began the epic poem Milton, in which
the thinly disguised Hayley causes inspiration to fall into the
world of materialism. In Milton and later in Jerusalem, Blake
seems to abbreviate Hayleys name to Hyle, the Greek word
for matter, to portray him as a materialist in opposition to
the higher, inspired realm. So we see that at the moment he
wrote the note about who was Hired, Dante or the
67

translator, issues of patronage and artistic freedom were much

on his mind. The groveling dedication by Boyd to his patron
would have made it clear from almost the first page that this
translator was on the side of those who do the hiring.
Dante also lived by patronage in later life. He includes several
lines in the Comedy praising current or potential supporters.3
Although he makes clear his high opinion of Virgil and other
great poets, he never challenges the social status quo of his
day or the need for artists to be dependent on those who hired
them. Leonardo Bruni, in the short biography of Dante
included in Boyds volume, goes into detail about the poets
travels around Italy and France in search of patronage, and
recounts without embarrassment a story in which Dante is
literally given the bones from his hosts tablean anecdote
that ends with the poet comparing himself to a dog.4
Admirers of Dante, even those of us who are not dependent
on patrons of our own, may find the strict regard for social
class in the prefaces to be irritating. We can understand how
Blakes situation in Felpham could prompt an angry note.

he is not a Republican
Following the dedication to his patron and a list of the
subscribers who helped pay for the book, Boyd opens his
preface to the Comedy by reproducing a chapter called A
Summary View of the Hell of Dante, from Thomas Wartons
History of English Poetry (published in three volumes from
1774 to 1781). Warton is apologetic for Dantes many
extravagancies and indelicate descriptions, forgiving

68

them as examples of an earlier age before indelicacy became

offensive.5 Despite these reservations, Warton does an
admirable job of sketching Dantes place in literary history,
using passages from Hayleys partial translation of the
Inferno to look back to Virgil as antecedent and recognizing
the debt that Milton owed to the Comedy. Wartons
comparatively scholarly approach is quickly left behind in the
first chapter written by Boyd himself, entitled A
Comparative View of the Inferno, With some other Poems
relative to the Original Principles of Human Nature, on which
they are founded, or to which they appeal. As the title
indicates, Boyd shows no doubt that he has a clear
understanding of the principles of human nature and has the
moral duty of making them clear to his readers. His outlook
remains one of a minister, who judges poetry primarily by the
moral lessons it teaches. One of Blakes marginal notes in this
section mentions Dante, but the criticism is aimed solely at
Boyd, who asserted that our enjoyment of a work of literature
is dependent on our ethical approval of the actions of its
characters. Boyd writes: We cannot sympathise with
Achilles for the loss of his Mistress, when we feel that he
gained her by the massacre of her family. Blake, whose
imaginative involvement with Achilles goes beyond moral
judgment, replies: nobody considers these things when they
read Homer or Shakespear or Dante (E 633). A few pages
later, Boyd disapproves of both Achilles and Aeneas, and
cites instead the moral behavior of lesser-known characters
from Dryden and Racine. In response, Blake comes out in
favor of moral imperfection in fictional characters: Every
body naturally hates a perfect character because they are all
greater Villains than the imperfect. A final blast against
Boyds view of literature as moral sermonizing appears on
pages 45 and 46:
69

the grandest Poetry is Immoral the Grandest

characters Wicked. Very Satan. Capanius Othello a
murderer. Prometheus. Jupiter. Jehovah, Jesus a
wine bibber Cunning & Morality are not Poetry but
Philosophy the Poet is Independent & Wicked the
Philosopher is Dependent and Good Poetry is to
excuse Vice & shew its reason & necessary
purgation [E 634].
Note the use of the word Dependent, another reference to
the unfreedom of patronage.
We will examine in more detail Blakes views of morality and
condemnation in a later section of the present chapter. For
now, I would like to emphasize that it is not necessary to read
these marginal notes as damning the Comedy. Though Dante
the poet may not qualify as Wicked, he has portrayed Dante
the character as lost and in need of forgiveness, due to
unspecified wickedness. As he appears in the poem, Dante is
not a perfect character. Beatrice herself makes this clear
shortly after her appearance in the Earthly Paradise. She
explains that as long as she was alive, the goodness she
represented to Dante inspired his pursuit of moral goals. She
says, These looks sometime upheld him; for I showd / My
youthful eyes, and led him by their light / In upright walking
(Cary, 277).6 As soon as she reached her second age and
left Florence for Heaven, however,
then he left me,
And gave himself to others. When from flesh
To spirit I had risen, and increase
Of beauty and of virtue circled me,
I was less dear to him, and valued less.
70

His steps were turnd into deceitful ways,

Following false images of good, that make
No promise perfect.

Such depth he fell, that all device was short

Of his preserving, save that he should view
The children of perdition
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 27778].
In other words, exactly as Blake prescribed in his note to
Boyd, Beatrice has come to excuse Viceor at least to
forgive it. Her speech describing Dantes immorality shew[s]
its reason by explaining how he came to fall into sin. And
her role in the Comedy is to bring about the necessary
purgation of that sin, with a direct vision of the children of
perdition in Hell acting as a first step in that purgation.
However much the moralists of Blakes time wished to read
Dante as an ally, the pilgrim Dante is among those immoral
Grandest characters who, according to Blake, make up the
grandest poetry. In this, Blakes interpretation is closer to
Dantes theology than Boyds is. Whereas Boyd urges
obedience to a universal law of morality, Dante sees virtue
and sin as matters of loving the best things or the less good.
Beatrice explains that Dante left the true path not through a
desire for evil but because he pursued false images of good.
This is exactly the motivation that Blake ascribes to Urizen,
who brought about the Fall of Man only through a misguided
desire for the good.
On a blank page at the end of Boyds Comparative View of
the Inferno, Blake makes it clear that he does not hold Dante
71

responsible for the views of his translator: Every Sentiment

& Opinion as well as Every Principle in Dante is in these
Preliminary Essays Controverted & proved Foolish by his
Translator If I have any Judgment in Such Things as
Sentiments Opinions & Principles (E 634). If Blake is saying
here that the sentiments, opinions, and principles of Boyds
essay controvert those of Dante, it is the translator and not the
poet with whom Blake disagrees. By a sort of transitive
property, then, Blake is saying indirectly that he does agree
with the sentiments, opinions, and principles of Danteor at
least, he finds them less objectionable than those of Boyd.
The only note Blake wrote in Boyds book to criticize Dante
is in the margin of the next chapter in Boyds introduction,
the Historical Essay of the State of Affairs in the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Centuries: With Respect to the History of
Florence; with a View of their Influence on the succeeding
Ages.
The Historical Essay opens with an explanation of the
famous feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. This
requires a long list of popes and kings and their intricate
disagreements. As in the dedication to his patron, Boyd here
gave the impression that it is the rich and powerful who
matter, and that even the greatest poetic works are only spun
off from the actions of the elite. Boyd recounted that Dante,
in his role as prior of Florence, had tried to bring peace
between the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. Rather
than blaming the squabbling nobility for the disaster that
followed, Boyd seemed to find Dante at fault for attempting
to make peace. He wrote: [I]t was he [Dante] who gave the
advice, ruinous to himself, and pernicious to his native

72

country, of calling in the heads of the two factions to

Florence.7
Blaming the peacemaker for the faults of his superiors is too
much for Blake to tolerate. This is the point at which he
penciled the note I quoted earlier, declaring, It appears to Me
that Men are hired to Run down Men of Genius under the
Mask of Translators. Seen in this context, the following line
seems almost grudgingly added, allowing that although Boyd
is the real villain here, Dante gives too much to Caesar he is
not a Republican Dante was an Emperors <a Caesars>
Man[.]
The balance of blame, as it were, sees Boyd as most guilty
here, but recognizes that Dante, too, is backward in his
political views. Its hard to imagine an essay that could
express more precisely than Boyds does the anti-republican,
anti-freedom views that Blake considered his enemies. Boyd
was a Tory first and foremost. He was lukewarm about
religious freedom and considered intolerance a necessary
attitude to preserve public morality. His confident assertion of
an unalterable moral law is an excellent example of the sort of
unforgiving attitude that Blake had long been parodying in his
depictions of the lawgiver Urizen. Indeed, many of the
sentences from Boyds introduction could be put into the
mouth of Urizen himself. For example: There always was,
and always will be, in every good government, an intolerant
zeal of virtue against vice, an intolerance which the Christians
did not, as some suppose, borrow from the Jews; but both
they and the Jews borrowed it from the unalterable Law of
Right.8 He attributed the decline of Athens or Rome to a
progressive lack of such moral commandments: The want of
this [moral] pole-star left them adrift in the boundless ocean
73

of conjecture; the disputes of their philosophers were endless,

and their opinions of the grounds of morality were as different
as their conditions, their tastes, and their pursuits.9 We will
see in a later chapter that for Blake, Heaven consists exactly
of these endless disputes: mental fight. For him, it is a lack
of alternatives in conditions, tastes, and pursuits that makes
London hellish.
Moreover, Boyd associated the application of the law with a
strict monarchical government and seems more willing to
endure tyranny than to risk too much freedom: Even in the
contest of freedom, we have often seen, that the prosperity
attendant on conquest only tended to sap the virtue of the
conquerors; and that a noble resistance to tyranny ended in an
inglorious overthrow by vice.10
To see why these statements would vex Blake so severely, we
need to examine in more detail his political views and how
they are intrinsically tied to his beliefs about religion and art.
Even at the risk of making this chapter into a nonTory
version of Boyds Historical Essay, I will have to give my
own brief sketch of the history of politics and religion.

Politics and Protestantism

Forty-one years before Martin Luther posted his theses on
Wittenberg Church, the cowherd Hans Bhm announced the
imminent arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The
Virgin Mary had revealed to him that there should be no more
royalty, popes or feudal lords, that all men were to be brothers

74

and all property held in common. Thousands of peasants

came to hear him speak, and he began to gain followers
among the clergy as well as the farmers. The bishop of
Wrzburg smiled tolerantly at the movement until Bhm
announced that the redistribution of worldly goods was to be
carried out by force. Shortly afterward, the bishops soldiers
fired their guns into a crowd of Bhms followers, and the
movement collapsed. Every few years thereafter, Emperor
Frederick III saw violent efforts among his poorer subjects as
they tried to relieve the harsh conditions of feudalism. These
revolts climaxed in the Peasants War of 152426, which
resulted in at least one hundred thirty thousand dead and
many thousands homeless. Though Luther was careful to
distance himself from the peasants violence, in every case
the revolts were linked in the mind of the populace with
religion.
Especially in Protestant countries, and in times of economic
hardship, the tendency to link Christs words about the
brotherhood of man to revolutionary action has been a
recurring phenomenon. Those who saw rewards and
punishments as delayed until after death were sometimes
overwhelmed by others who believed that God intended to
establish a thousand-year reign on the earth. As H.M. Abrams
writes:
The explosive element in apocalyptic prophecy was
the millennium. The anticipation of a heavenly
kingdom, to be achieved only after the end of
creation, posed no threat to the established order of
the world. But in its millennial (or in the Greek
term, chiliastic) component, the Biblical text
denounced the present state of the world as
75

unrelievedly evil and promised Gods early

intervention to annihilate all existing states and
institutions in order to set up His kingdom, not in
heaven, but on earth; and this constituted a patent
menace to the status quo.11
Oliver Cromwell, whose wars occurred a century after the
German uprisings, also believed himself to be doing Gods
will in ending unjust government. His armies included
Anabaptists and other members of radical sects whose passion
for violence was inflamed by eschatological expectations.
John Milton, who wrote in defense of revolutionary
government, also hoped that the New Model Armys
successes were leading to a chiliastic outcome. Cromwells
defeat didnt end the desire, buttressed by religion, to
overthrow the social status quo; decades after the end of the
English Civil War, publisher Richard Blome wrote of the
Anabaptists: Babylon they would overthrow; and within
Babylon, they included all Magistracy and civil Government,
and all wealth and greatness; A great quarrel they had with
the Babylonian Gold.12
Another theologian wrote disapprovingly about radicals who
held That Christ would destroy not only unlawful
Government, but lawful Government, not only the abuse of it,
but the use of it; he was destroying both Monarchy and
Aristocracy.13
As A.L. Morton points out, We are now very close to
Blakes portrait of Jesus the Revolutionary14;
He mockd the Sabbath, and he mockd
The Sabbaths God, and he unlocked
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The Evil Spirits from their Shrines,

And he turnd Fishermen to Divines
He scornd Earths Parents, scorned Earths God,
And mockd the one and the others rod;
His Seventy Disciples sent
Against Religion and Government:
They by the Sword of Justice fell
And him their Cruel Murderer tell [E 878].
The American War of Independence gave hope in England
that change for the better was possible for the situation at
home, as well as in the colonies. Pro-American sentiment was
strong in London, especially among tradesmenthe class to
which Blakes father and engraving master both belonged.
Those parts of London that had relatively democratic systems
of local government, including Westminster and Middlesex,
became centers of anti-royal sentiment and, despite fierce
opposition from George III, were even more encouraged
when France followed America in revolution. In the early
years of the French Revolution, many in England thought
they were witnessing the change the millennialists had been
hoping for. Robert Southey wrote of the time: Old things
seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamed of but the
regeneration of the human race.15 Southeys generation of
Romantic poets were particularly enthusiastic in their
predictions. Wordsworths conclusion to his Descriptive
Sketches, Coleridges Destiny of Nations and Religious
Musings, and a number of Hlderlins early odes all share a
similar optimism for a new world.16 Blakes work from this
era also shows that he expected a great deal from political
changes. His Song of Liberty (1792) at the end of The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the book-length poem The
French Revolution (1791), and his illuminated books America
77

(1793) and Europe (1794) all refer to current events in terms

of apocalyptic change.
Blake had earlier tried different methods of expressing his
views on political matters. In the early 1780s he began plays
about King John and King Edward IV of England, both of
which seem intended to support the right of revolt against
tyranny. These were never finished. A ballad poem, Gwin,
King of Norway, and an early engraving, his first print to be
exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art, both dealt with evil
noblemen and the justice that befalls them. He also made a
drawing called The Keys of Calais, based on the story of the
burghers later shown more famously by Rodin. All of these
works attempted to solve the problem of publishing political
dissent during a time of strict censorship by projecting the
problems that Blake perceived in his own time onto historical
scenes, safely too far into the past to be of interest to modern
policemen. We can see that from his early twenties, Blakes
art and writing were deeply concerned with political issues,
and strongly republican in outlook.
The early influences that formed Blakes views of earthly
justice were inherited from the same sort of nonconformist
thinkers who fought alongside Cromwell. E.P. Thompsons
research has shown that Blake was raised in the tradition of
English antinomianism that had given birth to generations of
anti-royal sentiment.
The term antinomian was apparently coined by Martin
Luther,17 from the Greek , against, and , the
lawbut refers to law as custom or human tradition,
and not to Gods Law. The sort of belief now labeled
antinomian goes right back to the New Testament, when the
78

early Christians were working out which of the Old

Testament laws were applicable to them. Christs message
that the law was now written in the hearts of his believers
(e.g., For this is the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws
into their mind, and write them in their hearts [Hebrews
8:10]) meant that at least some of the laws of Moses were not
in force. Christ and Peter both emphasize that dietary laws, in
particular, are not meant to bind Christians. In the twelfth
century, amid continuing disagreements between secular and
religious authority as to who controlled what area of life, and
in a time when the Catholic Church tended to be hostile to the
peasantry,18 sects that opposed the laws of men, in favor of
what they perceived as the laws received directly from Christ,
drew many followers. The Bogomils, Cathars, Albigensians,
and similar groups differed in the details of their beliefs but
shared the core heresy that a believer whose heart had been
perfected had no more need for earthly law, either secular
or from the clergy.19 A visitor to Rome who observed some
antinomian Christians wrote, They go about two by two,
barefoot, clad in woolen garments, owning nothing, holding
all things in common like the Apostles.20 Naturally these
groups were eliminated by the rich and powerful as much as
was possible, but the founding ideals never completely lost
their appeal, and attempts to revive the movements broke out
again and again. One of the most historically important
revivals occurred in Britain in the seventeenth century.
British antinomians joined with more moderate Protestants
during the English Civil War. When the monarchy was
restored, the various minority sects of this intellectual world
lacked political power, but they attracted many of the most
enthusiastic and original religionists of the day. It would take
79

far too much space here to outline the relationships and

doctrinal differences among the Ranters, Diggers, Baptists,
Anabaptists, Shakers, and other groups that grew from this
tradition. We can safely say, though, that dissent from ancient
customs of social class and established power was a core
belief of all of them. Sermons and tracts by members of these
groups often show extreme opposition not only to the ruling
classes but also to all laws not expressly named in the New
Testament. The first paragraph from A Fiery Flying Roll by
Abiezer Coppe (16191672) will give a sample of the
confidence with which many in this tradition rejected the law:
Thus saith the Lord, I inform you, that I overturn,
overturn, overturn. And as the Bishops, Charles, and
the Lords, have had their turn, overturn, so your turn
shall be next (ye surviving dignified or
distinguished) who ever you are, that oppose me, the
Eternal God, who am UNIVERSAL Love, and
whose service is perfect freedome, and pure
Libertinisme.21
Coppes libertinism did include sexual freedom and a
rejection of marriage, but it was not a rejection of duty to the
Lord. He emphasized that a leveling of social classes
demands that each of us recognizes his responsibility for all
his Christian brothers and sisters.
Thus saith the Lord: Be wise now therefore, O ye
Rulers, &c. Be instructed, &c. Kisse the Sunne, &c.
Yea, kisse Beggars, Prisoners, warme them, feed
them, cloathe them, money them, relieve them,
release them, take them into your houses, dont
serve them as dogs, without doore. &c. Owne them,
80

they are flesh of your fleshe, your owns brethren,

your owne Sisters, every whit as good (and if I
should stand in competition with you) in some
degrees better than your selves.
Repent, repent, repent, Bow down, bow down, bow,
or howle, resigne, or be damned; Bow downe, bow
downe, you sturdy Oakes, and Cedars, bow downe.
Veile too, and kisse the meaner shrubs. Bow, or else
(by my self saith the Lord) He breake you in pieces
(some of you) others I will teare up by the roots; I
will suddenly deale with you all, some in one way;
some in another. Wherefore Each Beggar that you
meet Fall down before him, kiss him in the street.
Some nonconformist groups, such as the Philadelphians, were
intellectually active and conducted research into the work of
German mystic Jacob Boehme, the Neoplatonic traditions of
Paracelsus, and the Christian version of the Kabbalahall of
which have been named as influences on Blake. Other sects
emphasized personal worship by encouraging members to
write new hymns and sing Gods praise in their own words.
Again, this is a message that was echoed in Blakes personal
theology. Many of the sects were suppressed and others went
underground to survive, making modern research on their
individual beliefs difficult. Thompson has uncovered the
history of one group that was still active in the London of
Blakes time, however. These Muggletonians, as they were
called, after their founder Ludowick Muggleton, had been
formed as a sect in 1652.22 They were largely made up of
former members of the Levellers and Diggers. Their founding
was not untroubled, as it required them to declare that at least
81

one self-proclaimed son of God in Britain was the Antichrist,

and they quickly quarreled with the newly formed Quakers.
Their policy of keeping a low profile by not publicly seeking
new members meant that they never grew to be a large group,
and Thompson speculates that they maintained a membership
of between two and three hundred in the entire century after
their founding. They seem to have enjoyed a resurgence in the
mid1700s, however, increasing their numbers enough to
justify the vigorous reprinting of their founders works.
Muggletonian tracts and song collections were sporadically
added to and revived by later members, until at least 1823.
Records about the Muggletonians, like those of other
antinomian sects, are few. This is due to both their desire not
to attract the attention of the authorities and their conviction
that church hierarchy or official organization would be
counter to Gods will. Still, Thompsons detective work
shows that in the London of Blakes youth this group and
other similar believers had an active influence, especially
among the lower middle classes. We must not of course
imagine that Blake was an orthodox member of any
particular sect, but the existence of such a persistent minority
with political views like his, in close proximity to his friends
and family, show that the anti-monarchical roots in his place
and time were deep and, from the beginning, a part of
religious faith.
More public political radicals also made an impression on
Blake in his younger days. From the 1770s to the late 1790s
he led a socially active life centered in large part on the
writers and artists in the circle of publisher Joseph Johnson, a
man of left-wing political views. This group included
dissenting minister (and discoverer of oxygen) Joseph
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Priestley, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and

Thomas Paine, all of whom made friends and enemies for
their progressive views on human rights and freedoms.23
Paine is today known as one of Americas Founding Fathers
thanks to his 1776 book Common Sense and a series of
pamphlets urging independence that were widely read in
America. Though their religious beliefs were very different,
Blake defended Paine against criticism from a conservative
bishopalthough, again, this defense was carried out mostly
through notes in the margins of a book (E 611). Blakes early
biographers tell us that he saved Paines life by advising him
to escape to France when the British authorities sought his
arrest. More recent scholars think this anecdote may be
exaggerated,24 but the threat of imprisonment for ones
political views was real. Most of those arrested for radical
speech during the time of the French Revolution were
acquitted by sympathetic juries,25 but the Seditious Meetings
Act and the Treason Act of 1795 were sufficient to quiet
almost all dissent. Joseph Johnson tested the limits of the law
in 1799 by publishing an outspoken political pamphlet, and
went to prison.26
G.E. Bentleys thorough biography of Blake points out,
Blake may have been surrounded by political activists and
government informers, but his own struggles were all in the
mind. He was never a joiner or a builder of street
barricades.27 It would be difficult to think ill of Blake if he
chose not to risk arrest. At an impressionable age he had been
detained on suspicion of spying; while he was still an art
student, in about 1780, he went with two friends to sketch the
harbor and was taken into custody by the police. He was held
for several hours, until an official from the Royal Academy
came to vouch for them.28 Though he was in little danger of
83

imprisonment, this incident did demonstrate how closely

innocent artists were being watched. In the following years he
knew that he lacked the means to flee to Paris as Paine had
done, and a stretch in prison would most likely have ended his
always-precarious career as an engraver. (Even Abiezer
Coppe had recantedoutwardlywhen threatened with
hanging.) When Blake left behind the radical circles in
London and moved to Felpham, he still had reason to feel in
danger. Statements that he allegedly made in anger while
ejecting a rowdy soldier from his garden were taken so
seriously that he was made to stand trial for sedition in 1804
and could have been hanged if found guilty. A skilled lawyer
and Blakes uncharacteristic silence in court allowed him to
be acquitted.
It may be, though, that even when many poets and radicals
had placed their hopes in earthly revolution, Blake had
religious reasons for holding back from direct action. After
all, antinomian religion doesnt seek to replace one form of
lawmaking body for another; it seeks a world in which law
itself will become unnecessary. Seen in this way, the keen
disappointment that so many poets and radicals felt as they
watched the French Revolution turn into a reign of terror, and
then give way to the rise of Napoleon, was only confirmation
that hope for earthly improvement through governmental
change was never to be fulfilled. Real change would only
come about through spiritual means. After his relocation from
London to Felpham, Blake seemed firmer in his conviction
that a poets job is poetry and not politics. As Erdman writes:
Blake is somewhat sorry to have defended Orc in 1776 and
1793 and in the early version of Milton, and he implies that
Milton should never have put aside poetry to write with his
left hand in the service of Satan29 (Orc being the
84

characterization of revolutionary energy in Blakes work, and

Satan, in this case, the political use of force).
If Blake had given up on politics while still keeping a hope
for transformation, he was not alone. Writing of the Romantic
poets and their reaction to the failure of the French
Revolution, Abrams points out, For Wordsworth and his
contemporaries the millennium didnt come. The
millennial pattern of thinking, however, persisted, with this
difference: the external means was replaced by an internal
means for transforming the world.30
Here, too, Christianity supplied the precedent. The earliest
Christians probably believed that Jesus would return to earth
quite soon and bring with him the Kingdom of God. The
Gospels seem to say as much, as for example in Matthew
16:28, Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here,
which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom. As the years went by and the Second
Coming did not occur, biblical exegetes postponed the literal
millennium to an indefinite future and interpreted the
prophecies of an earthly kingdom as metaphors for a present
and entirely spiritual change in the true believer.31 Milton
had followed a similar course. Disappointed by the outcome
of the Puritan Revolution, he had shifted his hopes to [a]
paradise within thee, happier far.32
Blake had already shown that the real monarch we must
overthrow is not flesh and blood, but spiritual. Urizen is not a
tyrant who can be removed from office with a guillotine. If,
as Abrams and Erdman hold, Blake gave up on worldly
revolution in favor of religious apocalypse, it was not a
change in his basic beliefs so much as a return to a more basic
85

antinomianism. In the marginal note to Boyds essay that

scolds Dante for not being a republican, Blake concludes with
the phrase Luther also left the Priest & joind the Soldier[.]
Here the method, rather than the goal, is criticized: worldly
action, by violence, is a hopeless choice; only religion holds
the key to reform.
In the margins of the same book in which he made his defense
of Paine, Blake wrote:
To defend the Bible in this year 1798 would cost a
man his life
The Beast & the Whore rule without control.
I have been commanded from Hell not to print this
as it is what our Enemies wish [E 611].
The Enemies alluded to may only be government agents,
but if we recall Blakes thoughts about law in general we can
interpret the comment in a more philosophical sense.
While earthly enemies force our bodies to obey arbitrary
laws, Urizenic enemies are those who force our spirits and
perceptions into arbitrary positivistic categories, in which we
lose the ability even to imagine our freedom. Any act that
violently imposes one system of laws over another is still a
positivistic statement of truth, and therefore a shutting-off of
true freedom. By 1810 Blake seemed to have turned entirely
away from political hopes, and stated clearly that there would
be no improvement until the Last Judgment. For Blake,
though, even this final reckoning is nothing like a weighing of
obedience judged by a heavenly monarch. Blakes vision of
the Last Judgment is a clarifying of the perceptions, and not a
removal to another realm: The Last Judgment is an
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Overwhelming of Bad Art & Science. Error or Creation

will be Burned Up & then & not till then Truth or Eternity
will appear[.] But how does error disappear? Is it through
divine fiat? No, It is burned up the Moment Men cease to
behold it (E 565).
The Kingdom of God wont arrive until the Last Judgment,
but the Last Judgment wont be prompted by laws or
morality, political action or violent revolution. It is a
perceptual changethe moment when people open their eyes
and stop seeing the world falsely. The important thing for our
present analysisto bring us back, finally, to The Divine
Comedyis that Blakes experiences with politics bring him
back, finally, to the pure antinomian view of religion. God is
in the hearts of people, and no system of laws or adjustment
of governmental systems can make a real difference. On this
he disagrees with the Comedy.
We must assume that Blake knew very little of Dante other
than what he read in Boyds introduction and in The Divine
Comedy itself. Scholars who have access to Dantes De
Monarchia and other work written in Latin will find that the
authors political views changed over time and deserve a
more subtle treatment than I can give them here. The
Monarchia, however, was not translated into English until
fifty-two years after Blakes death. He had little Latin or
Italian, and the wealth of scholarly work on Dante in English
had barely begun to appear, so I will proceed on the
assumption that Blake did not know the Monarchia, the
various epis?tles, or the Convivio, which might have given
him a more nuanced view of the Italian poet.33

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Dantes Politics
Dante discussed the political situation in Italy throughout the
Comedy. For the most part, these passages do not inform us of
his theoretical views on the roles of church and state but serve
only to lament the current condition of his home country.
Corruption is rampant; people are too greedy. There is no
reason to think that Blake would have objected to such an
evaluation. He believed that England, too, was corrupt and
greedy. We can identify at least two sections, however, in
which Dante represented his opinions on government in more
philosophical terms, and in both cases his views are not
something with which Blake could agree.
The first part of the Comedy we should examine is the deepest
level of Hell: the frozen lake of Cocytus in which traitors are
trapped sempiternally. In his usual careful manner, Dante
broke down this type of sin into subgroups, ranged in order of
seriousness. The least bad traitors are those who have turned
against their own families, and the worstin fact, the worst
people in all of Hellare those who have betrayed their lords
or benefactors. From what we have seen before of Blakes
antinomian beliefs, it will be clear that to him, we do not have
different levels of responsibility to different sorts of people,
especially to those who outrank us. Dante, of course, is not
asserting that we may never turn against a leader. He shows
us enough popes and monarchs in Hell to make it clear that
bad elites are not exempt from judgment. The sinners he
shows in the lowest level are those who have betrayed good
men and bitten the hands that wisely fed them. It follows,
then, that the worst traitor is the one who betrayed the best
benefactor: Judas.

88

Although Blakes Christ is not quite the same as the one that
Dante imagines, both poets would agree that the murder of
Jesus was the worst of sins. The real irritation for Blake, and
the reason the issue becomes one of government, arises from
the identities of the two sinners who are punished to the left
and right of Judas. In Satans three mouths, Judas is in the
center, and on each side are Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed
Julius Caesar. To rate these two as next-worst, almost as bad
as Judas, does seem to make Dante into an Emperors <a
Caesars> Man. Why is the assassination of the Roman
emperor nearly as bad as the betrayal of Christ? To
understand this, we can turn to the second, and clearest, of
Dantes statements on the role of government.
On his way up the mountain of Purgatory, the pilgrim Dante
has stopped to talk with Marco Lombardo, a fellow Italian.34
Dante has asked him about the influence of the stars on
peoples personalities, and whether we are justified in
blaming astrological factors for our sins. The answer is that of
course we are born with various tendencies due to stellar
influences, but that human beings do have freedom of choice
in deciding whether they succumb, or not, to inborn traits.
However much the stars have shaped our natural desires, our
intellects are unaffected and may overrule our urges. At this
point, perhaps surprisingly to those who consider Dante a
strict moralist, Marco describes an individuals moral
responsibility in a very merciful way. He says that each soul
appears in the world innocent and playful:
the soul
Comes like a babe, that wantons sportively,
Weeping and laughing in its wayward moods;
[Purgatory, 16; Cary, 215].
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Exactly like the innocent souls in Blakes Songs of Innocence,

the newborn soul laughs and weeps but is easily fooled. The
soul knows that Heaven is perfect satisfaction, so naturally
she turns toward the things that she enjoys:
artless, and as ignorant of aught,
Save that her Maker being one who dwells
With gladness ever, willingly turns
To whateer yields her joy.
The soul is not wrong to turn towards that which makes her
happy, but being young and lacking experience, she may opt
for easy pleasures over better ones.
Of some slight good
The flavour soon she tastes; and, snared by that,
With fondness she pursues it;
It is natural and good that a child prefers to eat things with
agreeable flavors. The trouble is that, left to herself, she may
opt for a diet of only ice cream, and neglect to eat the
vegetables that are necessary for a healthier, more satisfying
life in the long run. With fondness she pursues it; if no guide
/ Recall, no rein direct her wandering course. Here is where
we begin to consider the proper role of the government. The
purpose of civil law is to act as a rein on ill-aimed desire,
which is natural to simple souls but not in their ultimate best
interests.35
Hence it behoved, the law should be a curb;
A sovereign hence behoved, whose piercing view
Might mark at least the fortress and main tower
Of the true city.
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The king need not be an ideal man himself (only Christ is

ideal) but should at least have enough vision to see from afar
the landmarks that guide us toward the City of God.
Unfortunately, Marco says, modern leaderseven the
popeshave forgotten their roles.
Laws indeed there are:
But who is he observes them? None; not he,
Who goes before, the shepherd of the flock
Therefore the multitude, who see their guide
Strike at the very good they covet most,
Feed there and look no further.
The simple souls see their spiritual leaders, who lead by
example, aiming for worldly goods, and so it is
understandable and forgivable that the flock aims no higher
than the shepherd. In direct contradiction to Augustines
teaching on Original Sin,36 Dante says that it is not our
natures but our leadership that is corrupt:
Thus the cause
Is not corrupted nature in yourselves,
But ill-conducting, that hath turnd the world
To evil.
And according to Dante, the God-appointed leadership of the
world exists in two people, who should both rule from Rome:
the emperor and the pope.
Rome, that turnd it unto good,
Was wont to boast two suns, whose several beams
Cast light on either way, the worlds and Gods.
One since hath quenchd the other; and the sword
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Is grafted on the crook; and, so conjoind,

Each must perforce decline to worse, unawed
By fear of other.
Dante believes that after Christ, the Romans became the new
Chosen People. Their empires fated mission was to bring law
and civilization to the world, uniting in one capital the
authorities necessary to guide people through good lives to
Heaven, but with a clear separation of church and state: an
emperor for worldly affairs and a pope for spiritual. It was a
commonplace in debates over which leader should be
dominant, emperor or pope, to refer to the more powerful as
the sun and the other as the moon, who illuminates only by
reflecting the others greater glory.37 Dante is perhaps unique
in asserting that God wants the world to be guided by two
suns, with clearly separated jurisdictions. In his eyes,
Europes troubles came about in large part because the papacy
had become as much a political concern as a spiritual
onewith the sword grafted to the [shepherds]
crooktherefore disordering both parts of the system that
God had ordained.
Earlier in the Purgatory Dante had complained more
specifically about the inability of emperors to pilot the ship of
state. In canto 6, the mere mention of the city of Mantua
causes the narrator to lament the state of Italy and to blame
specifically the lack of a strong emperor. What good was it,
he asks, if Justinian made the great laws of the empire, if
there is no one to enforce them?
What boots it, that thy reins Justinians hand
Refitted, if thy saddle be unprest?
Nought doth he now but aggravate thy shame.
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[Ah, people! thou obedient still shouldst live,

And in the saddle let thy Caesar sit,
If well thou markedst that which God
commands]
To make it clear that he is not using Caesar as a spiritual
metaphor or a symbol of Christ, Dante names the Holy
Roman Emperor, Albert of Hapsburg, who was in power at
the time the events of the Comedy are described as taking
place.
O German Albert! who abandonst her
That is grown savage and unmanageable,
When thou shouldst clasp her flanks with forked
heels.
...
Come and behold thy Rome, who calls on thee,
Desolate widow, day and night with moans,
My Caesar, why dost thou desert by side?
Come, and behold what love among thy people:
And if no pity touches thee for us,
Come, and blush for thine own report.
Though he devotes fewer lines to the issue than Boyd does in
his introduction, Dante regrets that the lack of a powerful
leader has led even peasants to get the idea that they can
oppose government.
So are Italian cities all oerthrongd
With tyrants, and a great Marcellus made

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Of every petty factious villager

[Purgatory, 6; Cary, 17173].
The name Marcellus here is usually taken to refer to Marcus
Claudius Marcellus, one of the Roman noblemen who
opposed Julius Caesar. The fact that in the Italy of Dantes
time even the peasantry could think themselves worthy of
opposing their betters is taken as a sign that the world is
seriously out of joint. It is, clearly enough, a judgment at odds
with Blakes antinomianism.
When Dante comes out so strongly in favor of the separation
of church and state, it might at first appear that republicans of
Blakes disposition would agree. Isnt the merging of royal
and spiritual power in England a mistake, in the eyes of the
antinomians? Answering this question will show us more
clearly why Blake would have had reservations about political
reform even before the failure of the French Revolution and
will introduce a major theme of this book: the absolute
immanence of God in the world.
Dantes political writings hold out the possibility that reform
and improvement can be achieved through worldly action.
For him, the path to Heaven is through the behavior that
comes from choosing to love the highest, best aims.
Government exists to build the guardrails that keep us on the
straight and narrow patha concept of the Middle Way he
has learned from Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics. The
Churchs role is different; it is to tend to the otherworldly
parts of people, to prepare us for the spiritual jump we make
at death into a vastly different world. In this way, the
separation of church and state exemplify what I see as the
main difference between the two poets theologies. For Dante,
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our earthly world and the higher world are not the same.
Good behavior in this world is necessary to get to the next,
but there is a fundamental ontological jump between the
higher and the lower. God and Heaven are transcendent, over
and above us, and cannot even be adequately imagined by us
as long as we remain in the material world.
Blakes theology is so radically different from Dantes view
that it required a full set of illustrations for him to set the
Comedy straight. Opposed to views of a transcendent God,
the theological concept of absolute immanence is
fundamental to Blakes beliefs. In such a view, God and our
earthly world are in no way separate; God is present not only
here and now, but in every grain of sand and every wild
flower, in his entirety. For Blake, this permeating presence of
God means that our perceived separation from Him is not to
be overcome through even the most well-meaning of
government laws or church rituals. Since there is no real
separation, but only a perceived one, the answer is to improve
perception. And neither church nor state have this goal. As
long as we perceive worldly issues and religious issues to be
different, and provinces of different institutions, we will never
open our eyes enough to see the truth. The authoritative
guidelines that Dante wants government to establish in fact
allow believers to keep their eyes closed, by urging us to trust
in our superiors to keep us on a moral path that leads
nowhere.
I will devote much of what follows to working out this
difference between Dantes transcendentalism and Blakes
theology of immanence. In my opinion, it lies at the root of
each significant difference between the two poets. Their
views of nature, of the possibilities of language, and of the
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role morality plays in our lives, all spring from this basic
disagreement. Before I turn to the history of absolute
immanence, however, there is one more aspect of Dantes
Caesarism that we must address.

Classicism in Dante
The nine Muses of classical poetry are the daughters of Zeus
and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Dante, following
ancient tradition, asks them for assistance throughout the
Comedy. Near the openings of the Hell and the Paradise he
calls upon them collectively; in the first canto of the
Purgatory he specifically invokes Calliope, the muse of epic
poetry. There are at least ten other mentions of Muses in the
poem, as well.
Blake would not have been the only reader to find it odd that
the greatest poet of the Christian Heaven and Hell should ask
for help from pagan deities. (In a later section of this book,
we will see why the Muses, in particular, are offensive to
Blake, as symbols of memory and not inspiration.)
Throughout the Comedy, classical sources, examples, and
characters are on nearly equal footing with those of the Bible.
For example, at each level of Purgatory, Dante cites moral
tales to show cases in which people have either succumbed to
the sin purged on that level, or risen above it. The cases he
chooses are carefully balanced between hagiographic or
biblical, and classical examples. At each level, one good
example is from the life of the Virgin Mary, at least one is
from the classical world of myth or history, and one more is

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from the Bible. The bad examples are equally balanced. At

the level that purges anger, for example, the demonstrations
of good behavior, showing forbearance against anger, are
Mary at the moment she finds her missing son in the Temple;
the tyrant of Athens, Peisistratus, refusing his wifes request
to execute a young man who had offended her; and St.
Stephen, who, according to Acts 7:5459, prayed for the mob
that was martyring him. The examples of people whose anger
got the better of them are Haman, from the Old Testament
book of Esther, and Amata, a minor character from the
Aeneid.
The willingness of medieval authors to look to both classical
and biblical sources is in part a result of the tradition,
mentioned above, that Rome had taken on the role of Gods
Chosen People and that its culture was intended by God to be
the source of peace and law for the secular world. By Dantes
time there was also a long-established conviction that
classical literature and art contained veiled hints of Christian
revelation. For example Virgil, though not himself a
Christian, was said to have obliquely foretold the coming of
Jesus in the Aeneid. The tradition was so well established in
the Renaissance that Michelangelo paired Old Testament
prophets with Roman sibyls on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel.
We have already seen Blakes views on the relationship of
Greece and Rome to Jerusalem. If, as he believed, classical
thought, art, and literature were all stolen from the Hebrews
and watered down by distance from its inspired sources, a
Christian poet who employs Greek and Roman characters as
models is merely imitating the imitators. Blake, in contrast,
chose to use in his mature work either biblical characters,
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reworked to suit his own mythology (he would say, returned

to their visionary origins), or original characters, such as
Urizen and Orc.
If the figures from classical literature had merely been trotted
out as bad examples, their presence in the Comedy might
seem less integrated with the Christian message. Throughout
his epic, though, Dante based fundamental elements of his
writing on Roman sources, in a way that goes far beyond the
borrowing of symbols or anecdotes. The pilgrim Dante, as a
character, is content to follow Virgils lead through two-thirds
of the poem as a humble student. The writer Dante, in
addition, engaged in complicated dialogue with his Latin
predecessors, building on and controverting their meanings.
As Kevin Brownlee writes:
Dante-protagonist undergoes (and/or witnesses) a
series of key experiences that are visibly modeled on
narrative events from the Aeneid, the Thebaid, the
Pharsalia, and the Metamorphoses. The most
important, frequent, and systematic instances of this
process involve two alternatives: either
Dante-protagonist functions as a new, Christian
Aeneas, modeled on the single protagonist of
Virgils epic; or he functions as a corrected version
of one of the many protagonists of Ovids
multi-narrative epic.38
The epic journey of the Comedy, beginning in disaster and
ending in a new kingdom, is of course not coincidentally
similar to Virgils story. Dante makes sure that his
predecessors book will be in the minds of his readers from
the outset, naming Virgil in the first canto of the Hell and
98

Aeneas in the second.39 Brownlee calls Dantes use of the

Aeneid a recuperative reading, in which episodes of the
Comedy are to be read against parallels in Virgils work. The
pagan model is therefore an essential element in the
metamorphosis of classical sources into an epic that is, from
the Christian point of view, more complete. Robert Hollander
has written: It is difficult to conceive of a major literary text
that might be as closely involved with an earlier masterpiece
as is the Commedia with the Aeneid, with the major exception
of the involvement of Virgils epic with those of Homer.40
Exactly how much of Dantes debt to Virgil Blake could
identify is difficult to determine. Dante makes some parallels
impossible to miss, as when Cacciaguidas greeting to his
descendent, in Paradise 15, is explicitly compared to that of
Anchises in Aeneid 6. Other references to Virgils work,
such as the implicit similarities in the description of Didos
first glimpse of Aeneas to the moment when the pilgrim
Dante is finally reunited with Beatrice, are less obvious and
may have escaped Blakes notice.
The works of Statius and of Lucan also appear in more or less
clear references within the Comedy, but the Latin work most
frequently reflected, after the Aeneid, is Ovids
Metamorphoses. Dantes story is both a journey and a
transformation, so the use of both books, combined and
remade, is a natural choice.
With Ovid, too, some borrowings are more obvious than
others. We are left in no doubt, though, that Dante has the
Latin work in mind, when in Hell 25 the narrator explicitly
compares what he has seen to similar events in the work of
his predecessor. In the level of Hell where thieves are
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punished, the pilgrim has witnessed a particularly grotesque

and imaginative transformation in which a man and a serpent
exchange forms. The narrator boasts:
Ovid now be mute.
I envy not; for never face to face
Two natures thus transmuted did he sing,
Wherein both shapes were ready to assume
The others substance
[Hell, 25; Cary, 107].
We see that Dante is not only using Ovid as a source, but is
also openly challenging the earlier master.
Many of the moral examples in the Purgatory are drawn from
the Metamorphoses, almost all of them negative. More
surprising, though, is to find that most of Dantes references
to Ovids work appear in the Paradise, where they function as
stories to demonstrate the spiritual transformation necessary
to enter Heaven. Ovidian characters Daphne, Marsyas, and
Glaucus are all mentioned in the first canto, and Jasons
journey in the Argo is referred to in the second. Semele and
Phaeton, both of whom were burned up by their encounters
with divine power, are invoked near the end of the canticle.
In choosing so many characters, examples, and tropes from
Greek and Latin literature, Dante has rooted his poem firmly
in the classical. He has of course employed them all in the
cause of Christianity, but for a Christian of Blakes radical
antinomian type, the poetic metamorphosis will not have felt
complete; the classical residue is still too much in evidence.
Dante has given too much to Caesar not only in the sense of
supporting imperial politics, but also in the wider meaning of
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failing to overcome antique ways of thinking. Political

Caesarism is, for Blake, not a separate issue from Latin means
of expression, or Greek forms of philosophy, all of which are
fundamental to Dante.
As mentioned above, the Comedys moral system is directly
and explicitly derived from Aristotle. Its cosmology, as well,
is Greek in origin, owing as it does more to the Timaeus than
to the Bible. We will look more closely in later sections at
Blakes opinions of these classical views, and Dantes use of
them. Here, let us examine what Blake would see as the
deepest level of the Comedys debt to classicism: its use of
reason itself.
The character of Virgil, who guides the pilgrim Dante through
two-thirds of the Comedy, is seen by most commentators of
the poem as a symbol of reason.41 Boyd confidently assigns
him that role in a footnote to Virgils first appearance, in the
first canto of the poem.42 Blakes own symbol of reason, we
have seen, is the cause of much trouble in the world. Urizen
does not function as a useful guide in any of Blakes epics,
but causes the world to fall out of balance by usurping more
than his proper role. If Dante has made the mistake of
assuming that reason can guide us nearly all the way to
Heaven, to be replaced by faith only in the final moments
before the ascent to Paradise, he has come close to repeating
Urizens mistake.
Given the largely negative role that Urizen plays in the
illuminated books, it is easy to forget that he is in fact one of
the four Zoas, Blakes symbols of the four faculties or
portions of humanity. The fallen condition in which we now
find ourselves will not be remedied by banishing Urizen to
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darkness, like Miltons Lucifer. The Fall of Man has occurred

precisely because Urizen has fallen into darkness. Humanitys
condition will be renewed when all four of the Zoas are
restored to their proper balance in unity, so that we may see
them as one man, or as all men, simultaneously. The fact that
Dante, then, assigns so great a role to Reason/Virgil is not a
gross mistake, as if he were taking pure evil as guide. It is
again a question of balanceDante has given too much to
Caesar, if we take Virgil as a symbol of Caesarist, classical
reason, but it was not wrong to include reason in the mix.
Blake corrects the balance by remaking Virgils role in the
illustrations, so that he may still act as psychopomp, but in the
capacity of inspiration rather than reason. How the adjustment
is carried out will become clear in our analysis of the first of
Blakes watercolors. In addition, one of the very last
illustrations, of the Rose of Heaven in the Paradise, depicts
the glory of the world that results from having the balance
restored.
An overemphasis on reason also affects the fundamental
structure of the Comedy, a fact we may miss until we compare
it to the structure of Blakes own epics. For many readers, it is
Dantes clear and orderly laying-out of the levels of sin and
virtue that gives the poem its moral beauty. Dante has
organized the epic as a travelogue, in a linear fashion,
interspersing symbolic representations with patient
explanation from the guides. A reader who is approaching the
Comedy as a guide to self-improvement, orGod
forbidfodder for a scholarly book, might find Virgils or
Beatrices explication to be the most interesting part of the
poem, and skip over as ornament the symbolic monsters and
ghosts. Such a reader would be sharing the opinion of
Warton, who found the Comedy too full of indelicacies.
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The clarity and order of the explication is only a benefit,

though, if we think we may understand Gods ways through
the use of clarity and orderthat is, through reason. Blake
does not think we can.
Blakes own epic poems are notoriously nonlinear. Early
commentators sometimes found them so lacking in apparent
reason that they dismissed them as products of a madman. It
took years of patient work to see that the seeming chaos of
works such as Jerusalem is an integral part of their message.
The fact that the morals of Blakes books are not abstractable,
not able to be summed up in a single line on the final page, is
vital. Northrop Frye writes that from Blakes perspective, It
would be far better if the morals of Aesops Fables, the
signposts pointing from art to ethics, were snipped off,
because all the morality worth having is already in the story,
heightened by the fact that we are not bound down to a single
conclusion.43
Images are better than explanations because Knowledge is
not by deduction, but Immediate by Perception or Sense at
once. Christ adresses himself to the Man, not to his Reason
(E 664).
Jesus taught through parables and direct action. The Old
Testament prophets, with whom Blake claims to have spoken
and whom he took as models for his own work, did not reason
or compare; they transmitted their visions. The Book of Job
seems to demonstrate in part that any explanation or reasoned
justification will never be adequate; only direct vision will
suffice. And of course the Apocalypse of John communicates
exclusively through poetic imagery, much of which Dante
reproduces. Blake sees the aim of art as creating clear vision,
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but we dont call it clear because it can be restated in

abstract formrather because it cannot. Ezekiels merkabah
or Johns Woman Clothed in the Sun are dramatically
rendered, clear images that are to be grasped with vision or
the imagination. To reduce such living symbols to
single-concept teaching tools would be as evil as reducing
any living thing into a means to an end.
Despite what modern literalists would have us believe, the
Bible teaches us to read the Bible imaginatively. The fact that
the Bible is self-contradictory, far-fetched, and impossible to
believe in a rational sense helps to show that it is true. Blake
contrasts this to genres with more literal messages:
Fable or Allegory are a totally distinct & inferior
kind of Poetry. Vision or Imagination is a
Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really &
Unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is Formd by the
daughters of Memory. The Hebrew Bible & the
Gospel of Jesus are not Allegory, but Eternal Vision
or Imagination of All that Exists [E 554].
Allegory, in which Character A is directly translatable into
Concept B, is counter to Blakes method. Despite his strong
language, however, he recognizes that the best allegorical
works may be redeemed: Note here that Fable or Allegory is
seldom without some Vision. Pilgrims Progress is full of it,
the Greek Poets the same (E 554).
Any book of rules or morals that are to be applied universally,
working from the general to the specific case, is abstract and
dead. Insofar as The Pilgrims Progress or Oedipus Rex use
their characters as tools to deliver such laws, they are
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allegory. To the extent that such works offer living imagery,

however, they contain vision. Here again, the model of such a
case is to be found in the Bible. Moses delivered 613
universal rules, which antinomian Christians felt were no
longer relevant. Blake sees these commandments as the work
of a fallen, Urizenic sensibility, which the later prophets of
the Old Testament spoke against and which Christ overthrew.
Moses gave tyranny, Christ freedom.44
Blakes own epics require imaginative reading. The helpful
bits, the logical explication or hints as to what a character
stands for, have been excluded as tyrannical impositions on
the readers freedom. This means that the conditions of our
fallen world, including coherent time and space, have been
rejected in favor of non-tyrannical, unbound vision.
We saw earlier that Blake had corrected Miltons lapses into
fixed morality and logical justification. Frye wrote of Milton:
Blakes poem attempts to recreate the central vision
of life, based on the Bible, which made Milton a
great Christian poet. Blake is, therefore, trying to
do for Milton what the prophets and Jesus did for
Moses: isolate what is poetic and imaginative, and
annihilate what is legal and historical.45
It is clear, too, that Blake undertook his work on the Comedy
for the same reason.

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6. Remarks on the Illustration to Hell, Canto 4

In canto 4 of Hell, the pilgrim Dante visits Limbo. Though

the souls in this level are inside the gates of Hell, they suffer
less than others in the underworld because they are
blameless but died without baptism, the portal to thy
faith. There is no torture beyond an eternal Desiring,
without hope (Cary, 14).
Within Limbo the pilgrim and his guide arrive at a
magnificent castle surrounded by seven walls and a
pleasant stream, and inside they discover a green plain where
Dante can stand in a place that is Open and bright and lofty
and observe many of the greatest philosophers and poets of
the preChristian age.
Blakes illustration for this scene contains the next criticism
of Dante we will examine. The words are written in pencil, in
Blakes normal handwriting, not the style of lettering he
used in his finished illuminations. Blakes comments are
written among concentric circles in the background of the
scene. The sentences are not written clearly and there are a
number of emendations and insertions. With the changes
indicated in <brackets>, the first part of the comments read:
Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for
Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the
Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature <Memory>
<is his Inspirer> & not <Imagination> the Holy
Ghost

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as Poor Churchill said

Nature thou art my Goddess46
Under these lines, in a separate circle, are the words
Swedenborg does the same in saying that in this
World is the
Ultimate of Heaven
This is the most damnable Falshood of Satan & his
Antichrist
And to the right, in a different group of lines:
Round Purgatory is Paradise & round Paradise is
Vacuum or
Limbo. so that Homer is the Center of All I mean
the Poetry of
the Heathen Stolen & Perverted from the Bible not
by Chance
but by design by the Kings of Persia and their
Generals The
Greek Heroes & lastly by The Romans [E 689]
This group of comments,47 and another comment that Blake
wrote on one of the watercolors in the final set of Dante
illustrations, will occupy us through the rest of this chapter.
Unlike the marginal note in the Boyd translation, we may be
sure that the words here are consistent with Blakes opinions
at the time he was making the illustrations. These notes may
seem too brief to warrant the attention I give them, but we
will see that they contain key words in the artists
thoughtenough to unpack a great deal of the dialectic
between him and his Italian predecessor.
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This World the Foundation of All

Blake writes that Dante has made This World the
Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature <Memory> <is his
Inspirer>. To understand this comment, we will need to
examine the special meanings that Blake gives to the terms
This World and Nature.
According to Blake, This World, where we suffer and write
books, is our fallen condition. Such a view is in keeping with
basic Christian theology. Where Blake differs from more
traditional Christian thought, including Dantes, is in his
insistence that despite appearances, the material world is in no
way separate from the spiritual, ideal world. The apparent
division of the two realms, which leads us mistakenly to see
God and Heaven as existing away in a transcendent realm,
comes about through the narrowing of our perceptions, when
we lose our ability to see beyond the physical surfaces of
things. Matter and spirit are not ontologically distinct despite
most peoples inability to perceive more than the physical
qualities of objects. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Blake wrote: Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for
that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five
Senses. the chief inlets of Soul in this age (E 34). This is a
clear rejection of dualism. We see that for Blake the body is
not a container to hold the soul, as Plato thought it was. The
body is the small portion of the soul visible to the bodys own
passive senses. In our present, empirical age, very few of us
are prophets or visionaries, and so we tend to rely overmuch
on the five corporeal senses, with the result that, to our loss,

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we may think that only elements of the body visible to normal

sight are real.
Just as a persons body is only apparently separate from the
soul, the worlds bodynatureis not really distinct from
the spiritual realm. If we think that mountains and stones are
inert, or jump to the conclusion that trees and flowers are
merely vegetable, our error is, again, due to narrowness of
perception. To understand Blakes view of nature, therefore,
we must first examine his ideas of how we perceive, and why
we are so prone to error. The final lines of his 1810 Vision of
the Last Judgment address the type of vision that Blake
advocates. He is asked: What it will be Questiond When the
Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a
Guinea[.] Most of us assume that the sun looks more or less
the same to everyone. It appears to be a bright disk, like a
large coin. Blake refuses to be satisfied with the physical
appearance, and replies to the questioner: O no no I see an
Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy
Holy is the Lord God Almighty[.] Blakes view of the sun is
more than the sum of the sense-impressions that his eyes
receive. The surfaces our eyes can discern are for Blake
something to look through, not at: I question not my
Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question
a Window concerning a Sight I look thro it & not with it (E
565566).
The Guinea sun is the sun of Lockean passive perception.
To see only the same sun that everyone else can see and fail
to see more than the mere light rays that strike ones cornea,
is scarcely to surpass a corpse whose eyelids remain open.
Harold Bloom calls such a condition the universe of death
which is the natural experience of most men (E 894).
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What makes a poets vision alive, even in our current fallen

condition, is the active faculty called imagination.
For Blake, of course, the term imagination encompasses more
than its typical conversational meaning, which might refer to
daydreams or the invention of a better mousetrap. Like Kants
imagination (Einbildungskraft) Blakes is the faculty of the
mind that actively organizes sensory input. (Kant: [T]he
imagination is to bring the manifold of intuition into an
image.)48 With Blake as with the German philosopher, the
word
imagination
keeps
its
root
sense
of
image-makingit is responsible for the images that the
mind creates from raw sense-data.
Blake could not have read Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason
appeared in 1821 and Francis Haywoods English translation,
the first, didnt appear until the year after Blakes death. The
role of the imagination in religion had been a topic in
Christian theology for centuries, however, and Blakes
convictions about imagination and perception may be traced
to earlier sources.
Augustine was the first Latin author to use the term
imaginatio in a consistent philosophical manner, warning
against the dangers of fantasy. The biblical distrust of images
combined with the influences of Augustines Neoplatonic
forebears caused him to conclude that imagination would only
interfere with the pure contemplation (noesis) required to
experience the highest levels of the spiritual world.49
Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus had all warned against the
same.

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Bonaventure (12211274) gave a more important mental role

to imagination. Like Kant, he located the imagination halfway
between the sensible world and the understanding. He also
granted it some role in prophecy. In agreement with
Augustine and Aquinas, however, he emphasized that it must
be firmly under control of reason in order to avoid dangerous
fantasy. He explicitly read the first and second
Commandments prohibiting false gods and idols as warnings
against demonic acts of imagination.50
New views on imaginatio were introduced by a figure to
whom we will return several times in the course of this book,
Nicholas of Cusa (14011464). Working in the tradition of
mystics such as Erigena and Eckhart, Cusanus developed a
theory of the imagination that diverged from mainstream
theology. The fact that God, he wrote, is always beyond
mans sensory or rational capacities requires us to approach
Him through mystical vision that employs imagination.
Moreover, because man is made in Gods image, our own
creative acts may be said to participate in a special way in the
ongoing process of creation. Thus human powers of imaging
and imagining are not separate from Gods power.51 Cusanus
specifically links the presence of Christ in us with our ability
to create: Because the Creative Art of Christ may come to
dwell in man, we may come to realize the highest goal of all
our desires and inclinationsthe knowledge of our creation
(nostrae creationis scientia). Though he holds back from
saying that we may know God in his entirety, Cusanus does
give a far greater role to the imagination than earlier
theologians, in a way that Blake echoes.
Some seventeenth century philosophers granted an important
role to the imagination but were careful to specify that only
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biblical prophets were granted correct use of it. Cambridge

Platonist John Smith wrote that imagination was for most of
us a gross dew on the glass of our understandings, while
making a special case of scripture: The Prophetical scene or
Stage upon which all apparitions were made to the Prophet,
was his Imagination.52 Spinoza split the same hairs. Paley
wrote, [B]y insisting on the imaginative nature of prophecy,
such views prepared the way for literary criticism of the Bible
as sublime poetry. It then remained for William Blake to
argue that all scriptures were sublime poems, including
Miltons and his own.53
The influence Cusanus had on the Christian mystical tradition
may be traced through Paracelsus to Jacob Boehme
(15751624), both of whom Blake names as sources for his
own thought (E 707). Boehme held that desire and
imagination were necessary tools to know God.54 He also
departed from traditional theology by asserting that God
himself felt desire and used imagination. Coleridge, after his
studies in Germany, agreed with Cusanus and Boehme that
imagination is the living Power and prime Agent of all
human Perception and a repetition in the finite mind of the
eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.55
Because our only perception of the world is a creation of
imagination, Blake writes: The Imagination is not a State: it
is the Human Existence itself (E 132); without imagination,
the world would not exist for us; and without the world, we
would not be human. Yet it is the perceptual condition of the
seer that determines how and what he sees. As a man is, so
he Sees (E 702); the Eye altering alters all (E 485). To
borrow for a moment Kants terms, the noumenal world is
only accessible to us when it has been made by the mind into
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phenomena, and it is the structure and character of the mind

that determine what form those phenomena will take. But I
should also warn that using these terms risks making Blake
into more of a dualist than he really is. We should not think of
the noumenal world as raw material and phenomena as
ontologically separate representations. They are not different;
what we see is real. As Kathleen Lundeen writes: I would
argue that Blake is a monist trapped in a language that is
predicated on binary thinking. Blakes claim that Error or
Creation is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it
[E 565] exposes dualism as a habit of perception, not a
structural principle of reality.56 It is a difficult habit to break.
Blake says that imagination may fall from a higher to a lower
state, so that what it perceiveswhat it createswill create
the fallen world. The only way to return to an unfallen world,
therefore, is to revive the full imagination. Abrams writes: to
see the world wrongly is to see the wrong world, but to see it
aright is to create a new earth and new heaven.57 This is a
point to which we will return.
Blakes character Los represents the imagination in its
synthesizing perceptual form. Suitably for the faculty that
creates everything we see, Los is depicted as a blacksmith,
wielding a hammer, forging the material world. Reversing
Augustines position, and following in the tradition of
Cusanus and Boehme, Blake believes that imagination
operates with the assistance of reason, but that when reason
establishes itself above imagination the result is disaster. As
one of the four Zoas, Los should be in balance with the
others, including Urizen. When Urizen/reason rips himself
separate from Los/imagination (E 74), both characters/
faculties fall. We begin to see the world through the eyes of
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reason and not through the creative eyes of imagination. As

Boehme taught, reason (Vernunft) takes account of the world
by abstracting from it, not by seeing it in a living way.58
Instead of our imagination working on the world through
creative processes, reason measures, calculates, and uses the
results of these researches to form abstract concepts. No
longer working in partnership with the noumena to form the
phenomena as we wish, the world begins to appear cold and
separate. The infinite possibilities available to free, creative
imagination are narrowed to only one, because, as Hegel
wrote, finite perception takes what is present for it to be a
universal.59 That is, reason assumes that its perceptions will
be the same as everyone elses. As Coleridge put it, we are
then reduced to a state in which we grasp the world through
mere understanding and we think of ourselves as separated
beings, and place nature in antithesis to the mind, as object to
subject, thing to thought, death to life.60
Blakes contemporary and fellow printmaker Francisco Goya
made one of his most famous etchings on the theme of reason
and its effects. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1797,
shows a man asleep at his desk, with monstrous apparitions
flying above him. The normal interpretation of Goyas title
indicates that it is dangerous for reason to go to sleep, because
in its absence monsters will overwhelm us. Blake would be
comfortable with the title, but would read it in a very different
way. For him, it is the sleep caused by reason that produces
monsters. As Morris Eaves points out, when we operate by
reason, and assume that nature is not dependent on our
imaginations, we may be at the mercy of monsters. But when
imagination finally realizes that the external is a metaphor
invented by the imagination itself, the result is that the

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tyranny of the external world over the imagination

disappears.61
One result of fallen thinking, in which our perceptions lose
their imaginative power, is the reification of social norms. In
Blakes time as in our own, supporters of the status quo gain
by assuring us that thats just the way things are. The cool
paternal advice that nothing can be done about things, that the
laws of nature require society to operate as it does now, is
Urizenic thinking at its most political. It is what Marxists
since Lukacs have called second naturetraditional norms
to which we are so deeply habituated that it is nearly
impossible to imagine alternatives.62 Blake, then, does not
think of nature as consisting only of animal, vegetable, and
mineral. Nature includes, for him, reified society as well,
including the monarchy and the economic injustices that we
assume will always be with us.
It is nature in antithesis to mind, the world seen as object
divorced from subject, that Blake calls Nature or This
World. When he scolds Dante for making This World the
Foundation of All, he is looking back on the theology of
Augustine and Aquinas, as used by Dante, from the
perspective of Cusanus and Boehme, and not liking what he
sees. The pilgrim Dante has allowed himself to be led by
reason through the larger part of his journey and has accepted
the laws of nature and society. The God of the Comedy is a
lawgiver, not a free creator in the hearts of individuals. The
structure of the Comedy and its reasoning, unlike Blakes own
epics, willingly follow reified abstractions that are only
creations of narrowed perceptions, including conventional
treatment of time, space, and logical progression.

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As a fellow poet, Blake will not be fooled into confusing the

identity of the pilgrim Dante and the poet Dante. The pilgrim
may seem passive and uncreative, but he is after all a creation
of the poet. And the poet has filled his book with creation and
imagination rivaled by few books in history. If the Comedy
were a dull recounting of things seen by the corporeal
perception, it would not have been worth saving. As it is,
Blake may help it out of its abstracted state by converting it to
the less logical, more perceptual medium of painting.
The above will also serve to explain why, in conversation
with Crabb Robinson, Blake insisted that Dante was an
Atheist. This is what Crabb Robinson remembered to his
diary, in December of 1825:
Our conversation began about Dante. [Blake said]
He [Dante] was an Atheist, a mere politician
busied about this world as Milton was, till in his old
age he returned back to God whom he had had in his
childhood. I tried to get out from Blake that he
meant this charge only in a higher sense, and not
using the word Atheism in its popular meaning. But
he would not allow this. Though when he in like
manner charged Locke with Atheism and I remarked
that Locke wrote on the evidences of piety and lived
a virtuous life, he had nothing to reply to me nor
reiterated the charge of willful deception.63
Reference to Milton and Locke here allow us to understand
Blakes odd use of the word atheist. Weve already seen
that Blake objected to Miltons conception of God as a
moralist. The assumption, in Paradise Lost, that God would
establish a moral code and eternally punish its transgressors
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means that Milton has mistaken Urizen or Satan, the real

creators of law, for the Christian God. (Milton was a true
Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it [E 35].) In
addition, Miltons choice to devote his middle years to earthly
politics distracted him from what Blake saw (at least by 1825)
as the only real means of revolutionspiritual enlightenment
through perceptual change.
John Locke was an atheist, from Blakes point of view,
because he believed knowledge is gained only from this
world, and not through inspiration. Throughout his work
Blake uses this philosopher as a personification of fallen,
Urizenic perception; it was Locke who outlined the most
empirically based epistemology that Western philosophy had
yet seen. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690) had claimed that all knowledge is gained through the
senses, and that the recombination and analysis of
remembered sense-impressions was the only way for people
to know anything. Though himself a Christian, Lockes work
showed how people could learn and grow in the total absence
of divinely given knowledge, or any sort of perception
beyond the five senses. Reception of sense-impressions, the
Essay states, is passive, and the only creative work that occurs
in the mind is the formation of generalized, abstracted
concepts out of sense-qualities. We may create the abstract
noun deliciousness, for example, after noticing the pleasant
quality of enough sample flavors. Thus Lockes epistemology
works in exactly the opposite direction to Blakes, removing
data from the world and making knowledge through
abstraction, rather than seeing an objects qualities, and then
beyond those qualities to the objects spiritual essence. Locke
thought that categorizing memories of sense-impressions tells
us about the real world, while Blake rejects such
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abstractionsthere is no deliciousness without a delicious

thing. Giving such importance to sense-data, and using it as
the base of all ones knowledge, cuts off our access to the
spiritual world, which lies beyond appearances.
Crabb Robinson recorded Blakes definition of atheism:
Everything is Atheism which assumes the reality of the
natural and unspiritual world.64 And in a letter to Dorothy
Wordsworth, postmarked 1826, Crabb Robinson recorded:
according to Blake, Atheism consists in worshipping
the natural world, which same natural world,
properly speaking, is nothing real, but a mere
illusion produced by Satan. Milton was for a great
part of his life an Atheist, and therefore has fatal
errors in his Paradise Lost, which he has often
begged Blake to confute. Dante (though now with
God) lived and died an Atheist. He was the slave of
the world and time.65
Which sounds damning enough, until the letter continues:
But Dante and Words?worth, in spite of their Atheism, were
inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Blake consistently associates inspiration, true poetry, and the
Holy Ghost, and contrasts these with memory, classicism, and
Lockean epistemology. We can see this in his objections to a
painter who, he felt, was not inspired by God, Royal
Academy founder Joshua Reynolds. In the Discourses on
Painting that Reynolds delivered as speeches between 1769
and 1776, and later published, the method he recommended to
young artists was based on Lockes ideas of education. The
philosopher had written that we assemble general ideas from
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a number of sensed examples, and Reynolds thought a

painters training should operate in the same way. While a
student, an artist should sketch numerous examples of a
thinga tree, or a facebut only to abstract from those
samples an ideal image. Just as Zeuxis depicted Helen by
painting the best parts of many different modelsthe
shoulder of one, the foot of anotherReynolds says no real
life example is near enough to the essential to serve as an
artists inspiration. A mature painter should work from the
general idea he has abstracted and assembled. He wrote:
When the artist has by diligent attention acquired a clear and
distinct idea of beauty and symmetry; when he has reduced
the variety of nature to the abstract idea; his next task will be
to become acquainted with the genuine habits of nature.66
We see that for Reynolds as for Locke, the laws or genuine
habits of nature are not to be seen directly, but deduced from
memories. Blake, in the margin of his copy of the Discourses,
accuses Reynolds and Locke together:
Deduct from a rose its redness, from a lilly its
whiteness, from a diamond its hardness, from a
spunge its softness, from an oak its heighth, from a
daisy its lowness, & rectify everything in Nature as
the Philosophers do, & then we shall return to Chaos
[E 595]
To Generalize is to be an Idiot [E 648].
They mock Inspiration & Vision [E 660]
Inspiration and vision allow us to see beyond the surface of a
thing, to its life. Unlike memory, which abstracts qualities and
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separates dead whiteness from the living lily, the Holy Spirit
inspires us to see the thing in its entirety, including its
qualities and beyond these to its infinite connectedness in
God. The nine Greek Muses, who were literally born of
Memory, Blake associates with Reynolds deductive methods
and with their classical origins. Twice in Milton he contrasts
the daughters of memory with the daughters of inspiration,
and leaves no doubt about which he prefers (E 95, 108).
We already saw that after the French Revolution, poets cited
the Bible as the model to follow when they turned from
political revolution to spiritual change. Blake is following the
same path when he declares it is the Holy Spirit who inspires
art. The prophets and the Pentecost are examples of true
inspiration, and not the classical poets. Blake made the Bible,
in this as in everything, the Great Code of Art (E 274). In
the Old Testament, Job is not satisfied with deduction or
analysis but demands a direct vision of the divine. (In fact, his
friends analyses all turn out to be wrong.) Ezekiel and Daniel
dont receive abstracted general principles, but monstrous
apparitions. Again, we should see the Bible as true vision of
the truth because it is less logical and more inspired, because
Christ addresses himself to the Man not to his Reason.
What Jesus came to Remove was the Heathen or Platonic
Philosophy which blinds the Eye of Imagination The Real
Man (E 664). The visions of the prophets, the parables of
Christ, and the revelations of John are direct imagination,
while their exegesis is mere talk. The Hebrew Bible & the
Gospel of Jesus are not Allegory but Eternal Vision or
Imagination of All that Exists (E 544). While the Cambridge
Platonists, Spinoza, and others carefully made the final book
of the Bible the final acceptable use of prophetic imagination,
Blake insists that true poets carry on the tradition. Blake
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himself had done so, and there was no reason why Dante
couldnt.
How far away is Blakes theory of imagination from Dantes?
Is the Comedy built of memory or of vision? This turns out to
be a more difficult question than we might imagine. Pietro
Alighieri, the poets son and earliest commentator, declared
that his fathers Comedy was fiction, and this was enough for
most subsequent critics to label the poem as no more than
allegory.67 Its customary to see Dante as a systematizer,
using his powerful intellect to assemble the data gleaned from
his wide reading into a great logical collage. Yet some recent
scholars have suggested that he was more of a visionary than
we have been led to believe. In 1941, Italian scholar Bruno
Nardi published a paper called Dante profeta68 to posit that
when Dante declared hed seen Heaven and Hell, this was not
fiction writing. Since Nardis article appeared, the
truth-claims of the Comedy have been analyzed against the
rich and various medieval traditions of visionary writing,
from bella menzognabeautiful lies to teach moral
truthsto genuine claims of prophecy of the Johannine
type.69 Its possible that even if Dante did believe hed visited
the realms of the dead, in flesh or in spirit, he would not have
said so. Noncanonical claims of prophecy would have caused
the Church to suppress Dantes work and place the Comedy
on its list of banned books, as it did his Monarchia, and so for
practical reasons he may have used one literary form to mask
another, in the interest of reaching the widest possible
audience. The debate about Dantes intentions continues in
our own time, and we can look forward to more research into
how people of earlier ages defined truth in regard to
statements on religion. For our present purpose we will leave

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these discussions to others and think only about what Blake

would have taken from the Comedy itself.
A less perspicacious reader than Blake might have believed
Boyds Tory analysis and seen Dante as an orthodox
Anglican monarchist. Multitalented in the arts as Blake was,
he had equally great skill as a reader, however, so we can
have faith that he could penetrate beyond received opinion to
knowledge of the text that is not dependent on any critics
system. We should look closely at Carys translation, to see
where it comes closest to Blakes own theology. Despite
earlier interpretations that see Blake in opposition to Dante at
every step, there are significant points of agreement, and one
of these is the importance of revelation. As the pilgrim and
Beatrice rise into the Empyrean in Paradise, canto 28, for
example, the poet makes it clear that direct vision is the only
method to gain knowledge of the divine. Now that Dante has
risen so high, his misunderstandings are blown away like dust
from the air.
As when the north wind blows from his milder
cheek
A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air,
Cleard of the rack that hung on it before,
Glitters; and, with his beauties all unveild,
The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles:
Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove
With clear reply the shadows back, and truth
Was manifested, as a star in Heaven
[Paradise, 28; Cary, 419420].
The knowledge that brings contentment comes from seeing;
love follows on.
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And all
Are blessed, even as their sight descends
Deeper into the Truth, wherein rest is
For every mind. Thus happiness hath root
In seeing, not in loving, which of sight
Is aftergrowth.
The degree of each individuals grace and blessing comes
from the degree to which that soul can see.
And of the seeing such
The meed, as unto each, in due degree,
Grace and good-will their measure have assignd
[Paradise, 28; Cary, 420].
And at the end of the canto, for good measure, we are shown
a good example and a bad example: one who got his
knowledge from direct vision, and was correct, and one who
only calculated, and erred. Dante reminds us that both
Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite and Gregory the Great had
written about the nine levels of angels in Heaven, but their
accounts did not agree. Eventually, when Gregory reached
Heaven, he saw that he had been mistaken.
But soon as in this Heaven his doubting eyes
Were opend, Gregory at his error smiled.
Dante says its no surprise that Dionysius should get it right,
because instead of relying on calculation, he had eyewitness
testimony: the account of the Apostle Paul, who had travelled,
Comedy-like, to Heaven to see for himself.

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Nor marvel, that a denizen of earth

Should scan such secret truth; for he had learnt
Both this and much beside of these our orbs,
From an eye-witness to Heavens mysteries
[Paradise, 28; Cary, 421].
Like Blake, then, Dante makes it clear that there is no
substitute for vision. Even a great man of the church such as
Pope Gregory I, a saint, smiles with recognition, knowing that
all his reasonable calculation will fall away when he can see
for himself.
In the next canto, Beatrice explains what vision is like for
those lucky beings who have not fallen into the material
world. Angels have perfect vision. They are most blessed
precisely because they see the most clearly.
Know thou, that, from the first, these substances,
Rejoicing in the countenance of God,
Have held unceasingly their view, intent
Upon the glorious vision, from the which
Nought absent is nor hid:
[Paradise, 29; Cary, 424]
And, most significantly when we compare Dantes view with
Blakes, angels have no memory. They dont need it, because
they see everything directly, all at once. They have not been
divided from God, they do not suffer from the illusion that
they and the world are separate, and they need not
reconstitute wholeness, because they have never lost it.
where then no change
Of newness, with succession, interrupts,
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Remembrance, there, needs none to gather up

Divided thought and images remote.
There is no variance between the poets here. Blake and Dante
agree that closeness to God does not come about through faith
in things not seen or through obedience to moral strictures.
And they agree that the Bible is the model for all art; that the
closer one stays to the Gospels and their message, the closer
one will be to the truth.
Christ said not to His first conventicle,
Go forth and preach impostures to the world,
But gave them truth to build on; and the sound
Was might on their lips: nor needed they,
Beside the Gospel, other spear or shield,
To aid them in their warfare for the faith
[Paradise, 28; Cary, 425].
In the current discussion sparked by Nardis work, about
whether we should see Dante as prophet or poet, Blakes
position would be clear: insofar as Dante was a poet, he was a
prophet. Blake saw himself and all true poets as prophets and
saw their working process as the same: clear vision. Where
we find Blake at odds with Dante is when prophecy falls
short. Canto 30 of the Paradise contains one example:
Mine eyes did look
On beauty, such, as I believe in sooth,
Not merely to exceed our human, but,
That save its Maker, none can to the full
Enjoy it. At this point oerpowerd I fail,
Unequal to my theme, as never bard

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 hath faild before

[Paradise, 30; Cary, 427].
Though Dante has seen the absolute beauty of the Empyrean,
he cannot describe it. Here he has slipped from prophecy
down into literature, from vision to memory. He has
employed two traditions of thought that would be familiar to
his readers but that, for Blake, fall short of what real poetry
can do. The first of these traditions is the rhetorical device I
mentioned earlier, in use since classical times, called the
inexpressibility topos, in which the speaker describes
something by saying it is indescribable. The second is the
metaphor that describes Gods emanation of the world and of
goodness in terms of light, shining from the sun. Such
language had been employed since at least Platos time as an
analogy for the way in which God creates the world. God
doesnt broadcast actual light, as if he were a big light bulb;
but it is hard for us to picture him emanating the ground of
existence itself, or abstract qualities. Thus it was a
commonplace to compare God to the sun, shining into the
darkness to create everything that exists. The Comedy
consistently employs this metaphor, describing the
overwhelming perfection of Gods presence in the vocabulary
of light too bright for eyes to endure. The first instance of this
trope is in the second canto of the Purgatory, where Dante
describes the angel who arrives bearing the souls of the newly
dead:
As more and more toward us came, more bright
Appeard the bird of God, nor could the eye
Endure his splendour near: I mine bent down
[Purgatory, 2; Cary, 153].

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Long before they have reached Heaven, any sight of someone

arriving from that location shines too brightly for Dantes
sight to withstand. As he rises through each level in the
Paradise, the light grows brighter and brighter until, at his
arrival in the Empyrean, his vision is overwhelmed.
As when the lightning, in a sudden spleen
Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes
To visive spirits, dazzled and bedimmd;
So, round about me, fulminating streams
Of living radiance playd, and left me swathed
And veild in dense impenetrable blaze
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 428].
In Dantes philosophical dialogue, the Convivio, the author
explains that there are things we can say little about because
of their transcendency.70 He continues:
Here we must observe that in a certain way these
things dazzle our intellect, insofar as certain things
are affirmed to exist which our intellect cannot
perceive (namely God, eternity, and primal matter),
things which most certainly are known to exist and
are with full faith believed to exist. But given the
nature of their essence we cannot understand them:
only by negative reasoning can we approach an
understanding of these things, and not otherwise.
For Dante, then, the final layer is not visible to us in this life.
He recommends negative reasoning, which would have
made Blake reach for his angry margin-marking pencil. Even
to the souls in Heaven, complete vision is impossible. Each
soul receives as much of Gods emanation as it can, but this
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varies according to the souls immortal character; none

receives as much as God shines forth. The souls fly near God,
Near as they can, approaching; and they can / The more, the
loftier their vision (Paradise, 28; Cary, 420).
Blake probably never read the Convivio, but the limitations
that Dante places on vision are clear enough from the Comedy
itself. Gods transcendence, his difference from our
ontological state, means that he is not visible to human eyes.
God appears, but God is light, too bright to be seen directly.
(Here I am referring to the epigraph of the present book, taken
from Blakes Auguries of Innocence: God Appears & God
is Light / To those poor Souls who dwell in Night / But does a
Human Form Display / To those who Dwell in Realms of
day [E 493].) The separation of the world into that which can
be seen by people, and that which can never be, is not
acceptable to Blake. To trace the theological differences
between his poetry and Dantes, we will have to return to the
writing of Cusanus and see how ideas largely rooted in that
theologians work played an important role in Blakes thought
and the Romantic period in general, as well as in the
philosophy of Hegel.

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Good Infinity and Bad Infinity: Cusanus to Hegel

And what is this God? I asked the earth and it
answered: I am not He; and all things that are in
the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea
and the deeps and the creeping things, and they
answered: We are not your God; seek higher. I
asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and
they answered: Neither are we God whom you
seek.Augustine, Confessions, 10.671
Whosoever thinks God is in the heavens above
the skyes; and so prayes to that God which he
imagines to be there and every where this man
worships the Devill.Gerrard Winstanley, The
New Law of Righteousness, 164872
O thou mortal man
Seek not thy heavenly father then beyond the
skies [E 114]
Between the time of Dantes Comedy and the time of Blakes
illustrations, developments in theology occurred that were
sufficient to move these two Christian poets far apart on
fundamental matters. Some of these developments may be
traced back to Nicholas of Cusa and have continued to
evolve, not without opposition, to the present day. In this
section we will pay special attention to issues of the
transcendence or immanence of God, and examine how Dante
and Blake differed on these important concepts.

129

Cusanus grew up in what is now southwest Germany, in an

area with many adherents to the Devotio Moderna, a
movement focused on encouraging devotion among lay
people through meditational practices.73 Their methods made
use of objects in the sensible world as aids in imagining the
transcendent. Leaders in the movement encouraged personal
mysticism as a way of bringing an individual closer to God
but held back from saying that complete union with God was
possible in this life. They avoided earlier controversies on the
subject of spiritual union by aiming only at the feeling of such
union and recommended contemplative practices to
encourage this feeling. Paintings from the same time and
place, by Robert Campin or Rogier van der Weyden, reflect
these exercises: when they show the Annunciation or other
biblical events in anachronistic, contemporary settings, it is an
intentional effort to bring modern Christians into closer
contemplative contact with the spirit. Mystical experience
through visualization was an important part of the Devotio
Modernas practice.74
Cusanus traveled widely, including a trip to Constantinople
only a few years before it fell to the Turks. There he learned
about practices in the Eastern church that made use of icons
as spiritual tools. More than in Western Europe, the East has a
long tradition of encouraging a connection to the intelligible
realm through meditation on the sensible.
Opinion is divided over how much direct influence this
German Renaissance man has had on others. Ernst Cassirer,
in his book The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance
Philosophy, introduced Cusanus as the most important thinker
of the Quattrocento and attributed to him enormous influence.
More recently, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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declared that except for Giordano Bruno, Cusanus work

made little impact until his rediscovery in the late nineteenth
century. Morimichi Watanabe claims that Cusanuss
influence was rather modest, but lists, among others, Pico
della Mirandola, Johann Kepler, Bruno, Leibniz, Kant,
Lessing, and Hegel among those who learned from himnot
exactly a list of slackers.75 We can avoid wading into the
debates about influences but still gain from a brief
examination of Cusanus philosophy, because it serves as a
starting point from which to see several important theological
issues. Among his most significant original ideas was a new
theory of the relationship of the spiritual, infinite realm to the
material finite. Cusanus theories on the immanent nature of
the infinite in the finite were a major refinement of the
Neoplatonic views that had prevailed in the Church for
centuries.
Platos ontology requires the absolute separation of idea and
matter. The intelligible and the sensible, higher and lower,
divine and earthly, exist in different realms. Aristotle
criticized this view and offered instead his doctrine of
hylomorphism, in which both idea and matter are of this
world. Platos transcendent idea, , becomes for
Aristotle , form. Form does not exist independently in a
transcendent realm, as do Platos ideas; there is no form
without matter, or matter without form.
Platos world of ideals exists over and above us, and the
material things of our world reflect or mime those ideals,
without the intermingling of the two realms. Aristotles Prime
Mover, on the other hand, sends out his force, via the stars
and celestial spheres, in a continuous, unbroken line to each
part of the universe. His universe is a finite, continuous space,
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and he has no need for the concept of transcendence. Whereas

Platos ideas are eternal and the things of this world reflect
them in better or worse degrees, Aristotle sees continuous
development from form to form (for example, youth to old
age), with no given state being closer to a higher world than
any other.
Plotinus and the other Neoplatonic philosophers tried to unite
these systems. They retain from Plato, as a fundamental
principle, the transcendental: the absolute opposition between
the intelligible and the sensible. But they imagine the
transcendental world to be operating in the manner described
by
Aristotles
concept
of
development.
This
combinationdevelopment in the material world stimulated
by the transcendentled the Neoplatonists to create the
concept of emanation, a kind of shining-out of existence.
Cassirer writes:
The absolute remains as the super-finite, the
super-one, and the super-being, pure in itself.
Nevertheless, because of the super-abundance in it,
the absolute overflows, and from this
super-abundance it produces the multiformity of the
universe, down to formless matter as the extreme
limit of non-being.76
In other words, Plotinus One is transcendent, as Platos
world of ideas is, but it operates largely as Aristotles Prime
Mover had done, by pouring its influence into the world. Thus
Plotinus can agree with Aristotle that in the sensible realm
finite forms develop, while asserting that the higher realm, the
purely intelligible, is a separate realm of the ideal and the
infinite. His view became the standard Christian one
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throughout the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas, though his

thought was Aristotelian in so many respects, agreed with
Plotinus that there must be a metaphysical infinite, which, of
course, Thomas called the Christian God.
Cusanus didnt doubt that God is infinite and ideal, or that our
world is fallen. His originality was in his explanation of how
these worlds interpenetrate. As a mathematician, he knew that
we cant reach infinity by counting up to a very large number
and then adding one more. Infinity, by definition, cannot be
reached. Cassirer writes:
All measurement, comparison, and syllogizing that
runs along the thread of empirical existence must
also end within that realm. Within the empirical
world this movement can go on indefinitely; but this
limitless progression going on indefinitely does not
embrace the infinite which is in fact the absolute
Maximum of determination.77
God remains transcendent, in that he is unreachable, beyond
our vision or calculation.
As the maximum, the infinite, and the absolute, God
encompasses everything. To say he is the alpha and omega,
the first and the last, seems reasonable enough. But to say that
he is also the biggest and the smallest, or the straightest and
the roundest, or the heaviest and the lightest, is harder to
imagine. How can God be both straight and round? Yet if
God is truly infinite, he must encompass everything. Though
later mathematicians would disagree, Cusanus thought that an
infinite with something outside it, an infinite that doesnt
include everything is not infinite, by definition. Therefore
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God is both the straightest and the roundest. In our finite

world, in which the principle of contradiction holds sway,
such a coincidence is unthinkable. A thing that is straight may
not also be round. Yet God, being infinite, excludes nothing.
(This is the key point.) We can see that by including
everything at once, by causing all contradictory things to
coincide in him, God is the One, is the unity of all. And
because a truly infinite God must be excluded from nowhere
and be present everywhere, God must be immanent in every
part of our world, not something distant.
The Aristotelian, Ptolemaic cosmos, which Dante believed in,
saw our finite world as a sort of bubble within, but separate
from, the infinite. The center of the bubble is the center of the
earth. From that center to the orbit of the moon, everything is
made of various combinations of the four elements: earth,
water, air, and fire. From the moon to the stars the spheres are
made of the fifth element, aether. This element, being
unmixed, does not decay, but it does allow perfect,
unchanging movement. Leaving the bubble, above the level
of the fixed stars, beyond the spheres visible to astronomers,
we encounter a fundamental difference. The space above the
fixed stars is not made of any material, because if we rise to
that level we have left the material world. In fact, there is no
space there, either, or time. The intelligible realm is not a
realm of less or more, nearer or farther away, before or after.
It is the absolute, God himself.
Cusanus rejected this system. In his cosmology as in his
theology, Cusanus did not allow a space that is not a part of
the infinite. He rejected the ancient idea of pure matter below
and pure spirit above. If the finite is included in the infinite,
then there must be no boundary between the twothere must
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be nowhere where the infinite is not. Its difficult to overstate

the revolutionary quality of this idea. Before Copernicus and
before Kepler, nearly a century before Galileos trial, Cusanus
rejected the whole Ptolemaic system and declared that the
earth is not the center, that the earth moves, and that in fact
there is no center, other than God. He still believed that the
sun rotated around the earth, but he conceived of both moving
in an infinite void.
Because the universe is not a limited bubble within God, the
cosmos must be infinite. And because something with no
circumference or edges can have no center, it makes no sense
to speak of the earth at the center of the universe. And
because in a centerless, edgeless space all movement must
only occur in relation to other objects, the stillness of the
earth and the motions of the planets occur only relative to our
observations. Cusanus even imagined that there were alien
observers on other planets, to whom the earth appeared as a
star in motion.
Indeed, the perspective of the observer became a key point for
Cusanus, when he turned his attention to the problem of how
the infinite and the finite came to be perceived as different. If
the infinite is present at every point of our world, and God is
immanent everywhere, why can we not see that? Why is our
vision so narrow? Cusanus concluded, and Kant more
famously elaborated, that each being sees only as he is able.
The phenomena that a subject creates from his perception of
the noumena are determined by his abilities to perceiveby
the accident of what the physical body can receive and what
the mind can comprehend. God, the infinite noumenon, is
One. As material beings, though, we only perceive the
noumenon by dividing it into comprehensible elements.
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The Japanese character that shows a blade, cutting up from

below, ?, means both divide and understand. Cusanus
would find this appropriate. The infinite noumenon is there,
but due to our limitations we may not see it directly. For us to
understand it we must see difference, and division; we have to
chop it up, and lose the complete vision of its unending
interconnectedness. It is our process of understanding, as
limited beings, then, that creates the illusion of finiteness. The
very process through which we understand is also the process
that blocks our access to the infinite. If we could see as God
sees, there would be no finiteness. As an example, we can
imagine how it is that our minds create the concept of now
out of the infinity of time. God does not feel individual
moments of time as now and then, because he is capable
of seeing every moment in infinity simultaneously. As
Cassirer writes, the human mind is not so much in time, as
time is in it.78
How then may we improve our vision? Here we may see the
influence of Devotio Moderna and the Eastern use of icons on
Cusanus thinking. We do not see more through improving
our knowledge, obviously, because knowing is the very
process that separates us. Cusanus approaches the problem by
introducing his concept of Learned Ignorance. The first step
in this educated not-knowing is to end our vain habit of
attempting to analyze God through concepts. This sounds
similar enough to the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius,
which declares that we may never make any positive
statement about what God is, because that would limit our
concept of God, and God is limitless. (Pseudo-Dionysius was
in fact one of Cusanus most significant influences.) What is
original is the idea that we can see more of God if we see
more of the world. Bellitto explains it this way:
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Through introspective vision, the mind can see what

is invisible to regular sight. The mind does not
directly see the infinite potential of God himself, but
sees the myriad ways in which it is manifested in the
material worldin their particulars, not in concepts.
We dont see the ultimate unity of things that is
God, but we do see that unity showing itself in
multiplicity.79
The goal is not to form abstract concepts from observation.
The best we can do is to see directly and introspectively as
many particulars of the material world as we can, from as
many different viewpoints as possible. God exists in these
particulars, though he exists in more particulars than we can
ever possibly observe. If we can imagine something like the
totality of all particulars, unfolding in all its richness, we have
done the best we can.
We must not forget that Cusanus was, naturally, a Christian,
and his theology was particularly centered on the role of
Christ in the world. All this talk of the infinite in the finite
takes on a more familiar tone when we think that the best
example of the two together is the person of Jesus, who was
both God and man. And though under our own power we may
not see the infinite directly, Jesus is merciful and came to
show the wayso that with him, all vision is possible. As we
will see, Blake agreed.
How could Cusanus get away with radical notions such as a
non-geocentric universe, when Galileo and Giordano Bruno
were punished for similar ideas? In part it was due to his good
relations with, and practical work for, the Church. In addition
to serving as bishop of Brixen he performed so many duties
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for the Church that Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, later Pope

Pius II, compared him to Hercules. More importantly, as
Cassirer points out, the challenges of the Protestants in the
century after Cusanus caused the Vatican to hew to a stricter
line on speculative issues in Galileos time than in
Cusanuss.80 Indeed, it was the Protestants who took
Cusanuss theories about the immanence of God in our world
and developed them into more extreme forms. Just as Locke,
who was a Christian, laid the groundwork for an
epistemology without God, Cusanus prepared the way for a
theology that he would have opposed. Cusanus never doubted
the transcendence of God, never heretically claimed that there
is no God independent of the material world. Later thinkers,
however, used his ideas to build a theology of absolute
immanence, in which the world we know and God are
identical, or even, as in Blakes case, to say that God only
exists in the hearts of people. Today the Catholic
Encyclopedia contains only a terse entry on Cusanus that
barely mentions his originality,81 while the entry on
immanence chastises at length believers in absolute
immanence as heretical liberal Protestants.82 Pope Pius IX,
who served as pontiff from 1846 to 1878, found it necessary
to issue a special encyclical to denounce the heresies of,
among other things, believing that [t]here is no supreme,
all-wise and all-provident Divine Being distinct from the
universe; God is one with nature and therefore subject to
change; He becomes God in man and the world; all things are
God and have His substance; God is identical with the world,
spirit with matter[.]83
One of those liberal Protestants the pope had in mind was
Jacob Boehme, who was among William Blakes most
important influences.
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Boehme was another German of mystical tendencies.

Following a visionary experience he began to study the
writings of Paracelsus and the German mystical tradition, and
he benefited from the revival of esoteric learning that
occurred around the court of Rudolph II in Prague. In this
way he absorbed ideas from the sources and the descendants
of Cusanus, but he developed them in ways that would have
shocked the bishop of Brixen.84 Boehmes thought
exemplifies the heresies that Pius IX named. He taught that
there is no God distinct from the universethe universe is the
body of God. He believed that God is one with nature and
therefore subject to changein fact, the evolution of God is a
fundamental element of Boehmes theology. And he wrote
that God becomes himself in man and the worldGod
requires the presence of people to realize himself, to become
fully God. Not only is God immanent in the world, as
Cusanus taught; God is immanent here and exists nowhere
else; he exists as an active process within the world,
unfolding within history.85
For Boehme, the original, undivided substance of the world is
nothing: a special kind of nothing that he called the
Ungrundun-ground, sometimes translated as the Abyss.
The Ungrund is called a nothing (though it is God Himself)
because it is inconceivable and inexpressible.86 It is the
infinite, and it is Gods original condition. When I consider
what God is, then, I say, he is the One; in reference to the
Creature as an Eternal Nothing. He has neither Foundation,
Beginning, or Abode. he is in himself only one; he needs
neither Space, or Place. He is neither like or resembles any
thing and has no peculiar Place where he dwells.87 As
Fischer explains it, the Ungrund is pure potentiality.88

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Boehmes heresyor new insight, if you preferis to show

that this original undivided potentiality is God, but it is God
not yet conscious of himself. Like Cusanus or Kant, Boehme
believes that for humans to perceive the infinite noumenal
preexistence, we must divide it and convert it into
phenomena. Unlike his predecessor, Boehme believes that
such a procedure is necessary even for God to know himself:
[B]efore this world there was nothing but God
from Eternity; and after this world, there will be
nothing but God in Eternity; but the cause why we
comprehend not this, is because there is no
comprehensibility in God. For where is a
Comprehensibility there is beginning and end.89
Before there was a beginning, God comprehended nothing.
Comprehension
requires
comparing,
separating,
this-different-from-that, ?. The Ungrund lacks difference or
division, and so even God, of whom the Ungrund consists,
cannot understand it.
The series of events that causes God to fall into
consciousness, to form the Trinity and achieve his potential,
is so elaborate that we cannot describe it here in detail.
Boehme says it comes about because of the unity of opposites
that exist in God. Cusanus had seen the Coincidentia
Oppositorum as unchanging stability, but Boehme credits it
with the beginning and development of our world and of God.
In Hegels Lectures on the History of Philosophy the later
philosopher gives Boehme a very prominent place. He writes
that Boehme represents God not as the empty unity, but as
this self-separating unity of absolute opposites. It is the
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presence of the contraries that causes a split in God, a

separation of wrath and love that prompts the infinite unity to
begin to become conscious to itself. Hegel writes:
God as the simple absolute existence is not God
absolutely; in Him nothing can be known. What we
know is something differentbut this different is
itself contained in God as the perception and
knowledge of God. Hence of the second step
Boehme says that a separation must have taken
place in this temperament.90
And he goes on to quote Boehme:
No thing can become manifest to itself without
opposition; for if it has nothing to withstand it, it
always goes forward on its own account and does
not go back within itself. But if it does not go back
into itself as into that from which it originally arose,
it knows nothing of its original state.
The Ungrund is infinite, and so when it does come into
consciousness of itself it does so everywhere. The creation of
the material world is not, as it was for the Neoplatonists, an
overflowing of an already ideal and self-subsistent God. For
Boehme, the material world is a necessary development in
Gods evolution: The spiritual substance must needs bring
itself into a material ground, wherein it may so figure and
form itself .91 Even for God, knowledge is accomplished
through seeing, and for this, God, the uncreated, needs to see
himself in the created world.

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God hath manifested himself by the externall

World in a similtude, that the spirit might see it selfe
in the Being essentially, and not so onely, but that
the Creature likewise might contemplate and behold
the being of God in the Figure, and know it92
Most importantly for us, Gods process of self-creation takes
place in the human heart as well.
Thou canst name no place, either in heaven or in this
world, where the divine birth is not. The birth of the
divine Trinity likewise takes place in thine own
heart; all three persons are generated in thy heart,
God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In the divine
power everywhere we find the fountain spring of the
divine birth.93
Hegel remarks on this interiorization of God:
[W]hat marks [Boehme] out and makes him
noteworthy is the Protestant principle already
mentioned of placing the intellectual world within
ones own mind and heart, and of experiencing and
knowing and feeling in ones own
self-consciousness all that formerly was conceived
as a Beyond.
The New Testament principle, which we remarked on above,
of transferring Gods law from stone tablets onto the heart, is
here expanded to include Gods struggles as well. As God
undergoes the dialectical struggle toward self-realization,
people do as well.

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The quotes from Hegel in the paragraphs above are all from
his explication of Boehmes work, but in his own philosophy
there are sentences that could have been written by either
man. From Hegels Encyclopedia Logic, we can see the
similarity of their views on the immanence of God: We
usually suppose that the Absolute must lie far beyond; but it
is precisely what is wholly present, what we, as thinkers,
always carry with us and employ[.]94
There are many more concepts that have close parallels in the
two mens work. Boehmes separation of God into contraries,
which battle and create, reminds us of Hegels dialectic of
history, and Gods realization as it takes place in the minds of
people is recalled in the development of Geist. For our
purposes, interested as we are in the immanence or
transcendence of God, we may make use of Hegels notions,
also owing much to Boehme and Cusanus, of good infinity
and bad infinity.
Hegels Schlechte Unendlichkeit was until recently translated
as bad infinity, though Wayne M. Martin suggests that use
of the word bad here is misleading. To call this infinity
bad implies that it is a variety of infinity, an infinity that is
bad.95 Martin suggests instead the word spurious as a
translation of Schlechte, to make clear that Hegel intended
Schlechte Unendlichkeit as something that is not actually
infinity at all. Punter uses false to contrast this notion with
real infinity: The false infinite, which is infinity conceived
only in the crypto-quantitative terms of the understanding;
and the real infinite, which resides not beyond but within
finite objects.96

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Here we see that Hegel has discovered or rediscovered

Cusanuss idea that the infinite cannot be over and above,
separate from our world, but must include the finite. Hegel
goes beyond Cusanus in his expectation about how people
may think of this infinite, however. Whereas Cusanus (as well
as St. Augustine and Kant) felt that people could never fully
conceive of the infinite, despite its presence in the world,
Hegel does not see such a limitation. Hyppolite describes
Hegels thinking this way: Finite human thought is not
trapped in its own finitude; it surpasses itself and what it
reveals or manifests is Being itself.97 The optimistic idea
that people may see Being itself, and are not inevitably
separate from the transcendental, is shared by William Blake.
This, we will see, is one of the key differences he has with
Dante and one of the reasons he kindly undertook the
correction and completion of The Divine Comedy.

Blakes Infinity Versus Dantes Infinity

Jacob Boehme wrote, When I take up a stone or clod of earth
and look upon it, I see that which is above and that which is
below, indeed [I see] the whole world therein.98 Blake wrote
of the ability To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a
Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your
hand / And Eternity in an hour (E 490).
Boehme said, [I]f thy Eyes were opened, then in that very
Place where thou standest, sittest or liest, thou shouldst see
the glorious Countenance or Face of God, and the whole
heavenly Gate.99 And Blake insisted, If the doors of

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perception were cleansed every thing would / appear to man

as it is: infinite (E 39).
Boehme and Blake have taken Cusanuss claims about
infinity to a logical conclusion. Infinity, as we saw, cannot be
separate from our finite world, because an infinity with limits
is not really infinite. Likewise, infinity cannot be divided,
because you cant slice infinity down the middle and have
half an infinity. If infinity is everywhere, then, and also
indivisible, it must be present in its undivided entirety
everywhere, in every clod, every grain of sand, every human
heart, every particle of the universe.
All of Boehmes works were translated into English and
published in England from 1645 to 1662, and various
editions, selections, and interpretations continued to appear
through the next two centuries.100 The parallels between the
Germans writing and John Miltons have led scholars to
conclude that elements of Behmenist thought may be
identified in Paradise Lost.101 Interest in Boehme gained
encouragement from Jane Lead (16231704), a visionary and
religious writer, who published numerous books and
pamphlets on his work and founded the Philadelphian Society
in London in 1697 specifically to study his ideas. She was
among a large number of British antinomians and
independent religionists who read Boehme, including George
Fox, who founded the Quakers.102
There is solid evidence that Blake knew of at least one
famous edition of Boehmes works. We know that he praised
the illustrations in William Laws set of translations, telling
Crabb Robinson, [E]ven Michael Angelo could not have
done better.103 And Blake claimed converse with the
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long-dead visionary, writing to his friend Flaxman, Behmen

appeard to me (E 707).
Its easy enough to see how Boehmes immanentist views
would find favor with Blake and other anti-monarchical
antinomians. A hierarchical view of theology and cosmology
implies top-down rule, and justifies, at least in the minds at
the top, the view that the monarchy is the will of God. Blake
pointed out early in his career that the vulgar had been
enslaved by those who caused them to forget that [a]ll deities
reside in the human breast (E 38). Since Blakes time, less
religious people have also seen transcendental views of God
as allied with an oppressive status quo. Ludwig Feuerbachs
1841 The Essence of Christianity, which made a deep
impression on Marx and Engels, describes religion in terms
with which Blake would have agreed completely, insofar as it
is speaking about the common religion of his day:
Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he
sets God before him as the antithesis of himself.
God is not what man isman is not what God is.
God is the infinite, man the finite being; God is
perfect, man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal;
God almighty, man weak; God holy, man sinful.
God and man are extremes: God is the absolutely
positive, the sum of all realities; man the absolutely
negative, comprehending all negations.104
Of course Blake would have said that true religion is none of
these things. True religion, as Boehme taught, sets us free
from such illusions.

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Why, according to Blake, have we have allowed the status

quo to disunite us from ourselves? Why do we not see the
infinite, despite being in the midst of it? To answer these
questions, we will examine more closely his understanding of
nature and recall what was written above about perception
and the imagination. Here we must introduce another of the
characters from Blakes original mythology: Vala. As in the
case of Urizen, her name is thought to be a pun with at least
two references. S. Foster Damon concludes that her name is
derived from Vluspa, a Scandinavian guardian spirit of the
earth.105 (Wagner, with no input from Blake, used the name
Vala as an alternative name for Erda, the earth goddess in
Siegfried.) For Blake, too, she is a kind of earth goddess, but
not necessarily a kind one. She is the portion of the undivided
One that we can perceive with our corporeal senses and is
therefore most commonly known to people in our fallen
condition as Nature. The name Vala is also reminiscent of
veil, because people have fallen into the habit of looking
only with the sensesnot the imaginationand so Vala
becomes a sort of veil, covering the true face of what is.
Recall now that Blakes epistemology is not an account of
passive sense-reception. Blake, like Cusanus and Kant,
conceives of perception as an active process, involving the
imagination, that depends very much on the condition of the
perceiver. What we face is not a dead thing that our mind
mirrors, but an infinite noumenon from which we create a
world. The sort of world we create depends on how we image
it. In Jerusalem, Blake wrote, [I]n your own Bosom you bear
your Heaven and Earth & all you behold; tho it appears
Without, it is Within (E 225). Nature may appear to be out
there, separate from us, but in fact it is some?thing we
actively assemble. An atheist, for Blake, is someone who
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has forgotten this fact and thinks that what he sees is

independent of himself, dead matter. We can trace the process
of the atheists misunderstanding, its occasion and its
correction, in the story of Vala.
The character first appears in the long unfinished poem now
usually referred to as The Four Zoas, although when Blake
began work on the manuscript, in about 1797, it was titled
Vala. She appears mostly near the beginning and end of the
poem, and though other characters are named more
frequently, Vala plays a key role in the story. The work was
intended as an epic, telling of The Universal Man and
His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity
His fall into the Generation of Decay & Death & his
Regeneration
by the Resurrection from the dead [E 301]
The Fall creates the veil of nature, the attractive but
dangerous perception of a nature separate from ourselves. In
this account Urizen begins as one of the Four Zoas, the four
faculties of the Universal Man. Here, though, the Fall isnt
due to his own usurpation of power. Albion, the Universal
Man, wearied by passion, calls him and says:
Take thou possession! take this Scepter! go forth in
my might
For I am weary, & must sleep in the dark sleep of
Death [E 313]
Urizen first exults, because he has been handed the reins of
power, but soon enough he becomes afraid.

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No more Exulting for he saw Eternal Death beneath

Pale he beheld futurity; pale he beheld the Abyss

Mighty was the draught of Voidness to draw

Existence in
Terrific Urizen strode above, in fear & pale dismay
He saw the indefinite space beneath & his soul
shrunk with horror
His feet upon the verge of Non Existence
The Abyss is the emptiness of nonexistence, which reason
rightly fears. But remember that Abyss is also the English
translation of Boehmes Ungrund, the original state of God,
the noumenon before it is perceived even by God himself.
Reason cannot face the One on its own, without imagination.
When he tries to, the living interconnectedness of everything
goes unseen due to the fact that he must abstract in order to
understand. Reasons ascent to control causes the Petrifying
[of] all the Human Imagination into rock & sand (E 314).
Urizens fear of the Abyss causes him to create a new domain
of false safety, called the Mundane Shell. He calls on Luvah
and Vala and commands them:
Divide ye bands of influence by influence
Build we a Bower for heavens darling in the grizly
deep
Build we the Mundane Shell around the Rock of
Albion
The Zoas, mans various faculties, are no longer working in
concert. They divide their tasks according to their separate
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abilities and build what Urizen believes is a necessary

protective container. The result, though, is a separation of part
from part. The ability to perceive by imagination is lost, and
the illusion of separation begins:
Their eyes their ears nostrils & tongues roll outward
they behold
What is within now seen without they are raw to the
hungry wind
They become Nations far remote in a little & dark
Land [E 314]
Luvah, who represents passion and was one of the four Zoas
before the Fall, is dangerous in such a world, because, as we
all know, passion may upset the order that reason has built.
Therefore
Luvah was cast into the Furnaces of affliction &
sealed
And Vala fed in cruel delight, the furnaces with fire
Stern Urizen beheld urgd by necessity to keep
The evil day afar, & if perchance with iron power
He might avert his own despair; in woe & fear he
saw
Vala incircle round the furnaces where Luvah was
closd
In joy she heard his howlings, & forgot he was her
Luvah
With whom she walkd in bliss, in times of
innocence & youth
[E 317]

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Before the Fall, Luvah/passion and Vala/nature lived in bliss

together. As long as imagination controls perception, and man
is free to form the world as he wishes, human emotions are
never out of step with the world of nature around them. Now
that they have forgotten their connection, however, nature
causes only suffering. Cooperation becomes impossible;
nature resists and attacks us. There can be no winner here.
Without living connections, nature soon becomes a dead
thing, burnt up.
And when Luvah age after age was quite melted
with woe
The fires of Vala faded like a shadow cold & pale
An evanescent shadow. last she fell a heap of Ashes
Beneath the furnaces a woful heap in living death
Then were the furnaces unseald with spades &
pickaxes
Roaring let out the fluid, the molten metal ran in
channels
Cut by the plow of ages held in Urizens strong hand
In many a valley, for the Bulls of Luvah dragd the
Plow [E 318]
In this sad state, we reach a sort of industrial landscape, in
which nature is ashes and the passions are yoked to reasons
plow. As more literal-minded socialists were to warn some
years later, alienation from one another, which is alienation
from nature, and the fear of passions unconstrained by reason,
lead to a world more dead than alive. Urizen himself realizes
that the immense work that has gone into his ordered society
has not brought happiness. He meets Vala in her fallen
condition, sees that the two of them are unreconciled, and
regrets that labor in his world is unsatisfying.
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Two wills they had two intellects & not as in times

of old
This Urizen percievd & silent brooded in darkning
Clouds
To him his Labour was but Sorrow [E 320]
There is a long wait, though, before Vala regains her original
form. The final chapter of the poem describes the Last
Judgment and shows how the four Zoas may be reunited in
Universal Man.
Resurrection, of course, comes only through Christ. Shortly
before the resurrection occurs in Vala, Blake writes, The
Lamb of God has rent the Veil of Mystery soon to return (E
385). Now we see Vala subsumed into traditional biblical
symbolism: the veil of the Temple, which separated the
worshippers from God in the Old Testament (Exod. 26:33)
and which tears at the moment of Christs death on the cross
(Matt. 27:51), is shown to be the veil of nature, which has
been separating us from the infinite One. Then the Universal
Man begins the task of gathering the elements of himself that
he had thought were separate:
Man looks out in tree & herb & fish & bird & beast,
collecting up the scatterd portions of his immortal
body
into the Elemental forms of every thing that grows
[E 385]
Finally the regenerated man can tell Luvah and Vala to
resume their former roles:

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They must renew their brightness & their

disorganizd functions
Again reorganize till they resume the image of the
human
Cooperating in the bliss of Man obeying his Will
Servants to the infinite & Eternal of the Human form
[E 395]
Passion and nature are a portion of man, not separate things
that act upon him. Resurrection occurs when the various
portions have regained their cooperation within mans
totality. Luvah and Vala go to the garden of Beulah, the level
or condition of mans being where he rests from the effort of
Edens eternal changes. Vala is restored to her role as a
creation and partner of passion, intended to give rest. She
sings:
My Luvah here hath placd me in a Sweet & pleasant
Land
And given me fruits & pleasant waters & warm hills
& cool valleys
Here will I build myself a house & here Ill call on
his name
Here Ill return when I am weary & take my pleasant
rest
So spoke the Sinless Soul & laid her head on the
downy fleece
Of a curld Ram who stretchd himself in sleep beside
his mistress
And soft sleep fell upon her eyelids in the silent
noon of day [E 397]

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When reason has returned to its proper function as only one

of mans faculties, in balance with passion and imagination,
nature too is restored. Reason sees nature as something to be
used and tamed, because he can only see it through abstracted
dead concepts. When full vision is restored, and the Universal
Man sees the living connection of all things, nature is
beautiful again.
In theological terms, we are once more in territory that is
heretical, or at least heterodox. Dante would not have agreed
that nature will be saved. In the early Christian era Origen and
St. Gregory of Nyssa taught the doctrine of apokatastasis,
restitutio in pristinum statum, which said that not only
obedient souls but all parts of creation would be redeemed at
the Last Judgment. This was accepted by Erigena and others,
but the Church declared it anathema in 543. Milton seems to
have considered the idea that his Satan might be redeemed,
and a number of the antinomian sects believed it.
To sum this all up, then, here is Blakes definition of nature.
Nature is the portion of the Ungrund or noumenon that we
can perceive with our regular fallen senses. It is not an
illusion, any more than anything else we perceive is an
illusion, because everything we perceive is a creation of our
minds imaginative powers. And everything we perceive is
real, while we are perceiving it. But to limit ourselves to
nature as commonly perceived is to cut ourselves off from the
infinity of which that nature is a portion. Such a limited
position Blake calls atheism. When we become atheists, by
this definition, nature becomes a realm to which we are not
intrinsically connected, and therefore we feel we may employ
those disconnected portions as reason sees fit, chopping them
154

up further and molding them to the practical demands of

reason. If we reopen our eyes, however, we come to see that
(1) what we perceive is interconnected with everything else,
that the whole world is contained in every particle of nature,
and that (2) since perception is what shapes the noumenon
into a world, the world really is different when perceived
differently. In our ideal condition, when we spend our days in
Eden and create the world freely through imagination, nature
serves as a state of rest.
Dantes view of nature, in comparison to Blakes, is
traditional and will be familiar to students of Neoplatonism.
Hylomorphism as explained in the Comedy is very much the
postPlotinus, Christian version. The soul is, as Aristotle
taught, the form of the body, but according to Dante it can be
transported from place to place without a body in tow. In fact,
the body begins to form in the womb without a soul present.
God doesnt breathe the soul into the fetus until the brain
reaches a stage adequate to receive it. The soul finds itself in
the flesh of the embryo, and then puts the flesh to work
forming a body.
Know, soon as in the embryo, to the brain
Articulation is complete, then turns
The primal Mover with a smile of joy
On such great work of nature; and imbreathes
New spirit replete with virtue, that what here
Active it finds, to its own substance draws;
And forms an individual soul, that lives,
And feels, and bends reflective on itself
[Purgatory, 25; Cary, 254].

155

Note the use of the word nature in the passage above.

(Dantes Italian says natura.) Nature has made the embryo
already, with a brain whose articulation is complete. God
doesnt step in until that point, and adds his unique
non-natural component. When the physical body dies, the
soul leaves it and feels itself more keenly, unencumbered by
the heavy flesh.
When Lachesis hath spun the thread, the soul
Takes with her both the human and the divine,
Memory, intelligence, and will, in act
Far keener than before; the other powers
Inactive all and mute
[Purgatory, 25; Cary, 254].
Though Dante says there is No pause allowd between the
souls leaving its first fleshly body and the creation of its
spiritual one, the soul does have time to feel itself freed from
the weight of flesh.
Dante explains the hylomorphic process in the Purgatory, at
the level where gluttony is expunged. The pilgrim wonders at
the fact that the shades in this part of Purgatory appear
emaciated even though they have no flesh that needs
nourishment. Statius, now traveling with the pilgrim and
Virgil, explains to him how the soul forms for itself an
appropriate body out of whatever materials it finds at hand. In
the womb the soul found flesh to work with; in Purgatory it is
air alone. Dante compares the air-body to a rainbow:
Soon as the place
Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams,
Distinct as in the living limbs before:
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And as the air, when saturate with showers,

The casual beam refracting, decks itself
With many a hue; so here the ambient air
Weareth that form, which influence of the soul
Imprints on it
[Purgatory, 25; Cary, 255]
The soul feels a sort of spiritual emaciation, so the body it
forms from air appears to the viewer to be emaciated.
This is a sort of hylomorphism, but to preserve the Christian
idea that God is transcendent and that the soul comes directly
from God, Dante cannot maintain that form, like matter, is
entirely a part of the world. There is an ontological difference.
Soul belongs to a transcendent realm, although it gives itself a
physical body while it lives among matter. The uneasy
relation of the two is compared in the Convivio to a man
treading water. There, Dante writes about
the human soul which, although it is partly free from
matter, is also partly impeded by it, like a man who
is entirely in the water except for his head, of whom
it cannot be said that he is entirely in the water or
entirely out of it.106
The transcendent God and the material earth are not, as in
Blakes system, fully integrated. Dante believes that God
places the souls of people directly into the world one by one,
but the physical elements receive his influence only
indirectly. As I mentioned before, the central sphere of the
universe is made of the four elements, and the other spheres,
from the moon to the fixed stars, are of aether. God is above
all of these.
157

Shortly after lifting off for Heaven, Dante wonders about the
composition of the planetary spheres and their difference
from the material world below. Beatrice explains:
I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see,
The earth and water, and all things of them
Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon
Dissolve
[Paradise, 7; Cary, 323].
As we know too well, anything made of the four elements
will decay and crumble, and material bodies die. Yet, Dante
reasons, if all things derive from God, why arent the objects
of the world eternal? How can God make something that falls
apart? His guide tells him that although God made the
original four elements, the mixtures of the elements that form
objects are not the direct work of God. The material world
feels the influence of God mediated by the planetary spheres,
the stars.
the elements,
Which thou hast named, and what of them is made,
Are by created virtue informd: create,
Their substance; and create, the informing virtue
In these bright stars, that round them circling move
[Paradise, 7; Cary, 323].
The substances of the material world, and the stars that
influence the world, were created by God. The objects in our
world made of the elements, on the other hand, are
contingent. Their makeup depends on Gods influence only as
it is distributed and dispersed by the aetherial spheres. Even
the soul, placed in the embryo by God, feels the influences of
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the stars at the moment the baby is born. Thus our

personalities are not left in the pure state in which God
created them but are swayed by astrological means to have
one sort of temper or another.
Plants possess only what Thomas Aquinas called vegetative
souls. Animals have souls that are vegetative and
sensitive, but not rational. Rational souls have to come
directly from God. Therefore the souls of lower life forms are
fully of the material world. Their appetitive and sensing
powers seem near to human powers (we have those powers
also), but they lack the transcendental element that only
humans possess.
The soul of every brute and of each plant,
The ray and motion of the sacred lights,
Draw from complexion with meet power endued
[Paradise, 7; Cary, 323].
Carys translation is a bit tangled here. Singletons is easier to
follow, if unpoetic: The soul of every beast and of the plants
is drawn from a potentiate compound by the shining and the
motion of the holy lights.107 Plants and animals draw all of
their influence via the stars, and lacking the higher soul, they
dont feel a love of God. Human souls, however, despite the
geographical and ontological distance between us and God,
still feel a pull toward the highest place, the souls point of
origin. The influences of the stars cannot erase the desire to
rejoin God.
But this our life the Eternal Good inspires
Immediate, and enamours of itself;

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So that our wishes rest for ever here [in Heaven]

[Paradise 7; Cary, 323].
And in Singletons version: but your life the Supreme
Beneficence breathes forth without intermediary, and so
enamors it of Itself that it desires It ever after.
A bit higher in the solar system, Charles Martel explains to
Dante how the stars influence operates on souls in the world
and why such contingent effects are good. He says:
In her circuitous course,
Nature, that is the seal to mortal wax,
Doth well her art, but no distinction owns
Twixt one or other household
[Paradise, 8; Cary, 328].
Here, nature includes the stars. Astrological effects are like
a seal on wax, impressing personality and talents into
individuals. But the stars are indifferent; they dont make
choices about where or on whom they will endow their seals.
Thus the household of a soldier may give birth to priests, or
the child of musicians may become a blacksmith. Two
sentences later we read of Nature, in generation, which is
the sublunar sphere. (Singleton opts for begotten
naturethe Italian is Natura generata.) Astrological
influence is called Providence celestial:
Were it not
That Providence celestial overruled,
Nature, in generation, must the path
Traced by the generator still pursue

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Unswervingly
[Paradise, 7; Cary, 329].
Dante thought that the father of the child supplied the form
and the mother the material, like a seed and a flower pot.
Lacking a knowledge of combined parental DNA, Dante
thought that without the influence of the stars, each child
would be exactly like its father. Inheritance without astrology
would be unswerving, but the stars overrule direct
descent and give each child abilities different from the
fathers.
Though every occurrence in the sublunar world is contingent
on the stars, if we trace stellar influence up through the
spheres and back to its source, we see that everything
originates with God. When Dante reaches the sphere of the
sun, Thomas Aquinas himself explains that both mortal and
immortal things emanate from God:
That which dies not,
And that which can die, are but each the beam
Of that idea, which our Sovereign Sire
Engendereth loving; for that lively light,
Which passeth from His splendour, not disjoind
From Him, nor from His love triune with them,
Doth, through His bounty, congregate itself,
Mirrord, as twere, in new existences;
Itself unalterable, and ever one
[Paradise, 13; Cary, 351].
New existences in the sublunar world are reflections
mirrord in the elements. The beam of existence that shines
out of Heaven travels unbroken, from the highest level to the
161

lowest. Yet that beam must travel through the distorting

effects of the spheres of, in order from the top, the fixed stars,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon.
By the time it reaches the lowest levels, its influence has
weakened.
Descending hence unto the lowest powers,
Its energy so sinks, at last it makes
But brief contingencies; for so I name
Things generated, which the heavenly orbs
Moving, with seed or without seed, produce
Paradise, 13; Cary, 351].
And the mixtures of the four elements that make up earthly
objects may or may not be well adapted to receiving this
lessened force. Thats why some examples of a type, for
example a fruit tree, may be better than another. If the
material were always ideal, and the influence of God
unmediated, the results would always be ideal.
Their wax, and that which molds it, differ much:
And thence with lustre, more or less, it shows
The ideal stamp imprest: so that one tree,
According to his kind, hath better fruit,
And worse: and, at your birth, ye, mortal men,
Are in your talents various. Were the wax
Molded with exactness, and the Heaven
In its disposing influence supreme,
The brightness of the seal should be complete:
But nature renders it imperfect ever;
Resembling thus the artist, in her work,
Whose faltering hand is faithless to his skill
[Paradise, 13; Cary, 35152].
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Differences between Dantes view of nature and Blakes will

now be obvious. The Thomist theology of the Comedy and
the Protestant antinomian views available to Blake threw the
two mens systems into nearly complete opposition. Dante,
writing more than a century before Cusanus, could not have
imagined the cosmology of the Copernican system, much less
the absolute immanence proposed by heretics such as
Boehme.
Whereas all of Dantes nature originates in God, who is
distant from man and onto-logically unimaginable, Blakes is
a creation of the human mind. Dante sees the universe in
clearly defined elemental or ontological divisions: the world
of the elements, the aetherial spheres, and the transcendental
above. The transcendental world leaks into the levels below
only as the overflow of Gods radiance. God himself is ideal,
unmoving, and unaffected by what goes on beneath. For
Blake, God and the world are the same: whether we see one
or the other depends only on how we perceive at a given
moment. There is no outside the world; there is no above or
below, except as these things relate at one moment to a given
observer.
Perception becomes the topic of discussion in canto 19 of the
Paradise. If Blakes copy of Carys translation were available
to us, I imagine that this passage would be the one most
heavily argued with in the margins, as it seems most clearly to
contradict Blakes system of immanence, perception, and
knowledge. In this part of the Paradise a huge group of souls
is assembled in the shape of an eagle and is speaking in one
voice. They begin by referring to God as He Who turnd His
compass on the worlds extreme, an image almost
guaranteed to set Blakes teeth on edge. The compass as a
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tool of God has its origin in Proverbs 8:27: When he

prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass
upon the face of the depth. Milton had borrowed the same
symbol in Paradise Lost:
in his hand
He took the golden Compasses, prepard
In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things.
The idea of God using a tool to separate or draw boundaries
on the world is exactly what Blake is against. Blake had
shown a compass in an illustration for one of his earliest
printed books, the illuminated book There Is No Natural
Religion (1788). A drawing of a man using a compass
accompanies the lines
He who sees the Infinite in all things sees
God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only
[E 3].
Ratio is Blakes word for a limited system founded on
what facts are available, and organized by Reason.108 In
other words, a lack of imagination.
Another painting shows one of his spiritual enemies, Isaac
Newton, in the process of circumscribing human knowledge
with compasses. And one of Blakes most famous images,
usually known as The Ancient of Days, shows a bearded,
God-like figure reaching down to create the (fallen) world
with compass-like rays.

164

An epigram from one of Blakes notebooks gives God this

satirical advice:
To God
If you have formd a Circle to go into
Go into it yourself & see how you would do [E 516]
Such lines sound blasphemous when directed at God, but of
course for Blake a God who divides the world into inside and
outside is not the true God.
The compasses in the Comedy are put to the same use as the
ones in Blakes bad examples. God has divided the universe.
He has marked out a circular limit to separate the below from
the above. And within the bubble of the material world Gods
glory and Logos must remain infinitely beyond human grasp.
He, it began,
Who turnd His compass on the worlds extreme,
And in that space so variously hath wrought,
Both openly and in secret; in such wise
Could not, through all the universe, display
Impression of His glory, that the Word
Of His omniscience should not still remain
In infinite excess
[Paradise, 19; Cary, 378].
Our lesser nature can never be expansive enough to receive
all of Gods goodness. John Ciardi glosses the above: Great
as is Gods creation, the Word (Logos, the creating source)
cannot create what it does not Itself infinitely exceed.109

165

Whence needs each lesser nature is but scant

Receptacle unto that Good, which knows
No limit, measured by itself alone
[Paradise, 19; Cary, 378].
And here Dante explains our limitations in terms of
perception. Our sight, our ken, is like a man in a boat trying
to see the deepest part of the ocean.
Therefore your sight, of the omnipresent Mind
A single beam, its origin must own
Surpassing far its utmost potency.
The ken, your world is gifted with, descends
In the everlasting Justice as low down,
As eye doth in the sea; which, though it mark
The bottom from the shore, in the wide main
Discerns it not; and neertheless it is;
But hidden through its deepness. Light is none,
Save that which cometh from the pure serene
Of neer disturbed ether: for the rest,
Tis darkness all; or shadow of the flesh,
Or else its poison
[Paradise, 19; Cary, 37879].
The light by which we see originates in God, but we can
never see more than a tiny fraction of the world. Vision that
originates within ourselves, the lamp of the imagination, is
either a shadow of the flesh, or, worse, poison.
This is bad infinity at its worst. Still, the fact that Gods
emanation may be caught in glimpses is an important part of
Dantes message. Christian Moevs explains that the
transcendent realm is presented to us when we see in this
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world beauty, truth, or goodnessor, to use Dantes key

term, dolcezza, sweetness.110 Revelation comes from
exposure to examples of these good things, not through
ratiocination about them. Our experience of pure dolcezza, as
Dante had through seeing Beatrice, allows us a sample of
Gods infinity by taking us out of ourselves. Moevs writes:
How is the infinite revealed in the particular? through
forms transparent to the reality that gives them being.111 The
language here is very close to what we have learned to expect
from Blake, but there are still substantial differences. The
objects of beauty that Dante sees preserve enough of Gods
goodness, despite the mediation of the stars, to let us have
some idea of the ideal. Their attraction for us is a mirror of
the infinite attraction that God has. The beginning of the
passage that the eagle speaks, quoted above, explains why
even though we may experience a great many good things in
this world, complete vision of God is not possible. Even if we
saw every good thing in this world, the goodness of God
would still exceed that total, In infinite excess.
Today the Catholic Church holds to a doctrine similar to
Dantes, which it calls relative immanence. The Catholic
Encyclopedia tells us: The human soul, then, receives the
Divine verities as the disciple receives his masters teaching;
it does not create those verities. These verities include the
moral law, which is graven upon the very foundation of
mans constitution. It lives in the heart of man. This law is
immanent to the human person, which consequently enjoys a
certain autonomy. No doubt it recognizes its relation to a
transcendent legislator, but none the less true is it that no
prescription coming from another authority would be
accepted by the conscience if it was in opposition to the
primordial law, the requirements of which are only extended
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and clearly defined by positive laws.112 But Blake, as we

have seen, thinks that when our eyes are properly open, the
human soul creates everythingincluding moral law. The
idea that law comes from above, and is immutable, shows that
however much we may glimpse dolcezza in a world where
God is relatively immanent, Blake will see this as a
falling-short.
In a later chapter we will see that Albert S. Roe, in his book
on Blakes Dante pictures, thought that Blake had drawn
Beatrice as if she were Vala. In Roes interpretation, the
illustrations are pure criticism; Blake is merely showing us
Dantes inability to see directly to the infinity of God. If this
is the case, the pilgrim Dante, on meeting Beatrice and
thinking he is being led to Paradise, has in fact been tricked
by nature into worshipping the veil of the physical. In my
view, Blake has done more than show Dantes errors. I dont
think that he shows Beatrice as Vala, because I think that he
is giving Dante a push, a helping hand as he gave Milton, and
showing that it is possible to open the doors of perception to
the full.
The manner in which art can open those doors is the subject
of the next part of this book.

7. He could never have Builded Dantes Hell

168

Among Blakes sketches for the Comedy is a roughly drawn

map of Hell. Penciled in the lower left corner of the sheet are
these words:
It seems as if Dantes supreme Good was something
Superior to the
Father or Jesus [as] <for> if he gives his rain to the
Evil & the Good
& his Sun to the just & the Unjust He could never
have Builded
Dantes Hell nor the Hell of the Bible neither in the
way our Parsons
explain it It must have been originally Formed by
the Devil Himself
& So I understand it to have been
Whatever Book is for Vengeance for Sin &
whatever Book is
Against the Forgiveness of Sins is not of the Father
but of Satan the
Accuser & Father of Hell [E 690].
Blake is referring of course to the Book of Matthew, 5:4345.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto
you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That
ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and
on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.

169

Like many modern believers, Blake doesnt think that a just

God will send anyone to Hell for eternity. This is his greatest
disagreement with Dantes system of morality. If Jesus says
that we must love everyone and that God is impartial in his
blessings, it is unimaginable that he would also toss anyone
into the inferno. Blakes solutions to the problem of Hell and
forgiveness result in perhaps his most offbeat theology,
diverging widely from any mainstream form of Christianity.
In what follows I will describe Blakes convictions about
good and evil, forgiveness and punishment. We will see that
his moral sense is based firmly on the epistemol?ogy we have
already explored. His conclusions are not at all random or ad
hoc, being grounded in venerable Neoplatonic views and
some of the oldest literary traditions in existence.

The Creation of Good and Evil

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake relates the
following tale. It forms a single page, as an isolated anecdote.
The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with
Gods or
Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning
them with the
properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities,
nations,
and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses
could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city
& country. placing it under its mental deity.

170

Till a system was formed, which some took

advantage of &
enslavd the vulgar by attempting to realize or
abstract the
mental deities from their objects: thus began
Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods had
orderd such
things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human
breast [E 38].
This is a parable about two groups of people: the priests and
the poets. The poets do what Blake recommended in the story
of the Guinea sun, which weve mentioned before. When
Blake looks at the sun and sees a heavenly host, he is doing
what the ancient poets did. They look at the world and they
animate it through imagination. Their senses are enlarged &
numerous, not passive. They perceive mythically, seeing in
every place a living deity. As long as the mental deity is
particular and identical with its objectas Ouranos is with
the skythere is no problem. The trouble is, as usual, the
process of abstraction.
When the priests see the sun, or the sky, or Blakes London,
they do not see it as a living character. They see dualistically,
with a god that is separable from the material world: in a
word, transcendent. For them, God has an independent
existence and hollers down to us from a separate, nonhuman
location. The truth is that humans create God through their
imaginationsalthough in Blakes perfectly non-dualistic

171

world it would be the same to say that God creates humans

through his imagination.
When God is seen as separated and is no longer recognized to
be identical with human imagination, then the things we say
God desires appear to come from outside us. The priests deny
that their commandments come from their own hearts, and
attribute them to a transcendent source.
It will be helpful to summarize Blakes view of morality by
once again looking at his disagreements with John Locke.
Both Locke and Blake believed that we create moral laws by
accumulating
and
contemplating
individual
sense
impressions. Locke says this is inevitable; Blake says its
deadly.
If a person could look at an object without any conceptual
knowledge, he could put no labels on what he sees. For
example, he would be unable to say what color the object is.
Red is an abstract concept, because in the world there are
only red thingsthis red thing, that red thing. Locke says that
after seeing enough red things a baby recognizes the
similarity of the color in the individual instances and forms
the mental construct red. After that, the child can make
statements about redness without reference to any particular
object.
Blake refers to the concepts that we have abstracted from
particulars as Spectres, because they are no longer
individual living things, but reduced things, ghosts of real
things. Blake wants us to see each particular thing in the
world as itself. When we begin to abstract general concepts
from the concrete things of this world, we not only cease to
172

see those things as individuals, we are in danger of making

the abstracted concepts more important than the objects,
whether a grain of sand or a human being, that embody them.
Actual understanding doesnt consist of pulling abstractions
out of the thing, but of seeing the thing itself.
Blake contrasts Lockes errorfavoring deductive reasoning
over immediate perceptionwith Christs actions and
parables. Jesus of course makes no statements about
epistemology. His teaching is either through direct action or
through symbols: seeds, fig trees. Those who have ears hear
directly. Blake concludes from this that the general systems of
moral law, including that of the Old Testament, are Spectres
as much as any other abstraction.
You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing,
that you
May take the aggregate; & you call the aggregate
Moral Law[E 251]
The moral law is formed in the same way as Lockes general
principlesthrough accumulating particular examples, and
combining them into a dead ghost, held higher than real living
things. We perceive things in the world that we prefer or
enjoy, and in contemplating the memories of these things
create an abstraction called Good. In time the pursuit of this
Good may be so important to us that we are willing to
sacrifice living particulars in order to obtain it. The Spectre
wins out over life. When the law is more important than real
living people, says Blake, we are in trouble.
Here is a chart showing the consequences of Lockean
knowledge, according to Blake:
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We perceive particulars in the world.

?
We abstract qualities from those particulars.
?
We deduce laws and moralities from those qualities

?
but focusing on the higher laws makes us
unable to see the original particulars.
As Blake puts it in Jerusalem:
The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man; &
when separated
from Imagination, and closing itself as in steel, in a
Ratio
Of the Things of Memory, It then frames Laws &
Moralities
To destroy Imagination [E 229]
The Laws & Moralities hes writing of include everything
the English word laws may refer to: the laws of nature, such
as gravity; the laws of man, such as government censorship
regulations; and the laws of God, such as the 613 mitzvahs of
the Old Testament. In a world where imagination was in
control and the Spectre was in its place, none of those laws
would apply. Or perhaps certain laws would apply in
individual cases, but would expand and contract with human
perception, as do the laws of space and time in Eternity.
Whats certain is that a uniform application of Spectral law is
the work of priests and not poets, those who enslave and not
those who imagine. Urizen makes this mistake when he
decrees:
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One command, one joy, one desire,

One curse, one weight, one measure
One King, one God, one Law [E 72].
Urizen makes his commands because he fears unpredictable
changes. He craves a world in which everyone lives in safe
obedience to his law, in the way that (Newton tells us) the
planets do not deviate from natural law. The same is true of
Bromion, a character in Visions of the Daughters of Albion,
who asks:
And is there not one law for both the lion and the
ox?

To bind the phantoms of existence from eternal life?

[E 48]
Bromion accepts the truth of universals, to bind frightening
phantoms. (But Bromion, we should recall, is a slave master
and a rapist.) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell states the
matter more concisely:
One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression [E 44].
The lion and the ox have such different personalities, they
live with such different desires and needs, that to force them
both to obey the same law would be evil. This is why W.J.T.
Mitchell concludes that for Blake, the primal crime is the
promulgation of the law, not the violation of it.113 Punter
describes how standards that seem unquestionably good in the
abstract fail when they are applied to living things. Universal
laws become

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controls that appear as purely intellectual criteria of

judgement (fairness, balance) but which entail an
associated apparatus of social repression. As
opposed to this, real knowledge concerns itself only
with the particular and irreplaceable life of things,
all of which are different: The apple tree never asks
the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion. the horse,
how he shall take his prey [E 37].114
One way in which abstraction causes trouble is by
oversimplifying what a thing really is. For example, if we
look at an object as an example of only one of its qualities, we
may condemn it as bad when in fact it is not only bad. As
Frye memorably phrases it: an egg that is bad to eat may be
good to throw at someone.115 The need to see things in
terms of categories or concepts rather than looking at the
thing itself closes off to us all of the qualities or possibilities
that our abstraction has dismissed. The bad thing seems only
bad to the fallen eye of narrowed perception, but if we could
see more fully there might be innumerable ways the thing is
also good. There are two key terms Blake would have us keep
in mind as we try to open our eyes to the full potential of a
thing or a person: contraries, and states. Both are crucial to an
understanding of Blakes morality and how it differs from
Dantes. I will look at the idea of contraries first and discuss
states in a later chapter.

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Contraries
Cusanus defined the infinite as the place where all opposite
qualities coincide. His most effective illustration of this was
the thought experiment of the infinite circle and the infinite
straight line. We know that by definition, a straight line (not a
segment) goes on in infinity in both directions, and never
curves back on itself. We might say that its contrary is a
circle, which has no straight segments at all. From the human
perspective, nothing in the world can be both a straight line
and a circle. We do understand, though, that the larger the
circle is, the more a segment of it will appear straight to our
eyes. We know that the horizon appears straight at eye level,
even though the earth is round, because the earth is quite big.
If we imagine an even larger circle, say, the circumference of
our galaxy, we can see that quite a large segment of that circle
would appear straight from a human perspective although, in
fact, it is curved. The larger the circle is, the more its
segments approach straightness. What is more difficult to
imagine is a circle of infinite size. An infinite circle is not
merely bigger than a big circle. Its segments do not merely
approach straightness, they are, paradoxically, straight and
curved at the same time. You and I cannot perceive such a
circle, but God can; God sees infinitely. From Gods
perspective, straightness and roundness coincide, and so do
all other so-called contraries. From Gods perspective, it is
wrong to say that an egg is bad and only bad; it is good and
bad, simultaneously, and more besides.
Sad to say, we do not have Gods perspective. We tend to see
one or the other of an objects qualities, rate that quality good
or bad, and leave it at that. Blake tells us this is a mistake. In

177

Jerusalem, he makes it clear that in using our reasoning

power to abstract qualities from particular bodies, we
negate and murder those original bodies.
They take the two Contraries which are calld
Qualities, with which
Every Substance is clothed, they name them Good &
Evil
From them they make an Abstract, which is a
Negation
Not only of the Substance from which it is derived,
A murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer
Of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power
An Abstract objecting power, that Negatives every
thing
This is the Spectre of Man: the Holy Reasoning
Power
And in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of
Desolation [E 153]
Remember now that God is immanent in every point of the
universe. To see a point or an object (which is God) as only
one of the infinite qualities (of God) is to narrow our
perspective down to a deathlike state. And to name one
quality as good and its contrary but equally present quality
as evil is an abomination: it is negation.
Negation is a very bad word for Blake. It is a shutting-down
of perception and possibility. It requires a division of quality
from quality, and the judgment that one of those qualities
must be avoided at all cost. It is the means through which
Urizenic law frames its morality: Thou shalt not. The
promulgation of the law institutes negation; enforcement of
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the law punishes particularity. Christs return will not be

brought about by obedience to this law, nor will his presence
require our obedience. The Second Coming is the antinomian
lifting of the law. In Blakes poem The Everlasting Gospel,
Christ undoes the law that Moses had given:
Jesus was sitting in Moses Chair
They brought the trembling Woman There
Moses commands she be stoned to Death
What was the sound of Jesus breath
He laid his hand on Moses Law
The Ancient Heavens in Silent Awe
Writ with Curses from Pole to Pole
All away began to roll
The earth hears the announcement:
Good & Evil are no more
Sinais trumpets cease to roar
Cease finger of God to Write
The Heavens are not clean in thy Sight
Thou art Good & thou Alone
Nor may the sinner cast one stone
To be Good only is to be
A Devil or else a Pharisee [E 521]
To be good only is to be a devil. Humans, and therefore God,
are good and evil but, now that good and evil are rejoined, it
doesnt make sense to speak of them. There is only fullness,
not separate qualities.
For Blake, the proper reaction to morality is not obedience,
but overcoming. Not restraint but fulfillment. Jesus was all
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virtue, and acted from impulse: not from rules (E 43). We

think of Dante as a strict moralist, but his views are not as
different as we might expect. It is the usual Christian belief,
after all, that Christ fulfilled the law, and put it in the hearts of
the people. Where Blake and Dante differ is in their view of
the contraries, and how they see the contraries is, as always,
based in the difference between immanence and
transcendence. Blake believes that the contraries are to be
united in man through the opening of the senses; Dante thinks
such infinite resolutions only happen in God, and that the
moral choice is to thread our way carefully between.
The Comedy is clear that the path to Heaven isnt mere
obedience to biblically specified laws, but is based on love.
Love of God, the source of all goodness, inspires morality.
Diverted love, misdirected love, is sin. Though Dante sets the
explanation in Christian terms, the system is derived more
from Aristotle than from the Bible. It is Virgil the pagan, not
Beatrice the Christian, who explains during a pause on the
climb up Purgatory:
Creator, nor created being, eer,
My son, he thus began, was without love,
Or natural, or the free spirits growth
[Purgatory, 17, Cary, 220].
Love is never lacking. There is natural love, which is
instinctive, and there is another kind, which in Dantes Italian
is amore danimo. Cary has translated animo as free
spirit (though the Italian doesnt specify free) most likely
to emphasize that the animo has free will, to choose the better
or the worse path. In their notes to this verse, Martinez and

180

Durling describe this type of love as elective love.116 Virgil

continues:
The natural still
Is without error: but the other swerves,
If on ill object bent, or through excess
Of vigour, or defect.
Natural love does not err. Aquinas describes it thus: natural
love is always right, as natural love is nothing else but the
natural inclination grafted in us by the author of nature.117
The love that we choose, on the other hand, may be bent to
an ill objectthat is, we might, through misunderstanding,
choose to love something that is contrary to our own best
interests or to Gods will (which are the same). Or we might
love the proper thing, but love it too much or too little.
While eer it seeks,
The primal blessings, or with measure due
The inferior, no delight, that flows from it,
Partakes of ill.
Carys translation is unnecessarily difficult. Durlings will
make the message clearer:
As long as it [love] is directed to the first Good and
moderates its love of lesser goods, it cannot be a
cause of evil pleasure118
The first Good here, which Cary translates as primal
blessings, is of course the good that flows directly from God.
As long as we love God and his goodness, we cant go wrong.
Lesser goods are the good things of this world, like food
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and drink, that are necessary for earthly life but not of the
highest degree. As long as we are focused on the highest goal,
which is the source of all goodness, and moderate our love of
the healthful but lower things of this world, we will be all
right.
But let it warp to evil,
Or with more ardour than behoves, or less,
Pursue the good; the thing created then
Works gainst its Maker.
In Durling:
but when it turns aside to evil, or when with
more eagerness or less than is right it runs after
some good, it employs his creature against the
Creator.
When we begin to love something else, not the source of
good, then we are in trouble. That is what causes evil. And if
we love even good things with too much eagerness or too
little, then we begin to work against God.
While not exactly contradicting the New Testament, the
system Virgil describes here is clearly derived from the
Nicomachean Ethics. In that work, Aristotle explains that
virtue is a matter of balance. Loving the proper aim, in the
proper degree, makes a person virtuous:
Now virtue is concerned with feelings and actions,
in which excess and deficiency are in error and incur
blame, while the intermediate condition is correct
and wins praise, which are both proper features of
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virtue. Virtue, then, is a mean, in so far as it aims at

what is intermediate. It is a mean between two
vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.119
Such a definition will seem obvious when addressing, for
example, cases of gluttony. Excessive eating is to be avoided,
while deficient eating would also be harmful to a persons
health. The best diet is one of moderation. The same is true of
how one spends ones money, as the fourth circle of Dantes
Hell makes clear: both misers and spendthrifts are condemned
to the same punishment, although they circle, for eternity, in
opposite directions. Aristotle outlines how the same principle
of balance applies to every virtue, even when the choice of an
intermediate path does not seem obvious. In the case of
anger, for example, people who suffer from an excess are
often easy to identify; they are the ones doing the shouting.
An insufficiency of anger might not at first glance appear to
be a condition lacking in virtue. Aristotle writes in the Ethics,
however, that not becoming angry at the right things, or in
the right way, makes a person slavish.120 Probably there
are things that ought to make us angry, and to see them
without becoming so amounts to a state of unethical
indifference. In the Convivio Dante uses the vivid metaphor
of two enemies, one on each flank, vices of too much and
too little.121
Thus Dantes system of ethics is not one of laws and
transgressions, but one that we modern people might call one
of psychological health: loving what is best for us. Dante sees
God as the ultimate good and the ultimate aim of every pure
desire. People who cannot control their natural animal
instincts, or who deceive themselves into thinking that a
short-term goal is preferable to the goodness of God, sin not
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through breaking a commandment but through choosing

overly easy or mistaken objects of desire. A Christian life for
Dante, then, is like the attitude of the rider depicted by Drer
in his engraving Knight, Death, and the Devil. Riding a
narrow road, there are dangers and temptations on every side,
but the upright knight, protected by the armor of faith, keeps
his eyes straight ahead, on the goal: a bright castle on a hill.
We can imagine Blakes reaction to a doctrine of intermediate
rationality if we recall some of his proverbs from The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by
Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence [E
35].
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is
weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or
reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling [E
34].
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows [E 36]
Whereas Dante wants us to thread a careful path between the
extremes, Blake doesnt fear them. It isnt the avoidance of
contraries that brings us to God, but their total coincidence.
The infinite God immanent in each of us contains the extreme
of each and every emotion and desire. We know God not by
suppressing these infinites but by knowing them bothnot
through fear but through exuberance, because Exuberance is
beauty (E 38).
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Though it may appear that the two poets moralities are

irreconcilable, we can see that they share important views.
Both reject an ethics based on laws. Both take seriously the
idea that when we are pure, we do best to follow our desires.
Blake told us this when he said, Jesus was all virtue, and
acted from impulse: not from rules (E 43). Dante shows us
the same when, after the pilgrim has been purged of
everything that distracts or misdirects his love, Virgil tells
him:
To distrust thy sense
Were henceforth error. I invest thee then
With crown and mitre, sovereign oer thyself
[Purgatory, 28; Cary, 264].
Now that his love is properly aimed toward God, Dante is
correct to trust himself completely and follow his desire. He
no longer needs the direction of legal authority (the crown) or
Church (the mitre). His own impulses will be pure. At the
peak of Purgatory, everyone becomes an antinomian. The
path by which Blake and Dante reach this state is different:
Blake operates through Cusanuss coincidentia oppositorum,
and Dante through Aristotles Middle Way. But the result is
the same: a pure soul needs no laws because his every desire
will be that of God himself.

8. States, Not People

185

For Dante, then, sin is either a low goal poorly chosen or a

good goal poorly pursued. Love is the only motivation, but
the manner or object of love may be bad. If our natural
instincts are always good, then, and only the degree or chosen
goal of those instincts can be considered error, might not
those errors be cured? Might there not be some way to relieve
the poor sufferer of his complex? With God all things are
possible, but there are still people whom Dante thinks of as
hopeless and who deserve the unending torments of Hell as
punishment.
Dante is of course in the mainstream of Christianity by
believing in an eternal Hell, but ideas about the underworld
were not uniform in earlier times, and there have been many
dissenters along the way. Old Testament Hebrew uses the
name Sheol for the location of the afterlife, and it appears to
be the destination for all the dead, not only sinners. Not until
post-exilic times did Judaism begin to think of a divided
Sheol, with special sections for punishment.122 There is no
clear description of Sheol in the Old Testament, though, and
the various references to it do not give a clear view of its
nature. In places there are indications that it need not be an
eternal destination: Psalms 16 and 30, for example, assure us
that God can rescue a pious soul from Sheol.123
Early Christian opinions on Hell differed. Origen wrote in the
third century that temporary punishment would be enough to
purge even the worst souls and that in the end all would be
restored to God. Augustine disagreed, and fixed the concept
for the Catholic Church in the early fifth century, arguing in
his Enchidirion and other works that punishment or reward
would be unending.124 His argument rests in part on a
passage from Matthew 25, which declares that Hell contains
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everlasting fire and everlasting punishment. Naturally

many Christians over the centuries have disagreed, including
Erigena and a number of British Protestants,125 including
most of the antinomians. Among gnostic dualists such as the
Cathars were those who taught that our world is the most evil
and lowest level; that we are already in Hell. William Blake
agrees with Matthew that the fire and the punishment last
forever, but he doesnt believe that any individual will stay in
that punishing fire eternally. The fire is always there; people
pass through. In Jerusalem he writes:
As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent
remains
So Men pass on: but States remain permanent for
ever [E 229]
And in his Vision of the Last Judgment, he describes the
hellish condition of the antediluvian world and declares:
These States Exist now Man Passes on but States
remain for Ever he passes thro them like a traveller
who may as well suppose that the places he has
passed thro exist no more as a Man may suppose
that the States he has passd thro exist no more Every
Thing is Eternal [E 556]
As each point contains infinity, each moment contains
eternity.

187

Blakes States
The word states had a special meaning for Blake. He uses it
frequently in and after the composition of The Four Zoas,
though we can see it also plays an important role in his
earliest well-known work, Songs of Innocence and
Experience, which is subtitled Shewing the Two Contrary
States of the Human Soul (E 7). In that collection of poems,
a person may be in a state of innocence or a state of
experience, but he is still the same individual. What changes
of course is the way the person perceives. The state of
innocence eternally remains, and babies pass into it as they
are born. A transition to the state of experience is inevitable
and not to be regretted.
The state you are in depends on your manner of perception.
While in a particular state, a person perceives the world
according to that states particular narrowness or limitations.
We have seen that for Blake, though, perception is an active
creation of the world, so a persons state of perception will,
for that individual, determine what his world is. From outside,
from the perspective of a person in a different state, anothers
state may seem crazy or immoral. But from inside, they seem
to be in the only world possible. To philosophy students, the
prisoners in Platos cave seem like unreal puppets who exist
only for discussion purposes. But to someone tied in the cave,
his life seems to be the only possibility there is. States are
Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, meer
possibilities:
But to those who enter into them they seem the only
substances
For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor
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tear,
One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away
[E 158]
In the Songs, Blake demonstrates this by writing poems in the
voices of the innocent in the first half of the book and in the
voices of the experienced in the second half, performing for
us a dramatization of how the world appears to people in
those states. Only one of the poems in that collection includes
the voices of both states. The Clod & the Pebble, from
1794, begins in the voice of innocence:
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattles feet:
Blake makes it clear that this is not his own opinion by
inventing a character and attributing the speech. He then
introduces a different character, in a different state, and
invites us to compare the two viewpoints.
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite [E 19].
The innocent clod of clay is permeable and easily broken by
the uncaring forces of lifein this case a passing cow. The
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pebble of experience, in contrast, is hard and cold and

remains unmoved as the waters of life flow past it. We gain a
clue to our own state by thinking about which of the speakers
opinions we most agree with. We see, too, that from the
perspective of each speaker, love is, for him, what he says it
is. Each character has no choice but to reach the conclusions
he does, because of the way in which he perceives the world.
This is a fundamental principle for Blakes moral view.
In his later works, Blake names many more states than just
innocence and experience. Each of Chaucers Canterbury
pilgrims, for example, is named as an eternal state through
which individuals may pass. In a move that seems to
anticipate the theories of Carl Jung, Blake says that the
Canterbury characters represent different eternal states,
something like Jungs archetypes: The Plowman of Chaucer
is Hercules in his supreme eternal state, divested of his
spectrous shadow; which is the Miller, a terrible fellow, such
as exists in all times and places, for the trial of men (E 537).
Blakes own painting of the Last Judgment contained many
characters that he also declared to be representatives of states.
In the detailed description he wrote of this work, Blake warns
us that the figures of Moses and Abraham are not merely
depictions of those historical individuals. He writes:
it ought to be understood that the Persons Moses &
Abraham are not here meant but the States Signified
by those Names the Individuals being
representatives or Visions of those States as they
were reveald to Mortal Man in the Series of Divine
Revelations. as they are written in the Bible these

190

various States I have seen in my Imagination [E

556]
The painting also contains unnamed figures in attitudes of
contention that Blake tells us represent States of Misery
which alas every one on Earth is liable to enter into (E 557).
Caiaphas and Pilate are used in this way as well (E 558).
In Jerusalem, before he transcribes a long list of possible
states, Blake reminds us that in his theology the infinite is
absolutely immanent in the particular. His point is to show
that each of us, each individual, contains in potentia every
possible state. If we find ourselves in a particular state at a
particular time, it is due only to the fact that we have
circumscribed our perceptions and therefore, temporarily at
least, our potentials.
What is Above is Within, for every-thing in Eternity
is translucent:
The Circumference is Within: Without, is formed
the Selfish Center
And the Circumference still expands going forward
to Eternity.
And the Center has Eternal States! these States we
now explore [E 225].
There follows a page and a half of possible states, each
described as having various qualities and belonging to
different geographical regions. Elsewhere, Blake puns on the
word by naming perceptual states that are also geopolitical
bodies.

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There are States in which all Visionary Men are

accounted Mad Men such are Greece & Rome Such
is Empire [E 274]
The Artist having been taken in vision into the
ancient republics, monarchies, and patriarchates of
Asia, has seen those wonderful originals called in
the Sacred Scriptures the Cherubim, which were
sculptured and painted on walls of Temples, Towers,
Cities, Palaces, and erected in the highly cultivated
states of Egypt, Moab, Edom, Aram [E 531]
The states that have attracted the most attention among
readers of Blake are the ones he calls Eden, Beulah,
Generation, and Ulro. As I mentioned in the introduction to
this book, I think we need not restrict ourselves to these four
states in our analysis of the Dante illustrations. Their
superficial resemblance to Dantes Heaven, Purgatory, our
world, and Hell, respectively, have tempted scholars,
including Roe, to look for clear one-to-one correspondences,
but I think we can see from a wider look at the types of states
Blake mentions that there are far more choices available. The
major work Milton doesnt adhere strictly to the four-level
system, introducing Alla, subdividing Ulro and associating it
with different parts of the body.
And the Four States of Humanity in its Repose,
Were shewed them. First of Beulah a most pleasant
Sleep
On Couches soft, with mild music, tended by
Flowers of Beulah
Sweet Female forms, winged or floating in the air
spontaneous
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The Second State is Alla & the third State Al-Ulro;

But the Fourth State is dreadful; it is named
Or-Ulro:
The First State is in the Head, the Second is in the
Heart:
The Third in the Loins & Seminal Vessels & the
Fourth
In the Stomach & Intestines terrible, deadly,
unutterable [E 134]
And within Ulro there are three more states: Creation;
Redemption. & Judgment (E 179). It seems clear to me,
then, that we would be wrong to choose one combination of
states and force the Dante pictures to conform to it.
Identifying the name of each state that the pilgrim Dante
passes through is not as important as recognizing that these
states, while eternal, need not trap anyone forever.
Even Satan, we learn, is a state. But we learn in the same
speech that the state Satan must be distinguished from the
individual who is temporarily in that state. The state is
unredeemable; the individual may escape.
There is a State namd Satan learn distinct to know O
Rahab The
Difference between States & Individuals of those
States
The State namd Satan never can be redeemd in all
Eternity [E 380]
The above quote is from The Four Zoas, but similar ideas on
the difference between identity and state appear throughout
Blakes career. From the marginalia to Reynolds:
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Identities or Things are Neither Cause nor Effect

They are Eternal [E 656]
And in Jerusalem:
The Spiritual States of
the Soul are all Eternal
Distinguish between the
Man, & his present State [E 200]
And from Milton:
Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in
those States.
States Change: but Individual Identities never
change nor cease;
You cannot go to Eternal Death in that which can
never Die [E 132].
This last quote clears up what appears to be a paradox in
Blakes writing. He refers to Eternal Death more than once,
but makes it clear that one can escape this condition. Now we
can see that it is the state of death that is everlasting, not an
individuals residency in that state.
By this it will be seen that I do not consider either
the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State but
to be every one of them States of the Sleep which
the Soul may fall into in its Deadly Dreams of Good
& Evil when it leaves Paradise [with] <following>
the Serpent [E 563]

194

We have seen that anyone who abstracts qualities from an

object or a person is negating the rest of that persons infinite
qualities. To say, therefore, that the final resurrection in God
will bring us a state of perfect goodness is wronga Urizenic
error. It is only in our fallen, deadly dreams that we imagine
good and evil may exist separately. The perfect state, in
which ones perceptions are entirely open, is the state in
which both just and wicked qualities, and all other opposites
or contraries, are combined in their infinity, as Cusanuss
circle and straight line were identical in Gods sight. We
reach the highest, Edenic state, when we perceive the infinite
in each thing, no longer circumscribing our perceptions to the
point that we see contraries as opposed.
It should be clear now why Blakes theory of states is the
foundation of his morality. Falling into one state or another
affects our moral judgment in two crucial ways. First, such a
fall narrows our infinite perception, so that we believe good
and evil are separate and identifiable, thus falling into the
error of thinking that people (rather than states) may be
judged. Second, each state circumscribes our thinking,
thereby creating an ideology, which twists and narrows our
moral judgments. We look at individuals through the eyes of
abstract moral principles and forget that in fact each
individual is infiniteit is only that individuals current state,
and ours, that makes him appear the way he is. Blake prays
that Jesus will come to return our infinite vision, so that we
will not accuse others:
Descend O Lamb of God & take away the
imputation of Sin
By the Creation of States & the deliverance of

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Individuals Evermore
Amen [E 170]
But there are always people in lower perceptive states whose
narrowness causes them to blame the individual:
Thus wept they in Beulah over the Four Regions of
Albion
But many doubted & despaird & imputed Sin &
Righteousness
To Individuals & not to States, and these Slept in
Ulro [E 171].
Blake demonstrates in Jerusalem that as individuals are
eternal and may change from state to state, which for them is
the same as a change from world to world, it would not be fair
to blame any individual in eternity for what he perceived in
only one state. He describes the sons of Albion as they fall,
and how they produce moral codes of reward and punishment.
They are beginning to form Heavens & Hells in
immense
Circles: the Hells for food to the Heavens: food of
torment,
Food of despair: they drink the condemnd Soul &
rejoice
In cruel holiness, in their Heavens of Chastity &
Uncircumcision
The fallen moralists, thinking they are enforcing Gods law,
form Heaven and Hell, and undertake what they think is
holiness, though in fact it is cruelty. Blake particularly felt
that enforcement of chastity was a cruel restriction. The
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speaker of the lines above is Erin, who shares a name with

Ireland. In Blakes mythology, she symbolizes the holiness of
the body and its instincts126 and therefore opposes its ritual
mutilation (circumcision) and the suppression of its instincts
(chastity). She continues by proclaiming that even though the
sons of Albion are wrong to build walls of morality, we must
not judge them, but forgive.
Yet they are blameless & Iniquity must be imputed
only
To the State they are enterd into that they may be
deliverd:
Satan is the State of Death, & not a Human
existence:
......
Learn therefore O Sisters to distinguish the Eternal
Human
That walks about among the stones of fire in bliss &
woe
Alternate! from those States or Worlds in which the
Spirit travels:
This is the only means to Forgiveness of Enemies [E
199]
It is therefore the fallen sons of Albion who depart from the
antinomian fold and imagine the need for morality. They, like
Dante, feel that a Heaven and a Hell are required if holiness is
to triumph. Yet if we may take Erin at her word, Dante should
be forgiven. He is blameless, and iniquity must be imputed to
his state, not his person. What is his state? A simple answer
would be: someone who had the misfortune to live under the
shadow of Augustinian and Thomist theology, too early for
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Cusanus, Boehme, and Blake to show him the error of his

falsely transcendent thoughts. In the epilogue for Blakes
emblem book The Gates of Paradise, there is a poem that,
intentionally or not, directly addresses Dantes condition. It is
spoken to Satan, whose name in Hebrew means the
Accuser:
To The Accuser who is
The God of This World
Truly My Satan thou art a Dunce
And dost not know the Garment from the Man
Every Harlot was a Virgin once
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan
Tho thou art Worshipd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah: thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill [E 269]
In Blakes view, it is Satan who does the accusing, the
moralistic finger pointing. Those in Eden dont judge. The
garment is the state, which may be cast off, yet the devil cant
distinguish the garment from the man or woman wearing it.
Women in states of harlotry were once in a purer state, yet it
is the state that has changed, not the soul of the woman. The
state changes, but Kate is still Kate, and Nan is still Nan, no
matter what states they find themselves in. Moralistic
Christians mistakenly think that Jesus and Jehovah want them
to enforce morality, and they pass judgment on Kate or Nan
rather than on her current state.
In fact, by accusing others of sin, such Christians
unknowingly worship Satan, the Accuser. Blake is reminding
Satan here that, although he is worshiped in churches
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throughout England, he is still only the dream of a weary

traveler under a hill.
The poetic figure of a weary traveler may seem generic
enough, but it also suits perfectly the weary traveler whose
work Blake illustrated in the last years of his life. Dante
begins the Comedy as just such a traveler, tired and lost, at the
foot of a hill. Carys translation titled Dantes poem The
Vision, but it might as well have been called The Dream. In
canto 1 of the Hell, as the pilgrim Dante looks up from the
valley, to the hill lit at the top by Gods truth, he knows that
he is too weary to climb. The journey that he begins then is a
dream, a poetic dream, an imagination that is true. Yet
because in that dream he builds a Hell and a Heaven and
worships a God who could damn without forgiveness, he has
dreamt, under that hill, of the Accuser who is the God of This
World, not the real God whom Blake knows.
As we have seen, though, Dante is not unredeemable. He is in
a fallen state, but we must not condemn his eternal soul, or his
poetic genius, due to the inevitable errors all fallen humans
make. In Jerusalem, Blake has indicated that despite Dantes
less-than-Edenic position, the Comedy has contributed to the
mercy of this world. In chapter 3 of Jerusalem, several fallen
characters, in a frenzy of creation, bring to life the kings and
nobles of this world, creating them in the lowest level, Ulro.
The Imagination, personified here as Los, is merciful, and
rather than allowing the kings to go to eternal death, he
creates a sort of safety net, or counterforce, of great men:
but around
[The kings], to preserve them from Eternal Death
Los Creates
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Adam Noah Abraham Moses Samuel David Ezekiel

[Pythagoras Socrates Euripedes Virgil Dante
Milton]
Dissipating the rocky forms of Death, by his
thunderous Hammer
As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent
remains
So Men pass on: but States remain permanent for
ever [E 229]
The imaginative heroes from the Old Testament, philosophy,
and literature are there to keep the powerful men from falling
to the lowest level, to provide at least some vision in a fallen
world. (Even allegory is seldom without some vision.) At
some point Blake scratched out the line that mentions Dante,
but were not sure why. The line is printed in some copies of
Jerusalem and not in others. Whether he had a change of
heart about philosophy and poetry, or whether it was merely
an emendation for the sake of scansion, we can see that Blake
placed Dante in his list of greats, next to Milton, whom we
know Blake worked hard to save.
Later in this book, as we look in more detail at individual
illustrations, it will become clear exactly how Blake converts
Dantes Comedy to his own system. The main change will be
based on the topics we have just discussed: eternal states and
traveling souls. Dantes Hell may be everlasting, but the souls
the pilgrim meets there wont stay. And his Paradise may
seem eternal, but that doesnt mean it is made of goodness
alone. It is, rather, made of all the contraries at once.

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Our World Is the Lowest World

The Fall of Man is a perceptual fall. As our senses narrow and
we lose the ability to see as God sees, we fall to a lower
plane. The Fall is not a spatial fall, from one geographical or
cosmological level to another, but a change in state. As we
have seen just now, Blake imagines a large variety of states
that a person can be in, each with unique boundaries on its
perceptual abilities. Two of the most important states in his
system bear names that will be familiar to everyone: Adam
and Satan. Both are perceptual conditions, and both exist in
every person. In Jerusalem, Blake writes:
There is a limit of Opakeness, and a limit of
Contraction;
In every Individual Man, and the limit of
Opakeness,
Is named Satan: and the limit of Contraction is
named Adam [E 189].
Blake believes that God is absolutely immanent in each
person. There is no boundary between human and God. Yet
our fallen perceptual condition causes us to lose that
knowledge. How far can we fall? How narrowly can our
senses close? Only as far as these two limits. Satan is the
lower boundary below which no ones perceptual state may
fall. To Satan, the world is literally opaquehis vision stops
at the surfaces of things, so that he may not see their infinite
connection to God, the universe, and all other things. Its this
extreme lack of vision which makes him satanic. He is not
necessarily morally evil (a concept that antinomians dont
recognize) but because without vision of the
interconnectedness of all things, he is selfish. In Jerusalem,
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Blake declares that Satan is the Great Selfhood (E 175). He

is the state we are in when we think of ourselves as separate,
as islands. Though the state of Satan-hood is unredeemable,
people who are in it may be resurrected into more perceptive
levels. In fact the state of Satan was created for that purpose:
it was The Divine hand [who] found the Two Limits, first of
Opacity, then of Contraction (E 107). Jesus has created this
lowest point as a kind of safety net below which we will not
fall. Individuals who are in that state, therefore, are not lost
forever. The mercy of Christ means that we may be lifted up.
Adam, too, is a lower limit. As Satan is the perceptual state
that sees only surfaces, Adam is the state that sees most
contractedly. The result is similar to Satans condition, since
both states keep only the minimum of the imagination with
which, Blake says, we create our worlds. Adam, though, is
more connected to reason, to calculation from the surfaces he
sees. He is active and struggling because he is carrying out
Lockean calculations based on his sense impressions, but in
this state he will never see more than the Guinea sun and its
abstracted qualities.127
Almost everyone today lives in the states of Satan and Adam.
As long as our only truth is based on empiricism, and our
only hope for a livelihood is based on self-interest and
conformity of view, it is very difficult to do better. The good
news, though, is that this is as low as we can go. Satan and
Adam were mercifully created by Christ as the nadir. This
means that there is no Hell waiting below, to take us to an
even lower point. Were at the lowest point there is.

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The Necessity of the Fall

As depressing as it sounds to hear that we are at the lowest
possible cosmological and spiritual point, there is nonetheless
hope for us.
Blake follows in a very old tradition that tells us that although
it is painful to fall into division and opacity, it is nonetheless
necessary. Moreover, the later Neoplatonists, and the
Romantics who read them, declared that when we rise up
from our required fall we will be better than when we began.
Of Gods unity and our fall into division, Abrams writes that
in Christian Neoplatonism
the personal God the Father tends to become an
impersonal first principle, or absolute, whose
perfection is equated with his self-sufficient and
undifferentiated unity. Evil, correspondingly, is held
to be essentially a separation from unity, or a
division, fragmentation, estrangement from the One,
which is reflected in a division within the nature of
man. Second, the fall of man is conceived to be
primarily a falling-out-of and falling-away-from the
One, into a position of remoteness and a condition
of alienation from the source. Consonantly, the
original human sin is identified as self-centeredness,
or selfhood, the attempt of a part to be sufficient
unto itself; while the primary consequence of the
falldeathis described as a state of division from
the one Being.128

203

Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and other theologians

incorporated the Neoplatonic view so deeply into Christian
theology that it became the metaphysical superstructure of the
religion. Erigena, in his De divisione naturae, defined history
from creation to the apocalypse in terms of processio, divisio,
reditus, and aduntioa going forth which is also a division,
and a return which is also a reunion.129 Several tales from
the Bible lent themselves to metaphysical interpretation in
Neoplatonic terms of division and return, including the Jews
sojourn in Egypt and the parable of the Prodigal Son. It isnt
surprising, then, to find that the theme is crucial to both Dante
and Blake.
Contemplation of the fall from and return to God gave rise to
the paradoxical concept of the felix culpa, the happy fault.
St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, declared that Adams sin
was a happy one because, in the long run, it brought more
benefit than harm: Felix ruina quae reparatur in melius!
Gregory the Great, Calvin, Milton, and Kierkegaard, among
many others, agreed with him.130 In Paradise Lost, the
Archangel Michael tells Adam that the ultimate paradise will
be better than the Eden he started from.
[Christ will] reward
His faithful, and receive them into bliss,
Whether in Heavn or Earth, for then the Earth
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place
Than this of Eden, and far happier days [XII.
461465].
The reunion with God, then, will be more glorious than the
state before the Fall. For all those who believed in the felix
culpa, the necessary change that the Fall brings about is
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knowledge. Adams Edenic state was nave; understanding of

oneself and ones creator required more experience than the
original state of innocence could give. Love is the motivation
to regain unity, but unlike the childish sort, mature love
comes from profound knowledge of the loved one. One
Renaissance humanist described it thus: By love, i.e., by our
love of God, we are to return to our source, which is also our
end; for nothing else is able to bind together spiritual things,
nothing is able to make one out of many, except love; but
knowledge must precede love.131
Esoteric traditions place great emphasis on the manner in
which a person may gain such knowledge and often
emphasize that breaking down old habits of thought requires
painful initiation. Cults since Roman times had constructed
their initiation ceremonies as reenactments of the myths of
Persephone or Bacchus, in which the initiate re-experienced
the mythic figures descent into the underworld and
transfigurational return. Christians who were aware of the
Hermetic or alchemical traditions, such as Cornelius Agrippa
and Paracelsus, also structured the course of learning as a fall
and return. For them, the initiate falls away from childish
innocence to pursue truth in two steps: knowledge of the self,
and knowledge of God.132
Jacob Boehme also saw the Fall of Man as a felix culpa. He
agrees that mans original state, at one with God in paradise,
is an unthinking, unreflective unity.133 He believes that in
order to gain self-knowledge, we require resistance, because a
womb-like existence would never require thought, speech, or
knowledge. (In this, he anticipated Fichte, Hegel, and Freud.)
In the untroubled, unchanging life of Eden we have no
dialectical opposition with which to define ourselves. Stoudt
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writes of Boehmes theology: Without dialectic no thing can

become manifest to itself. If nothing resists it, then it
continually proceeds from itself; it does not return to itself
again. If the natural life had no dialectic then it would
never ask for the ground from which it came.134 And of
course the ground from which it came is God. The dialectic
of states, of experience opposed to innocence, is necessary if
we are even to ask the right questions. We see that for
Boehme, then, the course of the Fall and the eventual reunion
with God is not a one-time journey of mankind, beginning
once with Adam and ending once at the Last Judgment. For
Boehme, each of us must follow the path individually. As
with the Roman cult ceremonies, each individual recreates in
his own life what has occurred before in mythical time.
The natural world is a necessary stage on our path to full
awareness. Boehme writes: The Divine Ens which is
spiritual, cannot be manifested but through the Strife of
Nature.135
Remember that for Boehme, the unperceived noumenal world
that exists in the beginning, the Ungrund, is chaos. For any
order or object to exist requires conditioning by a
perceiverthe creation of phenomena. This is how
spiritGeisttakes on conditioned form. Perception creates
form out of the mass of chaos, giving body to spirit. This is
the Fall. It is for Boehme, as for Blake, a perceptual fall, and
it is a necessary change if we are to have knowledge of
anything. It is a change from unconscious unity to conscious
division. Out of the original chaos comes the division of
conditioned existence as perception creates individual
perceivable bodies. If the noumenal world is unknowable and

206

phenomena are all that we know, the fall into the phenomenal
world is essential for any knowledge to be had.
Traditional Neoplatonic philosophy had imagined spirit
dividing from the One and descending to enter a body. It is a
spatial fall as well as a change in state, from high to low.
Boehme sees both spirit and body as a portion of the
Ungrund: body is merely the division that perception forms in
order to perceive. Thus for him the Fall is not a literal descent
from a high place. It is a change in perception of the Ungrund
only. But for Boehme as for Plotinus, it is the identification of
spirit with body that brings strife into the world. Now that
portions of the Ungrund have been embodied, and knowledge
made possible, tension and dialectic are also possible. The
spirit perceives itself as suffering, and learns to yearn for a
third state: a state of consciousness without the pain that
physical limitation brings.
Plotinus had taught that the soul, after falling into division,
desires reunion with the One. The early Neoplatonic reunion,
though, is also the end of the individual soul. In this version
the soul will be fully reabsorbed into the One, losing all
individuality, as with Buddhisms Nirvana. Boehme rejects
this annihilating view as fully as Dante did. For Boehme, the
resurrection out of the physical body into the third phase of
existence is not dissolution but liberation. The self-awareness
discovered through the fall into division is retained, but the
painful limitations of life in the material world are cast
aside.136
With Boehmes reading, the apparently simple fable of Adam
and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge has been transformed
into something very close to Kantian epistemology. The
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preFall state is not merely a pleasant garden but a noumenal

chaos in which there is neither pleasantness nor
unpleasantness, because there is not yet the capacity to know.
Understanding, as Cusanus had taught us, requires division
(?). The return to unity retains understanding because it does
not eliminate the individuality of souls. But the final state of
the spirits dialectic is not a physical state; the temporary
inhabiting of bodies in the natural world gives us
individuality/knowledge that we didnt have in the noumenon
and allows us to return to the non-physical world with our
knowledge intact. Embodiment is like graduate school: a
horrifying state that no one would willingly remain in for long
but that is necessary for higher understanding. Blake wrote in
a marginal note to Swedenborg: Understanding or Thought
is not natural to Man it is acquired by means of Suffering &
Distress i.e., Experience. Will, Desire, Love, Rage, Envy, &
all other affections are Natural. but Understanding is
Acquired (E 602).
Many of the German Romantics read Boehme. We can see
elements of his philosophy in their work and in that of their
compatriot Hegel. Schiller, for example, said that we may not
go back to Arcadia but must press onward to Elysium.137
Schillers version of the fortunate fall is stated in terms of
morality rather than perception, but the result is the same:
This fall [Abfall] of man from instinctwhich to be sure
brought moral evil into the creation, but only in order to make
moral good therein possibleis, without any contradiction,
the most fortunate and greatest event in the history of
mankind.138
The German word Bildungsgeschichte translates rather
anticlimactically into English as education history, but as
208

used by the Romantics as one of their characteristic literary

genres, it became a record of the painful process of Christian
conversion and redemption into a painful process of
self-formation, crisis, and self-recognition, which culminates
in a stage of self-coherence, self-awareness, and assured
power that is its own reward.139
Such stories could proceed without supernatural elements in
obvious view, as sturm und drang within the mind of one
individual. Not surprisingly, it was Nietzsche who
pronounced that the interiorization of the process could be
completed and the same dramatic arc could be traversed with
no God at all: Just take one step farther; love yourself
through Grace; then you are no longer in need of your God,
and the whole drama of fall and redemption is acted out in
yourself.140
William Blake was writing about the necessity of the fall
from innocence early in his career. His third hand-printed
book, The Book of Thel, is about the possibility of such a fall,
and we will examine this more fully later. His fourth book,
described briefly above, contrasts the states of innocence and
experience. In comparing these states a less subtle writer
might have implied that innocence was the better of the two,
and that it is unfortunate to leave such a condition. Blake does
not pine for innocent days, recognizing that like all things in
life they have their allotted term. The Songs of Innocence and
Experience do not tell us that it is possible or even desirable
to remain innocent forever.
We briefly examined above, in our discussion of Blakes view
of nature, how his Four Zoas dramatizes the fall and eventual
resurrection of Albion, the Universal Man. In my opinion,
209

though, his clearest presentation of a fall that results in an

improved return to God is in his series of illustrations to the
Book of Job, the set of engravings he finished just prior to
beginning the Dante illustrations. The Job series has been
analyzed in detail by Lindberg, Raine, and Damon,141 and I
will not diverge from their interpretations here. A brief look
will be enough to see that this narrative follows, more clearly
than do his poetic epics, the arc we have been discussing: a
beginning state of navet, a fall into division and terror, and a
return that is in fact an improvement.
Readers familiar with the Book of Job but not with Blakes
elaborate and personal symbolism will have no trouble
following the story told in his twenty-two engravings. A first
look at the Job pictures might in fact give the impression that
Blake has restrained the urge to defy traditional
interpretations and has made straightforward, impersonal
illustrations. Some early critics thought this to be the case.142
Further investigation, of course, reveals that there is more of
Blake in the pictures than was originally thought. Through a
variety of narrative techniques, Blake has given the story a
clearer and more personal message than that contained in the
biblical text.
After a title page the set of engravings opens with a scene of
Job and his family at prayer (fig. 6). Job and his wife are
seated, prayer books on their knees, in front of a massive tree
from which musical instruments are suspended.
Their sons and daughters kneel around them, and in the
background we can see a flock of sheep and a Gothic
cathedral. This peaceful scene appears to be a kind of ideal,
and indeed Job at this point believes that he has achieved an
210

ideal position. The biblical text opens: There was a man in

the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was
perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed
evil (Job 1:1). Its not until after we have looked carefully at
the entire set of engravings that we can understand Jobs real
condition at the opening. He is in a state of innocence, which
cannot last. Like the childish chimney sweeper in the Songs of
Innocence, Job believes that he is living a righteous life by
following Gods commandments, and that if all do their
duty, they need not fear harm (E 10). Those of us with more
experience know that just because a person plays by the rules
doesnt mean he can avoid catastrophe.
And so already in the second illustration the catastrophe
begins. God and Satan conspire to bring disaster to Jobs
home and family. By the third engraving the home has
collapsed and the children are dying. When the lone survivor
escapes to tell Job what has happened, Job is plunged against
his will into the state of experience. Bad things can happen to
good people. The middle third of the original biblical text
consists mostly of Jobs lament and his dialogues with
well-meaning friends who wish to tell him that the disasters
are his own fault. Blake follows the pattern of the text and
shows Job in the fallen world: getting ill, getting lectured by
people who know nothing, being misunderstood, and at the
low point, facing an evil God who has the facial features of
Job himself. This is the world of experience, the fallen world
in which Satan and Adam are the limits. Job is no longer in
the protected world of navet, in which he can herd his sheep
and imagine all is well. He is in the world where imagination
is reduced to almost nothing, where the infinite connections
of man to man are forgotten and where even looking at God,
one sees only ones own face reflected back from opaque
211

surfaces. At the very lowest point in Jobs sojourn through the

world of experience, though, Blake reminds us that all is not
lost (fig. 7). In the frame below the scene of Job hovering
prostrate above the flames of the pit, Blake has engraved the
words:

212

Figure 6. Job and His Family, from Illustrations of the

Book of Job, 1825; engraving, design: 18.1 15.0 cm, leaf
size: 42.1 32.5 cm (collection of Robert N. Essick;
2013 William Blake Archive; used by permission).

213

For I know that my Redeemer liveth & that he shall

stand in the latter days upon the Earth & after my
skin destroy thou This body yet in my flesh shall I
see God whom I shall see for Myself and mine eyes
shall behold & not Another tho consumed be my
wrought image [Job 19:2227].
Job himself cannot see beyond the limitations of his state, but
Blake is reminding us, the viewers, that Christ does not allow
a soul to fall to complete death. Even at the lowest point, the
redeemer is there.
In the Book of Job, the title character is not satisfied with
explanations from others about why he has fallen into his sad
state. Moral or theoretical explanations will not do; he
demands vision. And he gets it. The Lord appears to him out
of the whirlwind. Modern readers may still find this
unsatisfactory, since when Jehovah appears he explains
nothing of why Job had to fall. God says only that Gods
ways are too much for Job to understand, that Job isnt as
strong or as powerful as God, and that, therefore, Job wont
get a full answer. If we are waiting for a reasonable, logical
explanation, we dont get it.
What we get is vision, and that is what we need. Logical
discursive argument is nothing compared to the ability to see
the infinity that is God. Job gains vision, and is redeemed.
The last plate in the series shows Job and his restored family,
in the same location as in the first plate, but engaged in a new
kind of worship (fig. 8). The musical instruments are no
longer hanging unused in the tree. The worshippers are no
longer seated and obediently praying from their books. They
are standing full height, worshipping through their music.
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This, and the previous plate in which Job shows his paintings
of his visions to his daughters, show us that Job has taken on
the artistic imaginative relation to the world which, for Blake,
is the only true Christianity.
The Songs of Innocence and Experience had shown us only
the preFall state and the condition of fallen man. Blakes
Book of Job ends, however, with a third condition, which
Paley calls higher innocence.143 It is the synthesis at the
end of the innocence-experience dialectic. It is the fuller
understanding that we must leave our innocent state to reach,
though the path there is tortuous.
We will see that Blakes version of the Comedy follows the
same path, though of course there are many differences in the
story. The illustrations begin, as the Comedy does, with the
state of innocence already lost and the fall underway. And
just as Dante explains in detail the conditions and horrors of
the underworld, Blake also lingers in the lower realm. The
difference is, of course, that for Blake the lower realm is our
current realm.
When comparing Blakes theology of fall and redemption to
Dantes, there is another significant difference that we must
keep in mind. I find no statement in Dante in favor of the felix
culpa. For him, the Fall is only to be regretted. Though the
pilgrim Dante must go down before he can go up, this is
required by his own fault in losing the right path. At no point
does the pilgrim announce that he is glad to have lost the
path, and glad to have been required to make the journey. At
various points in the Comedy, he announces that it would
have been better if he had had the opportunity to remain in an
unfallen state. Nor does he see Adam and Eves Fall as the
215

fault that allowed the greater reward. Both his own and
mankinds fall from grace are only everywhere denounced.
We see an example in Purgatory 29, as the pilgrim is walking
through the woods of the Earthly Paradise, which is the
original home of Adam and Eve. The great beauty of Eden
makes him think only of what humankind has missed by not
being allowed to stay.

216

Figure 7. Jobs Evil Dreams, from the Illustrations of the

Book of Job, 1825; engraving, design: 19.2 14.6 cm, leaf
size: 42.1 32.5 cm (collection of Robert N. Essick;
2013 William Blake Archive; used by permission).

217

Figure 8. Job and His Family Restored to Prosperity, from

Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1825; engraving, design:
19.5 14.5 cm, leaf size: 42.1 32.5 cm (collection of
218

Robert N. Essick; 2013 William Blake Archive; used by

permission).

Then did I chide,

With warrantable zeal, the hardihood
Of our first parent; for that there, where earth
Stood in obedience to the Heavens, she only,
Woman, the creature of an hour, endured not
Restraint of any veil, which had she borne
Devoutly, joys, ineffable as these,
Had from the first, and long time since, been mine
[Purgatory, 29; Cary, 26970].
The pilgrim regrets that Eve did not stand in obedience to
the Heavens, and endured not Restraint, because if she
had, ineffable joys Had from the first been mine.
Later, in the sphere of Mercury, Beatrice explains the Fall
with no hint of felicity at all.
That man, who was unborn [Adam], condemnd
himself;
And, in himself, all, who since him have lived,
His offspring: whence, below, the human kind
Lay sick in grievous error many an age;
[Paradise, 7; Cary, 320]
She explains that mankind lived in this grievous error for a
long time, until it pleased Christ to save them By the mere
act of His eternal love. Her explanation of the need for the
crucifixion, a masterpiece of theological argument, gives no
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indication that the Fall had been a necessary means to a good

result, but only a great error that required unprecedented
redemption.
It was possible to be a Catholic in Dantes time and not
believe in the felix culpa. It was not possible to be a follower
of Boehme or a Romantic poet and reject it.

Neoplatonic Stories of Katabasis

In the Christian era, several Greek myths were employed as
parables of the souls descent into the material world and
return to God. For example, Fulgentius in the fifth century set
a long-lasting pattern by reading the story of Cupid and
Psyche as a Christian allegory.144 More esoteric philosophers
such as Athanasius Kircher and Pico della Mirandola
espoused the prisca theologia, which held that the myths and
religions of all countries had sprung from a common true
source. Such men found it obvious that the many tales of
descent and return told a basic truth about the human
condition.
Such tales, in fact, form one of the most ancient of literary
forms, called katabasis ( = descent) in Greek.
Early katabatic myths include The Epic of Gilgamesh and the
stories of the Sumerian goddess Inanna and the Akkadian
goddess Ishtar, all current in the second millennium bc.145
This type of story was sufficiently widespread that the pattern
would have been familiar to auditors of Homers account of
Odysseuss katabasis, and ancient history to those who read
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Virgils account of Aeneass. Lucian and Aristophanes both

found the genre familiar enough to write parodies in which it
is assumed the audience will recognize the shape of such
infernal trips.146 There are common elements that were
established early in the tradition and tend to appear in most
versions, including a ferryman to cross the river boundary
into the underworld and the necessity of traveling with a
knowing guide.
In these stories a descent to the underworld is never attempted
lightly. In some, the hero is kidnapped or tricked into descent,
as when Persephone is abducted by Hades. In others, the
journey is made to rescue a soul from the land of death, as in
the story of Orpheus or of Herakles rescue of Theseus and
Alcestis. This type is echoed in the Harrowing of Hell: the
extra-canonical story, accepted by Dante, of Christ
descending to Limbo to rescue the worthy souls who died
prior to the crucifixion. The type of katabasis that most
strongly influenced Western traditions, however, is the quest
for life-changing information that can only be gained by a
perilous descent. Odysseus and Aeneas both make their
journey for this reason, and of course Dantes trip to Hell is
conducted in that tradition.147 In every case, the goal is a type
of rebirth. The story of Persephone and the earlier Akkadian
myths are fertility myths, related to the seasonal rebirth of life
in the spring. Herakles literally gives a soul rebirth from the
dead, and Homer, Virgil, and Dante each explain that descent
is necessary for his hero to begin a new life in the world.
Literature of the Christian Middle Ages returns again and
again to the katabatic theme. Augustine makes metaphorical
use of it in his Confessions, when he describes his life as
being on the road to Hell before his conversion to
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Christianity.148 Many apocryphal books that were popular in

medieval times included tours of Hell. Among these were the
Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of Thomas, the Apocalypse of
Paul, the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, the Greek Apocalypse of
the Virgin, and Hebrew texts describing trips by Isaiah and
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi.149
Neoplatonic readings of katabatic myths tended to reinterpret
the beginning and ending points of the journey. For Plotinus
and others, Persephones abduction from our world into
Hades was a symbolic story of the souls descent from God
into the material world.150 Persephone begins in a state of
innocence, gathering flowers on a riverbank; she is soiled
with experience in the world below, but returns wiser, at least
temporarily, to her starting point. Interpretations that make
the lower world into our own world may be traced back at
least as far as Platos Myth of Er, the fable that concludes his
Republic. These readings formed the theory behind the
Roman mystery cults, mentioned above, which were designed
to reenact the myths in order to guarantee a better afterlife.151
They were also helpful for those such as Boehme, Blake, and
the German Romantics who believed that the soul undergoes
a necessary fall from and return to God.
We can see, then, that the idea of rebirth attained through
descent and return is an ancient element in myth and religion.
The myth keeps its emotional force from Gilgamesh to Virgil,
and formed the basis for popular and long-lasting rituals.
Blakes view of salvation follows the pattern as well. In the
following sections, I will examine two works by Blake that
use this theme, so that we may get a better idea of how he
interpreted Dantes own katabatic journey.

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The Book of Thel as Katabasis

The Book of Thel is among Blakes strangest and most
moving works (fig. 9). It resists the urge to abstractionno
indisputable moral message can be obtained from it, despite
the efforts of scholars over many yearsyet in its ambiguity
it keeps a living appeal. Created around the end of the 1780s,
it is one of Blakes earliest illuminated books. It opens with
the motto:
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl? [E 3]
These lines, like everything else in the poem, have been
interpreted in a variety of ways, with the rod and bowl
standing for everything from the Anglican church to male and
female genitalia. I have no ambition here to offer a definitive
analysis of the poem, but a close reading can help us explicate
how Blake treated themes of travel between the higher and
lower worlds. As I see it, one way to see The Book of Thel is
as a kind of failed katabasis.
The poem opens in the Vales of Har, a pastoral place where
The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny
flocks. Only Thel, the youngest of the daughters, seems
inclined to disturb the peace by asking difficult questions. She
is troubled by the transience of life and the inevitability of
death.

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O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the

water?
Why fade these children of the spring? born but to
smile & fall.
Ah! Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting
cloud.
Like a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the
water.
Like dreams of infants. like a smile upon an infants
face,
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music
in the air;
Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my
head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death. and gentle hear
the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening
time [E 3].
The mention of him that walketh in the garden in the
evening time is of course a reference to Genesis 2:8, where
Jehovah walks in Eden in the cool of the evening just as he is
about to discover that Adam and Eve have sinned. From the
beginning, then, we are reminded of themes of falling, death,
and sin. Thel would prefer to stay in this innocent, preFall
condition, but her curiosity leads her to ask several other
inhabitants of Har about the meaning of death. She questions
The Lilly of the valley breathing in the humble grass, the
cloud, the worm, and the clod of clay. Each humbly reassures
her by saying that everything is all right, that God is watching
over us, and that death is nothing to fear. (Only the worm
makes no answer, because he is too tiny.) (Fig. 10.)

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These natural objects speak in the voices of innocence, like

the navely reassuring words in the Songs of Innocence, which
tell us that God will never allow harm to come to us. Critics
are divided on whether we should believe these comforting
words. Essick, for one, thinks we should not. He reminds us
that in the margins of Boyds translation of Dante, Blake had
remarked, Nature Teaches nothing of Spiritual Life but only
of Natural Life152 (E 634). If the same sentiment is at work
here, the natural objects are unable to see beyond nature,
which, as we have seen, is a veil over the spiritual. Thels
advisors believe only what their state allows them to believe,
like all the rest of us. Whether or not their advice is correct,
however, Thel is not satisfied with their answers. She decides
to go to the world of death and see for herself, and the poem
makes an abrupt shift in tone.

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Figure 9. Title page, The Book of Thel, relief etching with

hand coloring, 1789; object size: approx. 15.0 11.0 cm,
226

leaf size: 37.1 26.9 cm (Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection,

Library of Congress; 2013 William Blake Archive; used
by permission).

227

Figure 10. The Worm upon its dewy bed, from The Book of
Thel, 1789; relief etching with hand coloring, object size:
approx. 15.0 11.0 cm, leaf size: 37.1 26.9 cm (Lessing
228

J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress; 2013

William Blake Archive; used by permission).

The terrific porter lifts the bar on the eternal gates, Thel
enterd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown. She has
descended to the world of the dead, A land of sorrows & of
tears where never smile was seen. She wanders in this
underworld, listening to the horrible lamentations, until she
finds her own grave, where she hears a voice:
Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own
destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, showring fruits &
coined gold!
Why a Tongue impressd with honey from every
wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling &
affright.
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?
[E 6]
This is the voice of Thel herself, if she were dead in that
grave. The voice is lamenting the loss of innocence, regretting
that we must have knowledge of evil and of loss.
Characteristically, Blake has framed the questions in terms of
the senses. If Thel had remained in innocence, ignorant of
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death, her state would be one in which the ear and eye and
nostril are closed to their own destruction. We see that in
innocence the senses are unaware of suffering, and in
experience they lament.
The lower world is too dark, and the questions too horrifying,
and Thel flees shrieking back to Vales of Har. She wanted to
see for herself, had a brief vision of the world below, was
terrified by what she saw and rejected it. This is why I think
we can refer to Thels story as a failed katabasis. Unlike the
epic versions of descent stories, in which Odysseus or Aeneas
learn what is required for rebirth in an advanced state, Thel
rejects the knowledge she could have found there and returns
to her previous condition.
No doubt it is unnecessary for me to remind anyone that Thel
is a fictional character and a poetical construct. In the work of
an author like Blake, in particular, such characters are capable
of being in a number of states all at the same time, as
multivalent symbols and personalities. Given this freedom, I
will borrow portions of Kathleen Raines reading of The Book
of Thel, without necessarily following all of her conclusions.
Raine has read Thels story as an allegory of the soul in the
terms of Neoplatonic tradition. Plotinus and Porphyry had
held that the human soul begins as a portion of the One in the
intelligible world, and may fall into the sensible. For them,
matter is evil and the souls descent into body a death from
eternity incurred by sin or by folly.153 As described above,
the Neoplatonists saw the unity of the One as goodness, and
division from that unity as the source of evil. Unity in the
ideal world above is good; the fragmentation of the Ones
emanation into the material world is evil. Raine calls Thel a
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nymph from Porphyrys myth, who is tempted to divide

herself from the ideal world and fall to the generated world
below.154 If that is the case, Thel is wise to return as quickly
as possible to the Vales of Har; choosing to be embodied in
the world below would require a far more arduous journey
before she could rejoin her original source. Another
commentator concludes, The earlier sections of the poem
can in turn be interpreted as the souls search for reasons to
accept embodiment; finding none, she flees back to her
eternal vales.155
Raines Neoplatonic view does not see descent as a necessary
step toward an ultimately higher rise. Its possible that Raine
is correct, and in this early work Blake hadnt yet concluded,
as he did in his later work, that the goal is a higher innocence,
through and beyond innocence and experience. Songs of
Innocence and Experience, composed about the same time,
also lacks any description of a third, more advanced condition
for the soul to rise to. Even if Blake had not yet imagined a
stage beyond experience, however, Thels refusal to enter the
second stage of the dialectic seems to some scholars to be a
failure on her part. Northrop Frye reached this conclusion,
writing,
The irony suggested by the contrast of the two states
of innocence and experience is deepened by the
tragedy of Thel, the failure to overcome that contrast
which is symbolized by all unborn forces of life, all
sterile seeds, all the virginity that results from fear.
The Book of Thel thus represents the failure to take
the state of innocence into the state of experience, a
failure which establishes one of the poles of the
fallen world.156
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Since Blakes goal is always the coincidence and

transcendence of contraries, the choice to remain in only one
state for all of ones life can only be a failure.
Whatever we conclude about the wisdom of Thels choice, we
can agree with Raine that much of Blakes imagery in the
poem derives from Neoplatonic sources. Moreover, by
comparing Thel with those sources, we can be quite sure that
Blake was aware of the traditional idea that human souls
begin their lives in a higher plane and descend to our present
world. Death from that world is birth into ours, and vice
versa.
We have already mentioned two of the primary sources for
the idea of souls in another realm lining up to be reborn into
our world: Platos Myth of Er and the scene in the Elysian
Fields in Virgils Aeneid. Raine shows persuasively that there
was another source closer to Blakes time and in his own
language: book 3, canto 6 of Spensers Faerie Queene,
published between 1590 and 1596. Spenser describes in detail
the garden that Venus has created for assignations with her
lover Adonis. It is not only a perfect lovers bower but also
serves as the home for all the souls waiting to pass into
generation. There are two gates, operated by a genius: one to
let the souls descend into material bodies and one to receive
them on their return. I will examine Spensers description of
the Garden of Adonis in more detail than Raine does, because
we will see that much of its imagery is relevant to a later
work of Blakes, the Arlington Court painting, and to the first
watercolor in his series of Dante illustrations.
Spenser tells us that in the garden all the goodly flowres of
nature are present. Then he tells us that it
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is the first seminarie

Of all things, that are borne to liue and die,
According to their kindes.157
Here of course a seminarie isnt a theological school but a
place of seeds; a bed for the seminal forms of all things that
will live and die. As in the Neoplatonic myths, souls originate
in this ideal location but fall into generation one by one. The
garden is protected by a wall that has two gates:
And girt in with two walles on either side;
The one of yron, the other of bright gold,
That none might thorough breake, nor ouer-stride:
And double gates it had, which opened wide,
By which both in and out men moten pas;
Th one faire and fresh, the other old and dride:
Old Genius the porter of them was,
Old Genius, the which a double nature has.158
For Neoplatonists, iron symbolized the lowest level of the
world, the world of Platos cave. This makes the gate in the
iron wall the gate into the material world, our world, which
the souls pass through on their way to be born into
materiality. Gold stands for eternity, and so the gate in the
golden wall is the gate through which the souls return after
death in our world. Raine shows that Blake had used precisely
the same image in the dedication to his illustrations to Blairs
Grave (1808):
The Door of Death is made of Gold,
That Mortal Eyes cannot behold;
But, when the Mortal Eyes are closd,
And cold and pale the Limbs reposd,
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The Soul awakes; and, wondring, sees

In her mild Hand the golden Keys:
The Grave is Heavens golden Gate [E 480]
The genius gatekeeper in Spensers garden allows passage but
also clothes the descending souls in material bodies:
He letteth in, he letteth out to wend,
All that to come into the world desire;
A thousand thousand naked babes attend
About him day and night, which doe require,
That he with fleshly weedes would them attire:
Such as him list, such as eternall fate
Ordained hath, he clothes with sinfull mire,
And sendeth forth to liue in mortall state,
Till they againe returne backe by the hinder gate.159
Weedes in the above passage refers to a type of garmentit
being a common trope to refer to the fleshly body as clothing
for the soul. (We have seen that Blake used the same
metaphor to refer to the difference between a soul and its
current state, and later we will see that he uses metaphors of
weaving to show physical embodiment.) Because the ideal
world of the garden is considered pure while the physical
world is filth, the descending souls are said to be clothed in
sinfull mire until they can come back through the golden
gate. When they return, the souls may stay Some thousand
yeares before they begin the cycle again.
An obvious question to ask at this point is: if the descent into
generation is so dirty and unpleasant, why do souls ever
choose to go? Spenser gives a Christianized version of the
Platonic answer:
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of their owne accord

All things, as they created were, doe grow,
And yet remember well the mightie word,
Which first was spoken by thAlmightie lord,
That bad them to increase and multiply:
Ne doe they need with water of the ford,
Or of the clouds to moysten their roots dry;
For in themselues eternall moisture they imply.160
Gods command from Genesis 1:28, Be fruitful, and
multiply, is here associated with the Neoplatonic idea that it
is sensuous pleasure, particularly sexual sensation, that tempts
souls to enter generation. Spenser also reminds us that entry
into the material world is generally associated with water:
sometimes the ocean becomes a symbol of roiling materiality,
and other times souls are said to be attracted to moisture.
Heraclitus had believed that the soul is a mixture of fire and
water, and he associated water with ignoble qualities. He
wrote, The dry soul is wisest and best, It is pleasure to
souls to become moist, and It is death to souls to become
water.161 Though Heraclitus didnt explain generation as a
fall, his ideas were adopted into the general Neoplatonic
worldview.
Spensers description follows in the Platonic mold as he
describes how souls fall from the ideal world into matter,
which without the soul is a kind of chaos. He says that in the
wide wombe of the world,
there lyes,
In hatefull darkenesse and in deepe horrore,
An huge eternall Chaos, which supplyes
The substances of natures fruitfull progenyes.
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All things from thence doe their first being fetch,

And borrow matter, whereof they are made,
Which when as forme and feature it does ketch,
Becomes a bodie, and doth then inuade
The state of life, out of the griesly shade.
That substance is eterne, and bideth so,
Ne when the life decayes, and forme does fade,
Doth it consume, and into nothing go,
But chaunged is, and often altred to and fro.162
Both matter and soul are eternal. When a soul gives forme
and feature to a portion of matter, it Becomes a bodie, and
enters The state of life. But when the soul leaves that
matter, the matter decayes, and the forme does fade, so
that the matter loses consistency and may be often altred to
and fro. Spenser, like any good poet, regrets the fact that
beautiful forms may fade. The example he gives as a
regrettable loss will remind us of Blakes Thel:
For formes are variable and decay,
By course of kind, and by occasion;
And that faire flowre of beautie fades away,
As doth the lilly fresh before the sunny ray.
Thel also was saddened that the lily would fade. She was
pierced with pity, as we see that Venus also is in Spensers
poem:
Her hart was pierst with pittie at the sight,
When walking through the Gardin, them she spyde,
Yet note she find redresse for such despight.
For all that liues, is subiect to that law:
All things decay in time, and to their end do draw.
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But were it not, that Time their troubler is,

All that in this delightfull Gardin growes,
Should happie be, and haue immortall blis163:
My point here is not to insist that Blake is an orthodox
Neoplatonist or that he has adopted a worldview from
Plotinus or Spenser. Rather, I want to show that there is a
constellation of symbols that grew up from very early
philosophy and was available to Blake. Poets as far apart as
Virgil and Spenser made use of these images, and if Blake
does also we may be confident that he was aware of the
tradition, however much he fit the images into an original
theology. Reading The Book of Thel with this knowledge in
hand, we can be sure that the overall symbolic system of
descent and return, of innocence above and materiality below,
and of birth and death as a reincarnational change of level,
were parts of his poetic world from the beginning of his
career. His own belief in the absolute immanence of infinity
and God in the particulars of the finite world means that he
does not adhere perfectly to the Neoplatonic view. What
Plotinus considers a spatial as well as an ontological fall,
Blake sees as primarily perceptual. And the fact that the
reincarnational cycle occurs between only two poles in the
earlier examples means that Blakes mature system, in which
the dialectic of innocence and experience results in the higher
innocence of Eden, diverges in important ways from
Neoplatonism.
Greek myths such as the story of Persephones abduction
could be read in more than one way. At the simplest level, as
stories of love and power, the myths and their characters were
familiar to all readers from long before Blakes time. As
allegories of Neoplatonic thought, however, the stories had
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always been esoteric. A certain amount of intentional

obscurity was built into the myths when they were used this
way, either by hermeticists, alchemists, or poets. Its not
surprising, then, that Blake would adopt and adapt the
symbols from the ancient and more difficult tradition as he
went about constructing his own imaginative world. The
symbolic vocabulary he took on was neither too reified by
time to put to his own uses, nor too obscure to be entirely
inaccessible. He could use the building blocks bequeathed to
him by Plotinus and Boehme to construct his own answers to
the big questions about the soul, the Fall, and the goal.

The Arlington Court Picture

In 1949 one of the stately homes of England became the
property of the state. Arlington Court, a neoclassical mansion
on thousands of acres of grounds, was being tidied up by its
new owners when they discovered a watercolor by William
Blake on top of one of the kitchen cabinets. This work had
previously been unknown to scholars, and no one is quite sure
how the Arlington family, who were avid collectors, came to
own it. The picture is signed and dated 1821, making this a
mature work from just a few years before Blake began the
Dante series.
Having had only fifty years to debate the picture, scholars are
still not in agreement on the meaning of the work. The central
figure, for example, a man wearing a sort of red tunic, has
been identified as Odysseus by Raine and as Isaiah by
Christopher Heppner.164 Disagreements arise in part due to

238

Raines attempt to force the work too closely into the role of
literal illustration. She believes that Blake has combined
elements of two related literary works: a scene from book 5 of
the Odyssey, and Porphyrys Cave of the Nymphs, a
Neoplatonic interpretation of a location mentioned in book 13
of the Odyssey. Because this combination is not entirely
persuasive, and because Blakes landscape scene doesnt
conform precisely to Homers description of the cave,
Heppner and others dismiss much of Raines interpretation.
My own reading of the Arlington Court picture might be
called a simplified version of Raines. If we keep in mind that
Blake never felt the need to illustrate written texts slavishly
but did feel free to employ Neoplatonic imagery in his own
way (as we have seen in our interpretation of The Book of
Thel), the pictures connection to Porphyrys work seems
beyond doubt. Allowing a few differences from Raine in how
we see the characters actions in the painting also means we
need not look to book 5 of the Odyssey at all, therefore
simplifying the source material.
One of Heppners main objections to Raines interpretation is
that she insists, against all evidence, that Blake was a
Platonist.165 This view, I believe, requires more nuance. It
would be wrong to call Blake a Platonist, but it would be
equally wrong to say that he rejected the tradition that grew
out of that philosophers writings. It is entirely possible to
reject Platos banishment of the poets, say, or his dualistic
view of the soul, while still using Neoplatonic sources.
As I described in an earlier chapter, Blake thought that the
wisdom of the Hebrews had been stolen by the Greeks and
Romans, who degraded and spoiled it by making it
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subordinate to reason. The sweep of intellectual history, for

him, is clear: God revealed truth to the prophets, and the
Greeks misused it, but there has been a steady return to true
knowledge, in certain minority traditions, after that low point.
From our modern viewpoint, Plotinus and Porphyry may have
been changing Platos views by adding more mysticism, but
to Blake, they were undoing the damage. Plotinus, after all,
had numerous mystical experiences of union with the One.166
As time went on, thinkers in the Neoplatonic tradition became
more and more mystical, until Jacob Boehme, steeped in its
ideas, turned into a full-fledged Christian mystic.167 Thus
from our point of view Blake is Neoplatonic, but from his
own point of view he is an antiPlatonic recoverer of true
wisdom. It is no contradiction for him to berate Plato while
illustrating Porphyry.
Discussion of Plato and Neoplatonism leads us to one of the
most interesting figures in Blakes literary circle: translator
and philosopher Thomas Taylor (17581835). Taylor was
self-taught, an eccentric and an enthusiast, who wished to
revive Greek religion. He was also an astonishingly prolific
translator. He published the first complete set of Platos
dialogues in English, as well as translations and
commentaries of works by Aristotle, Porphyry, Plotinus, and
other important interpreters of the Platonic tradition. When
Blake was born, in 1757, only one collection of Platos
dialogues was available in English translation,168 and of the
ten dialogues between its covers, six have since been declared
by scholars to be later works, not by Plato himself. Taylor
remedied this situation. We know that Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Shelley owned and valued his works, as did, in
America, Emerson and Emily Dickinson.169 Though he is

240

largely forgotten today, he had a profound affect on the

English-speaking intellectual world of his time.
One of Taylors translations is the key text in understanding
the Arlington Court picture, a work I mentioned earlier,
Porphyrys Cave of the Nymphs. Taylor first published this
in a collection he issued in 1788, so there was ample time for
Blake to have found it before making the 1821 painting.
Neoplatonist philosophers read ancient Greek works as
allegory. They believed that Homer and Plato had possessed
wisdom that was too important to be left in the open for
anyone to find, so they looked for deeper significance in
nearly every line of the Greeks writings. Procluss
commentary on the Timaeus, for example, goes to almost
comical lengths to see significance in every sentence of the
dialogue. This includes the apparently innocuous opening
line, where Plato begins by counting the members of the
group: [I see] One, two, three, but where, friend Timaeus, is
the fourth?170 Proclus follows this with eight pages of
commentary on number theory and cosmology, all of which
he thinks is alluded to in Platos count of one, two, three.
After reading volumes of such esoteric searches for depth, it
seems almost too obvious to recall that for earlier Neoplatonic
philosophers, Odysseuss voyage home is an allegory of the
souls voyage in the material world. Porphyry (234c. 305 ad)
cites Numenius (second century ad) as his authority that
Homer intended the allegorical meaning: the obstacles of the
sea are the troubles of the embodied world, and the undying
desire to reach Ithaca is the souls longing to rejoin the One.
Indeed, as it appears to me, it was not without
reason that Numenius and his followers thought the
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person of Ulysses in the Odyssey represented to us a

man, who passes in a regular manner over the dark
and stormy sea of generation, and thus at length
arrives at that region where tempests and seas are
unknown.171
And if we are tempted to think that these men are reaching a
bit too much with their interpretations, like a modern scholar
desperately stacking up pages to prove an untenable thesis,
Porphyry warns us, in Taylors translation, that
It must not, however, be thought that interpretations
of this kind are forced, and nothing more than the
conjectures of ingenious men; but when we consider
the great wisdom of antiquity and how much Homer
excelled in intellectual prudence, and in an accurate
knowledge of every virtue, it must not be denied that
he has obscurely indicated the images of things of a
more divine nature in the fiction of a fable.
In the thirteenth book of the Odyssey, when Odysseus finally
reaches Ithaca, he lands in a harbor overlooked by a rocky
headland with a cave, crowned by an olive tree. He hides his
possessions there and disguises himself as a beggar, on the
advice of Athena. Homer describes the location in twelve
lines:
High at the head a branching olive grows
And crowns the pointed cliffs with shady boughs.
A cavern pleasant, though involved in night,
Beneath it lies, the Naiades delight:
Where bowls and urns of workmanship divine
And massy beams in native marble shine;
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On which the Nymphs amazing webs display,

Of purple hue and exquisite array.
The busy bees within the urns secure
Honey delicious, and like nectar pure.
Perpetual waters through the grotto glide,
A lofty gate unfolds on either side;
That to the north is pervious to mankind:
The sacred south timmortals is consignd.
Whether Homer meant this description as allegory or not, it is
too much for Porphyry to resist, and he assures us that the
cave is meant to obscurely signify. He writes:
[I]t is evident, not only to the wise but also to the
vulgar, that the poet, under the veil of allegory,
conceals some mysterious signification; thus
compelling others to explore what the gate of men
is, and also what is the gate of Gods: what he means
by asserting that this cave of the Nymphs has two
gates; and why it is both pleasant and obscure, since
darkness is by no means delightful, but is rather
productive of aversion and horror.
Porphyry begins his analysis by reminding us that caves have
played important roles in religion as symbols of the sensible
world, concluding with the most famous of cave allegories,
Platos. And by Plato, in the seventh book of his Republic, it
is said, Behold men as if dwelling in a subterraneous cavern,
and in a den-like habitation, whose entrance is widely
expanded to the admission of the light through the whole
cave.

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Some of the symbols are more obvious than others (fig. 11).
The olive tree at the crown, for example, is easily taken to
represent wisdom, since we know the olive is the sacred tree
of Minerva/Athena, and it is she who has guided Odysseus on
this last leg of his trip home. The cave is pleasant to Naiades,
Porphyry tells us, because they are water nymphs, not wood
nymphs, and thus prefer humid caves. Attracted to humidity,
then, the Naiades are symbols of souls descending to
generation, because, as we have seen, philosophers since
Heraclitus have said that descending souls move toward
water. The bowls and urns are also associated with liquid,
both the water that attracts souls and the wine that stands for
pleasure. Homer tells us that the nymphs are weaving
amazing webs, not on wooden looms but on shining native
marble. Porphyry explains: And to souls that descend into
generation and are occupied in corporeal energies, what
symbol can be more appropriate than those instruments
pertaining to weaving? For the formation of the flesh is on
and about the bones, which in the bodies of animals resemble
stones.
The bees that fill the urns, Porphyry cites various authorities
to show, are symbols of noble souls, buzzing busily in
anticipation of return to the world. Honey is another sign of
sensual pleasure, which had been known to serve as bait for
the gods.
By now we recognize the symbols of northern and southern
gates. Homer says the north is for mankind and the south for
immortals, but Porphyry assures us that immortal here
refers to the immortal souls of people, ascending to the ideal
world, while the south is for souls descending to generation.

244

Blakes painting is not identical to this description. There are

many trees at the top, for example, not a lone olive. The bees
have been replaced with winged women carrying the urns on
their heads, but when we recall his painting of the ghost of a
flea, showing the insect with a muscular human body, this
seems not unusual. More importantly, the details Blake adds
to the painting that are not mentioned in Homer all relate
strongly to the theme that Porphyry describes. As is his
custom, Blake has not illustrated but interpreted. In this case,
his interpretation does not correct the philosophical work
Taylor translated but reinforces it.

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Figure 11. The Arlington Court picture, 1821; pen and

ink, watercolor, gouache and gesso on paper, 40.0 49.5
cm (The Chichester Collection [The National Trust];
Arlington Court, Devonshire, Great Britain, National
Trust Photograph Library/Art Resource, New York).

Blake has added a classical temple at the base of the cliff, a

building not mentioned in Homer. But Porphyry describes at
length that the caves of the ancients were considered holy
places for ceremony, so such a temple is not out of place, and
it serves as well to set the scene in the Greek world. On the
stairs between the cave and the sea Blake has placed seven
female figures with spindles and other tools for weaving.
These are to illustrate Porphyrys rhetorical question: And to
souls that descend into generation and are occupied in
corporeal energies, what symbols can be more appropriate
than those instruments pertaining to weaving?
Blake employed the same symbol of weaving bodies for those
who descend in The Four Zoas (E 372), Milton (E 111), and
Jerusalem (E 206). We will see that he uses it again in the
Dante illustrations.
At the foot of the steps leading to the cave Blake has invented
two female characters, one with her back to us, carrying a pail
as she ascends the stairs, and the other half submerged into
the sea, her bucket sideways beneath her. In this description
Homer mentions bowls and urns, not pails or tubs, but
Porphyry reminds us of lines from the Iliad, 14, v. 528:
From which the lot of every one he fills, / Blessings to these,

246

to those distributes ills. And Raine is surely correct to see

Blakes figures as illustrating this reference. Porphyry writes:
But Plato in the Gorgias by tubs intends to signify
souls, some of which are malefic, but others
beneficent; and some which are rational, but others
irrational. In Hesiod, too, we find one tub closed,
but the other opened by Pleasure, who scatters its
contents everywhere, Hope alone remaining behind.
So the woman with her back to us, climbing the stairs and
gesturing to the sky, is carrying her beneficent self upwards,
while the other woman, half-submerged in the ocean of the
material world, has succumbed to this world and has scattered
the contents of her tub.
Mostly submerged in the sea, to the left of the foot of the
stairs, Blake has added the three Fates, not mentioned here by
either Homer or Porphyry but completely in keeping with the
themes of life, death, and weaving. The three Fates, you will
recall, are Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. The first sister spins
the thread of life, the second measures its length for each
person, and the third cuts the thread at the moment of death.
They are depicted as a group, stretched horizontally across the
bottom of the page like an architectural frieze, with the
wound thread of life on the right and the shears at the
opposite extreme.
Above the Fates, dominating the left half of the painting, are
the two main figures, the bearded man in red and the
goddess-like figure gesturing upwards. As I mentioned,
Heppner identifies this man as Isaiah, based on the figures
resemblance to another work, an unfinished woodblock of the
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prophet that Blake began in about the same year. Though

lacking color, Isaiahs appearance on that block is identical to
the figure in the Arlington Court picture. Heppner justifies the
presence of an Old Testament prophet in a classical setting by
making Isaiah here a representative of imaginative,
non-classical vision, a role he certainly could fulfill in other
settings. The female goddess behind him Heppner identifies
as Nature personified, a contrast, then, of veiled, rational
vision versus the prophetic.172
Given Blakes contrast of vision and reason in other works,
we might almost agree with Heppner in his identifications if it
werent for the two figures gestures. The man in red is
holding out his hands to the left, toward the ocean, in a
gesture that reads as desire. Heppner interprets this gesture
according to the catalog of the French painter Le Brun, who
wished to standardize bodily movements in painting to
predetermined meanings, the way French classical drama had
done.173 Le Brun defines such a gesture as desire for the
object toward which the arms point. This would mean that,
paradoxically, Isaiah is telling us he desires the roiling sea of
the material world instead of Heaven, while Nature, behind
him, is gesturing upwards to the spiritual realm. I find this a
bit too paradoxical.
Raine interprets the mans gesture by saying that he has just
thrown an object into the sea, and tells us that the object was a
girdle given to Odysseus by the sea-nymph Leucothea as a
protective talisman in book 5 of the Odyssey. This reading
seems implausible to me because Blake has shown no object
being thrown, and because the gesture can be read equally
well without introducing elements from widely separated
parts of the Odyssey, which Porphyry doesnt mention.
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It makes sense to me to accept Heppners interpretation of the

gesture as being a sign of desire, while agreeing with Raine
that the figure doing the gesturing is Odysseus.
Here, then, is my own reading of the two main figures in the
picture. The man in red is Odysseus. This is in keeping with
the connection to the cave in Homer and with the other Greek
elements in the painting. As we recall, though, Blake had said
in his description of his Last Judgment painting that the
figures there of Moses, et al., are not to be read as historical
personages but as states. This means that Odysseus here is a
state of the human soul: an Odysseus-state, in keeping with
the readings of Numenius and Porphyry, who see him as a
symbol of the travails of the soul in the embodied world. He
gestures to the sea because he is tempted to stay in the
sensually pleasant world of generation. He holds his hands
out to the ocean and looks us in the eye as if to say: Look!
At the sensible world as it is! Porphyry quoted Heraclitus as
saying that souls are drawn to water, so it is fitting that the
soul in the Odysseus-state is desirous of the ocean. The
woman behind him, then, is Athena/Minerva. This, too, stays
within the bounds of the Homeric story, in which Odysseus is
guided in his homecoming by the goddess. As the
personification of wisdom, she is gesturing upwards, away
from the sea towards Heaven, which is where, according to
Plato, Numenius, Porphyry, and Blake (and Homer too, if he
is really sending coded messages), the soul ought to be
directed.
Finally, we can turn our attention to two groups of figures in
the upper left quadrant of the painting. Above Odysseus we
can see a large, nude woman following four horses. No
vehicle is visible, but the pose indicates she is reclining in a
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sort of chariot pulled by the horses through the waves. A

twisting cloud that leads from the sky indicates she has just
descended from above, into the sea. At the top of the painting
is another figure in a chariot behind another four horses.
These horses are attended by a group of female figures in
joyful poses, and the whole group is engulfed in flames. They
stand atop a line of cloud such as Blake had used in his Job
pictures to indicate the boundary between the lower world
and the upper. Though Raine sees the upper group of horses
as eager for their journey, the behavior of the attendant
figures here indicates to me that the horses, their chariot and
rider, have just arrived in this upper world. One figure is
rushing in from the right with a towel or perhaps a ribbon as a
reward. The other attendants are brushing the horses as one
does after they have finished their race. The facts that the
entire group is in flames, and the rider is encircled as with a
large halo, means that she is at the level of the sun. Here we
remember what Porphyry had written: And according to
theologists, the Sun and Moon are the gates of souls, which
ascend through the Sun, and descend through the Moon.174
We can see, then, that the soul in the upper chariot has just
completed its ascent to the upper world. It is tired from the
great ascent, but is greeted by joyous inhabitants of Heaven.
We can see that at the right of this group, leading down to the
cave, is the top of the staircase that descends to the humid
souls in the ocean, making the painting into a complete circle
and emphasizing the round of birth and death, ascent and
descent, that is the story of this painting.
The other group of horses, then, entering the water from
above (fig. 12), have entered through the gate of the moon,
into the sea of time and space. The circling cloud above her,
which Raine implausibly calls Leucotheas veil, is then a kind
250

of vapor trail, the moist cloud that condenses to take on the

shape of the physical body.
From all weve seen we can be confident of the affinities
between Taylors translation of Porphyrys text, the Arlington
Court picture, and this passage from Blakes Milton,
completed perhaps ten years before the painting:

Figure 12. Descending soul, detail of figure 11.

the Sea of Time & Space thunderd aloud

Against the rock, which was inwrapped with the
weeds of death
Hovering over the cold bosom, in its vortex Milton
bent down

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To the bosom of death, what was underneath soon

seemd above.
A cloudy heaven mingled with stormy seas in
loudest ruin;
But as a wintry globe descends precipitant thro
Beulah bursting,
With thunders loud and terrible: so Miltons shadow
fell,
Precipitant loud thundring into the Sea of Time &
Space [E 110].
Many commentators have titled the Arlington Court picture
after this passage, calling it appropriately The Sea of Time
and Space. As Taylor had translated from another antique
text: [I]s not the ocean a proper emblem of an earthly nature,
whirling and stormy, and perpetually rolling without
admitting any periods of repose?175
There are a number of points in the Arlington Court picture
that, if my interpretation is correct, will help us in our
understanding of the Dante illustrations. The first is the figure
of the ascended soul, in the chariot at the top of the picture.
All of the other figures in the painting are clearly either male
or female: Odysseus has a beard, and the nymphs and Fates
have breasts. Only this ascended figure is androgynous. It has
long hair and a beardless indeterminate face, but the body is
stocky enough to be a man and there are no breasts. As I will
argue in my analysis of the Dante pictures, I believe that this
is the type of figure Blake used to show a soul in the preFall
condition; gender appears with the Fall. Because this soul has
re-entered the upper world, it has left behind the division into
male or female.

252

The second point to notice is the importance of Athena or

wisdom to the message of the painting. It is often assumed
that women in Blakes work are traps or veils. This is why
Heppner sees the female figure in the Arlington Court
painting as Nature, and why Albert S. Roe thinks Blake has
transformed Beatrice the spirit-guide into Vala the deceiver.
But if Athena here is both female and someone capable of
pointing to the correct path, it supports my argument that in
the Dante illustrations Blake has not changed Beatrice into a
trap but has left her in her original role as guide and symbol
of goodness.
Finally, if its true that Blake has left intact here (mostly)
Porphyrys interpretation of the ascent and descent of souls,
of the sea as the material world, of caves and woods as
transitional points between the realms, it means that a few
years after the Arlington Court picture was completed Blake
may well have used the same symbols in his Dante
illustrations. This is what I believe, and this is what I intend to
demonstrate in the next portion of this book.

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Color Illustrations

Figure 13. Dante Running from the Three Beasts, 182427,

pen and ink and watercolor over pencil (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [9883]).

254

Figure 44. Capaneus the Blasphemer, pen and ink and

watercolor (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
Felton Bequest, 1920 [9973]).

255

Figure 49. The Simoniac Pope, ink and watercolor (Tate,

London/Art Resource, New York).

256

Figure 66. Antaeus Setting Down Dante and Virgil in the

Last Circle of Hell, pen and ink and watercolor (National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920
[10123]).

257

Figure 69. Ugolino and His Sons in Prison, tempera on

panel, 33.0 44.0 cm ( Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge/
Art Resource, New York).

258

Figure 75. The Souls of Those Who Only Repented at the

Point of Death, pen and ink and watercolor over pencil
and black chalk (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
Felton Bequest, 1920 [10153]).

259

260

Figure 78. Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who

Guards the Entrance of Purgatory, graphite, ink and
watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource, New York).

Figure 77. Lucia Carrying Dante in His Sleep, watercolor,

black ink, graphite, and black chalk (Harvard Art
Museums/Fogg Museum; Bequest of Grenville L.
Winthrop, 1943.438; President and Fellows of Harvard
College).

261

262

Figure 82. Dante at the Moment of Entering the Fire, pen

and ink and watercolor over black chalk and pencil
(National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest,
1920 [10183]).

Figure 85. Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car, ink

and watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource, New York).

263

Figure 92. Saint Peter and Saint James with Dante and
Beatrice and with Saint John Also, graphite, pen and ink,
and watercolor ( The Trustees of the British Museum/
Art Resource, New York).

264

265

Figure 94. Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of

Light, graphite and watercolor (Tate, London/Art
Resource, New York).

266

Part IV: The Illustrations

9. Hell

A brief summary of what we have discussed so far will clarify

William Blakes beliefs about Hell. His view is, of course,
very different from Dantes.
1. Imagination/perception creates the world we are in,
which means that if we fall into Hell
2. the Fall is perceptuala closing of the senses. It
is not punishment. Hell is a state and not a place.
3. The infinity and immanence of God means that we
are never really separated from him; we only think so
because our senses are closed.
4. The Fall cannot go lower than our present condition.
5. The Fall into Hell is necessary to rise to a higher
state.
6. Hell is permanent, but souls dont stay there
permanently.
7. We rise out of Hell through improved perception.

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As I have shown, Blake imagines a large number of states that

people may find themselves in. He names Satan and Adam as
states, as well as each character in The Canterbury Tales and
in his Last Judgment painting. Ulro is said to be the lowest
state, but it has subdivisions. The material world is something
our imaginations create when we are in such a fallen
condition that we see only the surfaces of things and not their
infinite interconnectedness.
From all this we can conclude that for Blake, Hell is
composed of all the various states individuals can experience
while they are fallen to a level of near-total sense-closure. The
different levels of Dantes Hell become, then, different ways
of being in a sensuously closed state. What all the Hellish
conditions have in common is their self-centeredness. The
people in all the states of Hell have lost their ability to see the
infinity of which they are a part, and they believe that the
boundary of themselves stops at what they call the body. This
condition is what Blake calls the Selfhood.
The Selfhood is warlike (E 108), deadly (E 137), hypocritical
(E 151), accursed (E 190), blasphemous (E 250), and cruel (E
255). While we are in the state of Selfhood we are in pride (E
185); we are nothing (E 187); we are reasoning and doubting
(E 563). The Selfhood must be given up (E 110), put off and
annihilated (E 142), and broken asunder (E 250).
Of course it is not unusual for Christians to see Hell as a
separation from God, or to see selfishness as a reason for
deserving to go there. What separates Blake from mainstream
Christianity on this matter is the same one we have seen many
times already: Selfhood is not, for Blake, a question of
morality, it is a question of perception. In fact for Blake the
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imposition of morality is a prime factor in the creation of

Selfhood. As we saw before, general rules for behavior serve
only to tyrannize and to drive people apart by encouraging
judgment without pity. Though well-intentioned, those who
institute earthly law are
Striving to Create a Heaven in which all shall be
pure & holy
In their Own Selfhoods, in Natural Selfish Chastity
to banish Pity
And dear Mutual Forgiveness; & to become One
Great Satan
Inslavd to the most powerful Selfhood: to murder
the Divine Humanity [E 198]
The law and its enforcement allow us to feel moral about
abandoning our pity. Morality allows us to remain in isolated
Selfhood, because we can obey rules and feel holy without
perceiving our basic connection to other people through and
in God.
Blakes view of Selfhood has its origins in the same sources
as so much else in his theology: Jacob Boehme and the
British antinomian tradition. Abrams points out that Gerrard
Winstanley (16091676), a Christian communist, as well as
German Idealist philosophers learned from Boehme and
employed the concept of Selfhood in similar ways:
This radical cause of separation, hence of evil,
Boehme called Selbheit [Selfhood], Winstanley the
selfish aspect of fallen and fragmented man, and
Schelling the finite Ichheit which is the point of the
extremest alienation from God. Evil generally,
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Hegel said, when it is expressed as concept rather

than in the image-thinking of religion, is the
self-centered being-for-itself [das insichseiende
Frsichsein] and good is selfless simplicity [das
selbstlose Einfache].1
Selfhood is the lowest state we may fall to because it is the
most alienated from God, the world, and other people. Most
of us are currently in that state; we do not see as Blake or the
prophets saw. We do not see much beyond surfaces; we rely
on generalities and abstraction; our imaginations seldom see
anything other than the Guinea sun, the lowest Lockean
common denominator that everyone else sees, too. We are,
Blake tells us, in Hell, and the pictures he drew of Dantes
Hell are about us. The good news, of course, is that it need
not be permanent, and Blake will show us the way up.
Near the beginning of Jerusalem, Blake prays to the human
imagination to free him from Selfhood:
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal
Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into
Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human
Imagination
O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness &
love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!
[E 147]
If all of life is imagination, then we are no longer limited to
the vision of surfaces; our perception is not merely visual but
270

imaginative, and we see everything in

connectedness. Selfhood becomes impossible.

its

infinite

As we examine Blakes illustrations to Dantes Hell, we will

see that he could retain the characters and events of the
Comedy yet portray them with the changes necessary to adapt
them to his own views. He will correct the Comedy by
removing its Urizenic attachment to morality and bringing it
fully into the realm of visionwhere it almost all was before.

The Dark Forest

There are thirty-three cantos each in Hell, Purgatory, and
Paradise. The first canticle, Hell, contains an additional
introductory canto, bringing the total in the Comedy to an
even hundred. For both Dante and Blake this opening serves
as a prelude to the story, describing the pilgrims condition as
he begins his journey, and hinting at the reasons he must
make the trip. To see the differences in the two mens
thinking, therefore, the illustration for this canto is
particularly important. We will see that the changes Blake has
made to Dantes descriptions in the canto have changed the
meaning of the story much more than is obvious at first
glance.
The opening lines, of course, are well-known:
In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and een to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
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That forest, how robust and rough its growth,

Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death [Hell, 2;
Cary, 1].
The pilgrim finds himself in a wood that is gloomy, savage,
robust, and rough. There is no straight path from that point,
and even to remember the place is to bring back a bitterness
not far from death. A few lines later, Dante turns back to
look at where he has been, and sees that he has walked along
straits, / That none hath passd and livd.
The narrator resolves to tell of his experiences because, safely
home from the epic journey, he knows what good came from
it. As the Comedy begins, though, the pilgrim is in a state of
sleepy dullness, which weighd / My senses down. Being
lost has pierced his heart with dread. The valley ends at the
foot of a mountain:
I lookd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planets beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
Though the valley is dark, the top of the mountain is
illuminated by the rays of the rising sun. (Dante calls the sun
a planet because of his Ptolemaic view of the solar system.)
The scene is clearly set, then; there is no doubt that this is a
dark and dangerous forest, in a valley too deep for the sun to
penetrate. The only light is far above, at the top of a
mountain, which the pilgrim resolves to climb. He is quickly
blocked.

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Scarce the ascent

Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
And coverd with a speckled skin, appeard,
Nor, when it saw me, vanishd, rather strove
To check my onward going; that ofttimes
With purpose to retrace my steps I turnd.
...
in view
A lion came, gainst me, as it appeard,
With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
That een the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seemd
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
Oerwhelmed me, at the sight of her appalld,
That of the height all hope I lost.
The pilgrims attempted ascent to the light is halted by three
beasts: a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf. He despairs, but as
he returns to the depths he discerns the shade of a man.
Have mercy on me! cried I out aloud,
Spirit! or living man! what eer thou be!
He answerd: Now not man, man once I was[.]
This of course is Virgil, who introduces himself by naming
his birthplace, the age in which he lived, and the subject of his
great work. Dante recognizes him at once, and begs for help.
Virgil tells him that an ascent of the mountain is out of the
question; they must advance in a less direct manner, going
down before they can go up by another path. He promises to
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show Dante the world below and the path toward Heaven, and
to give the pilgrim over into the hands of another who will
take him to the highest point.
I thy guide
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
Spirits of old tormented, who invoke
A second death; and those next view, who dwell
Content in fire, for that they hope to come,
Wheneer the time may be, among the blest,
Into whose regions if thou then desire
T ascend, a spirit worthier then I
Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,
Thou shalt be left
Blakes watercolor for this canto is among the most finished
in the series. He has condensed the events of the story into
one scene, and the main elements are immediately visible:
Dante, forest, beasts, and guide. A glance at the picture shows
that the required figures are present, and their actions are in
accord with the text. Beyond the presence of these basic
elements, however, the illustration hardly resembles Dantes
text at all (see fig. 13 in color insert).
The difference in mood between Carys gloomy text and
Blakes colorful watercolor is immediately apparent. Though
there are large thorns on the ground, the forest does not
appear particularly dark or frightening. Indeed, the setting
more closely resembles Englands green and pleasant land
than it does a life-threatening savage wild. The pilgrim and
the animals are in a glade that opens directly onto an ocean
view, from which the rising sun ascends. Unlike the scene in
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Dantes clear verbal description, the sun shines directly into

the woods. The setting is more suitable for a picnic than a
near-fatal fall.
The three beasts are portrayed one above the other, in the
sequence Dante describes. Nearest to the pilgrim, and lowest
in the picture plane, is the animal that most translators call a
leopard. Cary uses the word panther, though he does
describe the animal as having speckled skin. Blake hints at
the speckles with light dabs of paint, but does not take
advantage of the chance to show a leopards spotted coat.
Above this animal is a lion, and above that is a she-wolf. If
the landscape setting seems more park-like than dangerous,
these animals, too, are hardly frightening at all. They are, in
fact, rather cute, like childrens toys.
The most obvious change Blake has made is to the
appearance of the two human characters. Thirty-five-year-old
Dante, traditionally shown in a Florentine cap and somber
attire, here looks like a young woman in a red nightgown,
with attractive blond locks. Virgil, too, is androgynous and
sweet-looking. Though Virgil has just ascended from Limbo,
Blake shows him hovering above the grass, more like Christ
in a painting of the Transfiguration than a classical poet. The
appearance of the two main characters is significant enough
that I will devote a later section of this chapter to their looks
alone. To make sense of the way they are shown, however,
we first need to see how Blake has re-imagined the opening
of the Comedy.

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Neoplatonist Mysteries and Katabasis

The choices Blake made in his illustration to Hell, canto 1,

will make more sense if we leave the text of the Comedy
momentarily and examine a different book: The Eleusinian
and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation, published by
Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor in London in about 1790.
The Mysteries of Eleusis and of Bacchus were secret
ceremonies of the Greek and Roman age. As Taylor describes
them in his book, both were based on myths of death and
renewal. The Eleusinian rites were based on the abduction of
innocent young Proserpine by Hades, her entrapment in the
underworld, and her eventual rediscovery at Eleusis by her
mother, Ceres. Her mother was so overjoyed to find
Proserpine again that she gave the world grain to farm and to
eat. The myth had long been associated with the seasons and
the fertility of spring, but the initiates of the Mysteries
attributed to it a more metaphysical meaning, as well. For
them, Proserpines descent into the world below was a
symbol of the souls fall from the ideal realm into the material
world. The ceremonies attached to the Mysteries thus were
intended to mimic Proserpines fall and re-ascent in order to
prepare the soul for re-ascent to its own proper, higher place.
In legend Bacchus, too, had been killed and resurrected. The
Titans tore him apart bodily, then boiled and scattered his
remains. Jupiter and Apollo gathered the parts, however, and
buried them in such a way that Bacchus could reassemble and
revive. This myth, also, was interpreted as a symbol
pertaining to the soul: as we have seen, the unity the soul has
in the ideal world is divided and scattered as it falls into the

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material. A rebirth to the ideal requires that the division be

undone and the soul made one again.
Though Blake made no direct references to either of these
myths, the stories in outline have broad similarities to his own
legend of the Fall. In Proserpines myth, the soul in a state of
innocence is tempted or tricked to descend, and her ascent is
seen as a reunion with (a) god. Blake also thinks that the unity
of the soul is lost as it falls. As he explains it, instead of the
full imaginative perception we are supposed to have, in our
fall we become limited to perceive the world as separate,
torn-apart pieces. The way back up is through reunited
perception.
Taylor says that the spiritual interpretation of myths and the
ceremonies required to reenact them come from Orpheus
himself, a figure whom most today consider to be mythical
but who was in ancient times regarded as a historical
personage. Perhaps divine or perhaps mortal, he was thought
to have predated Plato by centuries. Like Blake, Taylor
considers the oldest wisdom to be visionary and artistic, in
this case Orphic, and sees Plato as passing along only
simplified versions of the great truths. Since Blake believed
that all religions are, at root, one, and believed that the
interpretations we label Neoplatonic originated in
prePlatonic vision, there is no reason to think that he would
reject the elements in the myths that he found useful. He
could avail himself freely of images that he adapted to use in
his own carefully made mythology.
The symbolism that I believe he is consciously employing in
the first illustration to the Comedy is chosen from Taylors
book or other sources to show that the pilgrim Dante begins
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as an unfallen soul in a pastoral and innocent land. Blake does

not show the dark forest that poet Dante describes. He shows
us something like the Vales of Har, where Thels sisters herd
sheep; or the Garden of Adonis, where Spenser shows
innocent souls lining up to be reborn into generation; or the
Elysian Fields, where Virgil shows the same. Likewise, in
myth, Proserpine makes her departure from an idyllic glade.
Taylor quotes Minutius Felix, who wrote in the first or second
century ad:
Proserpina the daughter of Ceres by Jupiter, as she
was gathering tender flowers, in the new spring, was
ravished from her delightful abodes by Pluto; and
being carried from thence through thick woods, and
over a length of sea, was brought by Pluto to a
cavern, the residence of departed spirits, over whom
she afterward ruled with absolute sway.2
So I am confident that Blake changed the mood of the
Comedys opening scene for a good reason. The Dante we see
in the painting is not a thirty-five-year-old Italian gentleman
who has begun to live badly. He is a soul in the state of
innocence, who is about to enter materiality. The path he must
take is described in the excerpt from Minutius above: through
thick woods, over sea, and into a cave.
The trees in the first illustration are not gloomy enough to do
any more than hint at the thick woods Dante must cross. One
of the next watercolors in the series, labeled by Blake HELL,
Canto 2, exists solely to show such a setting. It shows Dante
and Virgil with their backs to us, massive trees on all sides,
about to step down into a lower and darker part of the woods.
It is still quite sketchy, with many looping pencil lines that
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would no longer be visible if Blake had completed the

picture. Its blue and grey washes, however, make the mood
suitably somber (fig. 14).
The Latin silva can mean either woods or material used for
making things. Silva is used to translate the Greek word hyle,
which has the same double meaning, and is preserved in
Aristotles theory of hylomorphismwhere objects are said
to need both material (hyle) and shape (morphe). Taylor and
other Neoplatonist writers believe that when the narrators of
myths describe the path to the lower world as running through
woods, they are giving such woods a symbolic meaning. They
say that the souls who pass through those woods (silva) must
assume a material (silva) body on the way to our world.
Landinos fifteenth century commentary on the Comedy sees
the dark forestselva oscura in Italianas having a similar
meaning, though its difficult to know if Dante himself
intended this.3
Depicting an ocean to cross was important enough that Blake
has included it in the first painting, contradicting Dantes
description. This is the water that Heraclitus says tempts the
soul to generation. It is the sea across which Hades carries
Proserpine or Jupiter carries Europa. In the Neoplatonic view,
it is the material world itself, which Blake calls the Sea of
Time & Space.

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Figure 14. Dante and Virgil Penetrating the Forest,

182427; pencil, pen and watercolor on paper (Tate
Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York).

In the Aeneid, Virgil describes the regions Aeneas must cross

in his own descent to the underworld. Taylor is convinced of
their symbolism, although the ocean here is represented by
Cocytus, which is usually a river or swamp:
Proserpina was carried by Pluto through thick
woods, and over a length of sea, and brought into a
cavern, the residence of the dead: where by woods a
material nature is plainly implied, as we have
already observed in the first part of this discourse;
and where the reader may likewise observe the

280

agreement of the description in this particular with

that of Virgil in the descent of his hero:
Tenent media omnia silvae
Cocytusque sinuque labens, circumvenit atro.
[Woods cover all the middle space and Cocytus
gliding on, surrounds it with his dusky bosom.]
In these words the woods are expressly mentioned;
and the ocean has an evident agreement with
Cocytus, signifying the outflowing condition of a
material nature, and the sorrows and sufferings
attending its connection with the soul.4
All of these myths, in their Neoplatonic versions, show a
person forced to travel through woods, over sea, and into a
cave, as a symbol of the souls descent into the material
world-our world. Blakes departures from Dantes
description, in this first painting, serve in every way to push
his story closer to those myths than to the Comedy. Naturally,
I am not saying that at this late date in his life Blake gave up
his own system to become an orthodox Neoplatonic
philosopher in the Thomas Taylor mode. As he had done
throughout his career, he stole the images he wanted in order
to tell the myth he created. The differences from Plotinus are
as important as the similarities and will be familiar by now.
Blakes Fall is not an actual spatial dislocation into
ontologically different existence. Blakes Fall is perceptual,
from nave innocence to experience, which entails, at least in
this case, the narrowed perception that tricks us into the
thinking that the material world and its divisions are
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unavoidable. Blake has expressed his myth through the

images of Neoplatonism, just as the Neoplatonists had earlier
expressed their metaphysics in the symbols of Greek
adventure stories.
The Three Beasts

The lion, panther, and she-wolf are described in a footnote by

Cary as, respectively, pride or ambition, pleasure in
luxury, and avarice.5 Traditionally, they have been seen as
the sins that prevent the pilgrim from climbing toward God.
Blakes beasts operate differently as symbols, reminding us of
both Neoplatonic stories of descent and of the well-known
tygers that appear elsewhere in his work. Virgil wrote that
before Aeneas could descend to the underworld, he had to
spend a night making sacrifices to the gods in the forest.
Dawn comes dramatically: So, now, at the first beams and
rising of the sun, the earth under the feet begins to rumble, the
wooded hills to quake, and dogs were seen howling through
the shade Taylor glosses this:
And the howling dogs are symbols of material
demons, who are thus denominated by the Magian
Oracles of Zoroaster, on account of their ferocious
and malevolent dispositions, ever baneful to the
felicity of the human soul. And hence Matter herself
is represented by Synesius in his first Hymn, with
great propriety and beauty, as barking at the soul
with devouring rage: for thus he sings, addressing
himself to the Deity:
Blessed thrice blessed! who, with winged speed,
From Hyles dread voracious barking flies,
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And, leaving Earths obscurity behind,

By a light leap, directs his steps to thee.
Taylor continues by quoting a description of secret rites by
Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus:
In the most interior sanctities of the Mysteries,
before the presence of the god, the rushing forms of
earthly demons appear, and call the attention from
the immaculate good to matter. And Pletho (on the
Oracles), expressly asserts, that these spectres
appeared in the shape of dogs.6
These canine specters, then, which are also demons, are
traditionally held to be matter itself, barking to distract souls
toward the world of generation. Blake of course shows one
canine shape, the hungry she-wolf described by Dante, and
makes the remaining two material demons into a lion and a
panther.
The three beasts are no longer symbols of sin, as they are in
Dantes text. Blake does not believe that sin will condemn
anyone to eternal punishment in a world lower than our own.
Instead, the beasts are distracting, material demons, forcing
flustered souls to forget the ideal world and run for the
material.
But if the innocent soul starts out in an idyllic and innocent
glade, where do such frightening beasts come from? The
answer, as always, is from the souls perception. In The
Four Zoas, after Urizen has enclosed the world into its
narrow, fallen, Lockean perceptive state, he also sees such
beasts:
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Then he beheld forms of tygers & of Lions

dishumanizd men
Many in serpents & in worms stretchd out enormous
length [E 347].
These beasts are men, but dishumanized, by which Blake
means that Urizen perceives them as so disconnected from
himself that he doesnt recognize their humanity. His senses
divide the world into unconnected elements of Selfhood. In
the Comedy illustration, too, these beasts are creations of the
pilgrim Dantes dividing personality. They are both the first
result and the cause of the division that will cause him to fall.
They are his own feelings, which he is too frightened to
remain undivided from. According to Paley, Blakes early
influence Swedenborg had seen animals as representations of
divers lusts and vices. Unlike Swedenborg, Blake isnt
worried about such desires: Blake, of course, invests these
images of correspondence with his own meaningto him
Swedenborgs lusts and vices are potentially the joys and
graces of eternity, and Orcs animal forms are symbols of
liberated desire.7
Passions are presented as beasts elsewhere in Blakes work.
In The Mental Traveller, he writes of Labyrinths of
wayward Love / Where roams the Lion Wolf & Boar (E
485) (and we should recall that for Dante, wayward love
equals sin). In The Proverbs of Hell, lions and tygers are
wrath (E 36 and 37). And the poem The Tyger is of course
about power incomprehensible to its speaker (E 24).
Blake is entirely in favor of passions. Still, we know that they
may cause us to lose con?trol, and this is frightening. The
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passions upset our peaceful innocence, and cause us to seek

answers outside our first state, as Thels fear of death did. In
fact, the passions may be more than we can handle: The
roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the
stormy sea, and the destructive sword. are portions of eternity
too great for the eye of man (E 36).
If the beasts are passions, then the passions are too great for
our eyes. This is a paradox, because in mans Edenic state, no
portions of eternity are too great for man to see; this is a
cornerstone of Blakes theology. In nonEdenic, less
fully-perceptive states, though, passion may be too much for
us to live with comfortably. Passions are scary. That is why
we project them outward, and give ourselves the illusion that
our passions are not a part of ourselves, but are dangerous
beasts we must flee from. In the first watercolor, the unfallen,
innocent Dante has created the three beasts, by perceiving
three passions but not wishing to recognize them as a portion
of himself.
He beholds What is within now seen without (E 314). It
may seem like a bit of silly projection to those of us in more
experienced states, but remember that
What seems to Be: Is: To those to whom
It seems to Be, & is productive of the most dreadful
Consequences to those to whom it seems to Be [E
179]
The dreadful consequence awaiting Dante, of course, is the
fall into embodiment, the incarnation in the material world. It
is the unwillingness to claim as ones own an emotion not
suited to the peaceful, unfallen world that brings about the
285

split into subject and object. Once the split has occurred, the
dominoes tumble, and the world changes.
We have seen similar falls again and again in Blakes work.
Urizens fear of disorienting passion causes him to create a
moral order that becomes tyranny. In The Four Zoas,
especially, the projection of interior existence onto exteriority
causes imbalance and horror.8 The illustrations for Dante,
though, are unique in one way: they do not require the pilgrim
to undergo the Fall. They save him from suffering by showing
him, and of course showing us as well, the consequences of
such a fall. In more traditional interpretations of the Comedy
the pilgrim is in danger of falling to damnation but is saved
through Beatrices kind intercession. Before he makes the
fatal fall, mercy allows him to take a guided tour of what
awaits in the afterlife. The same is true in Blakes version.
Just as the pilgrim is fleeing his exteriorized passions,
heading toward the sea of time and space that constitutes the
world below, he is caught by a kind spirit, who saves him.
Virgil as Poetic Genius

According to Thomas Taylor, Virgil was expert in acting as a

psychopomp. The symbolic descent of Aeneas into Hades,
which we have seen is representative of the souls fall into
materiality, requires a skilled guide. It is easy to go down;
hard to reascend. The trip enters
a corporeal or external nature, the descent into
which is, indeed, at all times obvious and easy, but
to recall our steps, and ascend into the upper
regions, or, in other words, to separate the soul from
the body by the purifying discipline, is indeed a
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mighty work and a laborious task[.] For a few only,

the favorites of heaven, that is, born with the true
philosophic genius, have been enabled to
accomplish the arduous design.9
Blake might have preferred the term Poetic Genius, which
he had often invoked, but philosophic genius is pretty close.
In the fourth edition of Taylors Mysteries, editor Alexander
Wilder has added a footnote to the word genius: I.e., a
disposition to investigate for the purpose of eliciting truth,
and reducing it to practice.10 I suspect that neither Taylor
nor Blake would have been pleased by this amplification.
They would have known that the modern sense of the word
genius refers to a talent or disposition, but this was
preceded by a more literal sort of meaning. Genius was the
Latin word used to translate the Greek dmon, a real spirit
that travels between the upper world and ours, and may act as
a guide or adviser. Most famously, Socrates held that his
dmon spoke to him regularly.
So we may take born with the true philosophic genius in a
more literal sense, and say that only those souls who have
philosophically inclined guides or dmons can negotiate the
difficult return to the upper world from the lower.
A glance at Blakes illustration of Dante lost in the wood
makes it clear who his genius will be. Blake makes no attempt
to show the figure of Virgil in the guise of a first century BC
classical author. The sexless spirit hovering in the air seems
to have descended lightly from above, not ascended on orders
from below. All Religions Are One, Blakes first illuminated
book, describes the poetic genius. It is another name for what
we have been calling imagination. It is the faculty of the soul
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that creates the world out of the noumenon. Just as The

Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself (E
132), so the Poetic Genius is the true Man (E 1). Our own
poetic ability to make the world is what constitutes our eternal
self, unrelated to the state we happen to be in. Now that
Blakes Dante has exteriorized his passions and fallen from a
pure integrated state, this integral part of himself also appears
as separate. Moments before, me and my imagination
were fully together in innocence; now, division has created
three beasts that terrify us, but also, mercifully, a genius to
guide us. Boehme taught that dialectic is required to make
anything manifest to itself. Now that the split has occurred,
there are elements we think are opposed to us, and the
dialectic may begin.
As we have seen, the Fall is necessary to reach a higher state
of innocence, beyond experience. The trip will be full of
horrors, but the genius will stay with us as guide. Blake
foresaw this thirty-seven years before he began the Dante
illustrations, when he wrote: As none by traveling over
known lands can find out the unknown. So from already
acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. therefore
an universal Poetic Genius exists (E 1).
Dantes Appearance

The fact that Blake has transformed Dante into an unfallen

soul explains why he didnt draw Dante as the poet
traditionally appears in art.
Botticelli painted a portrait of Dante in about 1495. The
severe expression, the aquiline nose, the red cap and the
laurels were from this time, if not before, the traditional
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image of Dantes appearance. Raphael repeated this view

about fifteen years later in the two fresco portraits of the poet
he painted in the Vaticans Stanza della Segnatura. Blake
knew the traditional image of Dante, probably from an
engraving by Paolo Fidanza,11 and used it himself when
asked to make a set of portraits for the library of his patron
William Haley in about 1800.12
Yet when he began to create the illustrations of the Comedy,
Blake chose not to use the traditional appearance of the poet,
and instead decided to depict him as an androgynous youth
(figs. 15, 16, 17). Roe and Baine believe Blake chose such a
sweet appearance to show that Dante is here an everyman,
or, in Blakes system, Albion.13 Elsewhere, though, Blake has
depicted Albion as unquestionably male.14 The youthful
androgyny of the figure is better explained if we see Blakes
Dante as an unfallen soul in a Neoplatonic universe, not yet
descended into the material world of generation.
Plato, and the Neoplatonists after him, describe the unfallen
human soul as neither male nor female. Hermeticists and
alchemists such as Giordano Bruno and Paracelsus described
the non-physical body as androgyne, as did Kabbalists and
Boehme.15 Gender is one of the qualities that souls take on
after they have adopted material bodies and entered our
world.16 Proclus and other philosophers refer to immaterial
souls with the feminine pronoun she, perhaps because in
Greek the word psyche, , is feminine. Shakespeare also
has Hamlet refer to his soul as female: my dear soul was
mistress of her choice.
In Blakes cosmology, he is clear that the division of the
sexes occurs when the soul descends out of its original
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state.17 Thus Dantes physical appearance is further proof that

Blake has remade the setting of the story: it begins not in a
forest in Italy but in a higher realm where unfallen souls live.
If we look through Blakes earlier work for figures similar to
his depiction of Dante, the greatest resemblance belongs not
to Albion but to Thel, the character who, we saw earlier, also
represented a soul in danger of descending into generation.
Though Blakes depiction of Dante has a more severe
expression and a more muscular body than Thel, his hairstyle,
profile, and the style and color of dress are the same (figs. 18,
19).

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Figure 15. Dantes appearance (detail of figure 56).

291

Figure 16. Dantes appearance (detail of figure 43).

292

Figure 17. Dantes appearance (detail of figure 61).

293

294

Figure 18. Thel (detail of figure 9).

295

296

Figure 19. Dante (detail of figure 37).

In the Arlington Court painting, the figure in the upper left

corner, a soul recently arrived in the upper world, has the
same androgynous appearance and is wearing a robe of the
same style (fig. 20).
Other souls, on falling into the material world, become male
or female, and so we will see them in the illustrations of Hell.
The pilgrim of Blakes illustrations, though, has been spared
from the Fall by the kindness of his guide, and so takes his
tour while maintaining his unfallen androgynous state. The
changes Blake made to the setting of this first scene in the
Comedy, therefore, are among the most important clues we
have to reading the rest of the series. It is in this single
painting that we learn how he has corrected Dantes poem,
changing it from a drama of near-damnation in Italy to a
presentation of the difficult but necessary fall that we all
undergo, and the rise that we all hope for.

297

Figure 20. Recently ascended soul (detail of figure 11).

The Mission of Virgil

Of the 102 sketches and watercolors that Blake made in his
series of Comedy illustrations, this one for canto 2 diverges
the most from Dantes written text. The artist has introduced
more of his own symbolism into this picture than into any
other painting in the set. And to make our task of
interpretation more difficult, the painting is far from finished:
the lower half seems near completion, but in the upper section
many details are only sketched in pencil and are hard to read
(fig. 21).

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At the bottom of the sheet we can read the words HELL

Canto. 2, which at least allows us to connect some of the
smaller elements in the picture with Dantes narration. In this
canto, the pilgrim has begun his trip toward the underworld
but humbly questions his worthiness. In epic katabasis, after
all, only gods and heroes make the journey.

299

300

Figure 21. The Mission of Virgil, watercolor over pencil,

pen and ink and scratching out (Birmingham Museums
and Art Gallery, Birmingham Museums Trust).

But I, why should I there presume? or who

Permits it? not Aeneas I, nor Paul.
Myself I deem not worthy, and none else
Will deem me
[Hell, 2, Cary, 6].
Virgil assures the pilgrim that his trip has been ordained on
high. The Virgin Mary has witnessed his distress and told St.
Lucia Now doth thy faithful servant need thy aid, / And I
commend him to thee. Lucia tells Beatrice, who is seated in
Heaven with the Old Testament Rachel. Beatrice speeds to
Virgil in Limbo and inspires in him the zeal to help.
Blake shows the four women of this narration in a narrow
twist of cloud across the center of the painting. The cloud
serves to separate the women from the other characters, and,
as we have seen, this is Blakes customary method of
separating the halves of the picture plane into an upper world
and a lower. Even these four figures, though, serve a double
purpose, and help to incorporate Blakes own imagery into
Dantes story. The uppermost of the women, seated in a kind
of bower at the left edge of the page, may be assumed to be
Mary, if we read the descent of the women from left to right.
Blake shows her seated at a loom, however, a detail that
Dante doesnt mention; nor would he, since souls in Heaven
toil not, and neither do they spin.

301

Roe says that the four figures were suggested by the ladies
mentioned by Dante but that Blake has converted them into
the Daughters of Beulah, characters from his private
symbolism.18 I feel it would be Urizenic of us to insist that
the ladies are either one or the other. This is an instancenot
the last we shall meetin which Blake has combined or
conflated symbols freely, and used them not as one-to-one
signifiers but as suggestive and multiple. The viewers job is
to see the signs not with the corporeal eye but with
imagination, keeping in mind the knowledge that everything
is immanent in everything else. Such a viewpoint would allow
the women here to be at the same time those whom Dante
names, as well as the Daughters of Beulah and several others
that Blake has mentioned in his earlier work.
The fact that Mary is sitting at a loom reminds us that
weaving is a symbolic act that occurs with frequency in
Blakes work. Variants of the word weave occur
twenty-nine times in The Four Zoas, twenty-five times in
Milton, and fifty-eight times in Jerusalem. Whereas Los is
shown doing the sweaty work of hammering out perceptions
from the noumena of the world, weaving is more often
encountered in feminine or pastoral contexts. In The Four
Zoas, for example, Luvah describes an interlude with Vala:
I hid her in soft gardens & in secret bowers of
Summer
Weaving mazes of delight along the sunny Paradise
Inextricable labyrinths, She bore me sons &
daughters [E 317]
But the products of the weaving may be a mixed blessing.
When souls fall, the contracted world they create with their
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narrowed senses is also said to be created through weaving, as

in the following passage from Jerusalem. In the Mundane
Shell,
the Daughters of Albion Weave the Web
Of Ages & Generations, folding & unfolding it, like
a Veil of Cherubim
And sometimes it touches the Earths summits, &
sometimes spreads
Abroad into the Indefinite Spectre, who is the
Rational Power [E 215].
The mundane shell is the enclosed carapace of the world. It is
the sky as perceived by man in his fallen condition: a welkin
of enclosure. Albion, you will recall, is the universal man,
who, when fallen from unity, divides into a variety of
emanations, including the ones Blake calls Albions
daughters. Within the bubble of space the mundane shell has
enclosed, these daughters do their female duty of weaving by
creating ages and generations; in other words, they create the
time portion of the Sea of Time & Space. Time is an
illusionary portion of the Fall, but creating it is also an act of
mercy. Without the net the daughters weave, we would fall
even farther, into nonexistence. It is a sort of kindness when
the daughters of Los and of Beulah weave material bodies for
souls who drop out of the level of Beulah, a place of rest, into
generation, the material world.
Images of weaving weave together some of Blakes most
complex and confusing ideas. The Fall is considered
unfortunate and an occasion for weeping, although it will lead
in the long run to Eden. The bodies that are woven for us at
the time of the Fall are also creations of our limited senses,
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because, as we have seen, the body is only a portion of the

soul visible to unimaginative people. Yet having received a
woven body is a good thing, because it prevents an absolute
fall into nothingness, and begins the dialectic of the contraries
that will allow us greater understanding. So images of
weaving in Blakes poetry may be bloody and horrible, as
when streams of gore pour out of looms in Jerusalem (E
230), or pure delight, as when
every generated body in its inward form,
Is a garden of delight & a building of magnificence,
........
Continually woven in the Looms of Enitharmons
Daughters
In bright Cathedrons golden Dome with care & love
& tears [E 124]
Looms weave the Body of Death (E 107), which sounds
horrible enough, until we remember that the death described
here is a dying from out of the higher world into our material
world, which, from our perspective, is birth.
The mere presence of a tiny loom at the side of this
illustration, then, tells us a great deal. First, it is further proof
that the pilgrim in Blakes version of the Comedy is an
unfallen soul, because there are daughters at the ready to
weave the material bodies required for entry into the lower,
material world. Second, we are reminded of the mixed
blessing of the Fall. Souls who fall out of their original
innocent state must make this terrifying trip through the
material world, which Blake will depict with the same horrors
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and pains that Dante used to describe a Hell of eternal

punishment.
The God of This World

Above the dividing line of cloud at the center of the picture

are two figures unlike anything Dante mentions in canto 2.
The largest is a white-bearded man with arms outstretched,
seated on a plinth, with his upper body pushed uncomfortably
forward. His overall appearance is similar to that of the elders
or prophets who appear throughout Blakes work. In the
watercolors for the final part of the Comedy, for example, we
see that Saint Peter and Saint James are shown with the same
wide faces, white hair, and muscle-revealing robes. Despite
the traditional view of God or Moses as patriarchal figures of
this type, most famously on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
we would be wrong to assume that any personage in Blakes
work with such an appearance is a model of biblical
goodness. His 1795 hand-colored print of a scene from
Genesis, for example, shows Old Testament figure Lamech as
of the same type, but in that print he serves as an example of
how pride may lead to violence.19
The first appearance of this figural type in Blakes work is in
the Songs of Experience, at the bottom of the page containing
the poem The Human Abstract. Even at this early point, the
bearded patriarch is associated with fallen religionthe
views of the cynics. The poem begins,
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we; [E 27].
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This is as shocking a sentiment to us today as it must have

been to the (from his perspective) self-satisfied churchgoers
of Blakes time. Pity and mercy, two cornerstones of Christs
message, are here said to require that we actively make
pitiable the objects of our mercy and pity. That is, our good
sentiments only come about because we have made the
world unjust.
The Human Abstract continues:
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care [E 27].
These are the sentences in the Songs of Experience illustrated
by the white-bearded figure. He has a severe expression and
forward-leaning torso, awkwardly entwined in ropes. Whether
he is knitting the snare or is trapped in it isnt clear, but we
see that the world he is a part of is more cynical and less
glorious than Michelangelos frescoed patriarch.
Closer parallels to the bearded figure in the Dante illustration,
both in appearance and in the date of production, appear in
Blakes engravings to the Book of Job. The title character of
that series is shown with the same facial type and clothing
and, more importantly, Jehovah is shown with an identical
appearance. Jehovah is seen in the second illustration of the
Job series, giving Satan permission to attack Jobs family. In
the fifth engraving he is seated on a plinth identical to the one
in the Comedy illustrations, but is slumping from his chair
and the halo behind him seems to be flickering out. In
engraving 14 of the Job series, Gods pose is identical to the
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one in the illustration to canto 2 of the Comedy. No plinth is

visible here, but the pose of the man is the same: his right leg
is bent so that the knee points upwards, and his arms are
outstretched. Only the facial expression differs; in the
engraving, the face is noble and untroubled. This is because
the illustration comes late in the series, and shows Job after
his trials have ended. This God is not the troubled one Job
had imagined earlier, but the one he can see now that his eyes
have opened to true vision. The slouching God of the fifth
picture and the noble one of the fourteenth demonstrate once
again that the divine realm appears to us as we are able to see
it. God himself changes from a distant weak figure in our
fallen condition to a powerful vision when we have improved
our perception.
We can be sure that the God-like figure in the canto 2 picture
is not to be trusted when we notice his left foot. Clearly
visible on our right, it is the cloven foot of an ox or, as in the
tradition of Christian painting, of the devil. This sign, too,
appears in the Job illustrations. We can see the false Gods
ox-foot in the eleventh engraving, as Job reaches the absolute
nadir of his fall. Job is stretched horizontal on a bier or
sepulcher, as scaly devils reach up from the flames below
(fig. 7). Stretched over Job is his false image of God, with his
hair flaring out, entwined in a giant serpent. Now his left foot
is fully visible, and he is revealed to be an evil, false God.
Damon writes of the Job engraving:
Job sees for the first time the cloven hoof of this
Gods left foot; for the God of Justice is only Satan,
masquerading as an angel of light. He is the
Accuser, who knows that no man is so pure as to be
perfect. Every man judged by this Godthe God of
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this world onlyis condemned. And this God is

entwined with the serpent of Materialism.20
To leave us in no doubt about the identical figure in the
Comedy illustration, Blake has penciled the words The
Angry God of This World at his head (E 688).
Weve met The God of This World before. In Blakes
emblem book The Gates of Paradise, this God is called The
Accuser, and addressed as Satan. He is the one who is a
dunce and cannot distinguish between the garment (the
present state a person is in) and the man (the eternal soul).
This we will see is the case in Blakes version of Dantes
Hell. Each individual is mistakenly perceived to be identical
with only one state or set of characteristics and assigned to a
level in hellish society based on that constricted view. We can
see that for Blake this is the opposite of true Christianity
when we locate the source for this Gods title, in 2
Corinthians 4:34: But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them
that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the
minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto
them. When the light of Christ improves our perception and
unblinds us, we leave the state of Hell behind.
Though Blake had long held the idea that the rank and file
Christians of his time worshipped a reduced and worldly God,
his drawing of the corrupt deity may have been prompted in
part by a book he had recently read and annotated. In 1827,
the last year of Blakes life, Robert John Thornton published
an extensive explication of the Lords Prayer, and Blake
wrote comments in the margins that are aggressive even by
his usual standards. He called the book Dr. Thorntons Tory
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Translation and wrote a parody that began with the words

Our Father Augustus Caesar who art in these thy Substantial
Astronomical Telescopic Heavens21 (E 669). Blake wrote in
the margin of one page: God is an Allegory of Kings &
nothing Else (E 669), which of course isnt true of the real
God, but is true, Blake thinks, of the one Thornton worships.
The God we imagine while in a narrowed, material state is at
best a paternal lawgiver and at worst a tyrant.
In the section of Jerusalem addressed specifically To the
Deists, Blake makes it clear that the God of this world is the
one who would like to take vengeance on people by putting
them into Hell: Listen! Every Religion that Preaches
Vengeance for Sins is the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger;
and not the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, Named by
the Divine Name Your Religion O Deists: Deism, is the
Worship of the God of this World (E 201). And in Milton
Blake spells out another of the reasons why the Gods of this
earth are evil. Its true that in Eden souls do not cease from
mental strife, but in the material world kings cause physical
violence and cruelty: These are the Gods of the Kingdoms of
the Earth: in contrarious / And cruel opposition: Element
against Element, opposed in War / Not Mental, as the Wars of
Eternity, but a Corporeal Strife (E 130). We have seen that
without contraries there is no progression, but in such
unspiritual corporeal war it is possible also to have contraries
without progression, as in the endless conflict between the
violent souls in Hell.
The angry God of this World, pictured here just as Dante is
about to begin his descent, is further evidence that the world
to which he descends is not the traditional Christian Hell but
our own material world, where moral judgment is installed
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through fear and a desire for vengeance. The God in this

picture is the one worshipped in churches, Blake insists, but is
not the true God.
There are other elements with and behind this figure that
might have emphasized his meaning if Blake had had time to
finish them. The outstretched hands are each holding
something that is too loosely drawn to be made out, though
Paley suggests they are serpentine thunderbolts. The figure
is seated in front of a half-circle where washes of red and
yellow paint indicate a rainbow. The fact that Revelation 4:3
describes Christs return on such a rainbow throne gives
credence to Paleys suggestion that the multiple parallel lines
sketchily emanating from the rainbow were intended to
become the thrones of the twenty-four elders who appear with
Christ in Revelation 4:4.22 Thus the upper half of the painting
was probably intended in part as a parody of Johns
apocalyptic vision, with the God of the fallen world appearing
in the sky on a rainbow throne. But instead of the true
revelation of the worlds fulfillment, we have its contrary, the
narrowed vision of the worlds fall. As in Neoplatonic fable,
this is a death that becomes a birth into the material world.
The angry God here appears more senile than dangerous, with
his confused look and uncomfortable posture, but kneeling
before him is another figure who seems more genuinely
frightening. His profile is severe and untrustworthy. His back
is to us as he pays homage to the God of this world, and his
left hand points downward, across the division of cloud into
the lower half of the picture. From his other hand swings a
censerperhaps a sign of formal but insincere worship, of the
type that Job conducted before his vision. This man wears a
spiked crown, and his transparent robe is decorated with all
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sorts of signs and symbols, none of which I can make out

with confidence. Blake has labeled this figure Caesar. Paley
is surely correct to point out that the angry God and the figure
of Caesar are here symbols of church and state, which, Blake
was sure, had both left the path of true wisdom in his own
time.23 Dante would of course agree that both pope and
emperor had failed in their ordained mission, but he doesnt
mention them in this canto and doesnt see them as ruling
over the underworld.
Incidentally, to the modern eye, the vague symbols on the
gown of the Caesar figure appear much like the logos of
corporate sponsors, a situation that Blake didnt anticipate but
that is entirely suitable to his views.
We have discussed the weaving of bodies as garments; Blake
had also described in Milton how the woes and troubles of a
people might be inscribed on such clothing.
My Garments shall be woven of sighs & heart
broken lamentations
The misery of unhappy Families shall be drawn out
into its border
Wrought with the needle with dire sufferings
poverty pain & woe
......
I will have Writings written all over it in Human
Words
That every Infant that is born upon the Earth shall
read
And get by rote as a hard task of a life of sixty years
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I will have Kings inwoven upon it. & Councellors &

Mighty Men
The Famine shall clasp it together with buckles &
Clasps
And the Pestilence shall be its fringe & the War its
girdle [E 111]
Contrary Giants

In the center of the lower third of this painting we can see

Dante and Virgil passing beneath the arch of smoke. Virgil
has already gone through and has turned back to face Dante
with an encouraging gesture. Dante has his back to us, but by
his agitated pose we can see he is hesitant about walking
deeper into the painting. His feet are on a line parallel to the
picture plane, showing that at the moment he is not moving
forward.
The pilgrims hesitancy in the painting is consistent with the
poets description. Dante says that he had doubted his
worthiness to continue at this point and needed to hear from
Virgil that his trip had been approved by the ladies above.
Blake has retained the possibility of this literal sense, while
adding his own reason why the pilgrim might be wary of
progressing. Not only have the three beasts reappeared here,
contrary to the Comedys narration, but Blake has added two
giants, one on each side of the path the pilgrim must take.
Again, these figures are not mentioned in Dantes book, so we
must assume that Blake has included them for reasons of his
own.
Roe describes these giants as symbols of enslaved mankind
and calls them souls in Ulro, the lowest level in Blakes
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four-tier cosmology.24 I find this interpretation unconvincing

for two reasons. First, it is clear that Dante hasnt yet entered
the underworldhe is still on the path in that direction, but
before he sees actual suffering souls he must pass through the
famous Gate of Hell and arrive at the River Acheron. More
importantly, the two giants are depicted with very specific
and Blakean attributes that indicate he had a more precise
meaning in mind for them.
Blake names a pair of gatekeeper giants in both Milton and
Jerusalem and connects them with the perceptual narrowing
that defines the fall from Heaven. In another reminder that
God is immanent and not far away, Milton is told as he falls:
O thou mortal man
Seek not thy heavenly father then beyond the skies:
There Chaos dwells & ancient Night & Og & Anak
old:
For every human heart has gates of brass & bars of
adamant,
Which few dare unbar because dread Og & Anak
guard the gates
Terrific! and each mortal brain is walld and moated
round
Within: and Og & Anak watch here; here is the Seat
Of Satan in its Webs; [E 114]
In our fallen state the skull forms a wall and a moat around
the mind, holding us back from perceiving eternity. Og and
Anak are the guards at the gates of this wall, keeping the
mind in the lowest possible state, which is Satan.

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Blake has taken the names of these giants from the Old
Testament, the book of Numbers 13:33 and 21:33, where Og
and Anak are called enemies of the Israelites. In the following
lines from Milton we can see that Blake has employed them
in the role of enemies to man, who oppose opening the doors
of perception. Their job is to prevent us from seeing a world
in a grain of sand, or to perceive that the sweet smell of a
flower emanates from eternity.
Thou percievest the Flowers put forth their precious
Odours!
And none can tell how from so small a center comes
such sweets
Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expands
Its ever during doors, that Og & Anak fiercely guard
[E 131].
In Jerusalem, Og and Anak operate Looms & Mills &
Prisons & Work-houses (E 157), and when Los creates the
material world within the mind of man, we read that the
starry characters of Og & Anak are Perusing Albions
Tomb To Create the lion & wolf the bear: the tyger &
scaly serpent. They are present when summer and winter are
divided, and all the things of Vegetative Nature are created
by hard restricting condensations (E 228). Damon writes
that the giants in Milton and Jerusalem function to oppose
Mans progress towards Eternity and that Og and Sihon
[another giant] together constitute the Mundane Shell, all of
which I believe applies to the Comedy watercolor as well.25
The giants presence in different scenes of the Fall, their
association with frightening beasts, and their position at a gate
make the connection clear. Here they are guarding the
entrance to Hell, rather than the exit toward Eternity, but we
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have to remember that Eden can be reached only by passing

through the lowest world. In this case the giants serve to
frighten Dante, who hesitates to pass between them. Without
his poetic genius beckoning him onward, he would return in
fear to the world of innocence, just as Thel did. As always,
we must not expect Blakes symbols to reappear each time in
exactly the same way. It is enough to note that in two of his
major works he repeatedly uses giants in conjunction with the
tomblike restriction of narrowed senses.
The giants are not a matched set. The one on our left is
emaciated and hunched together in the midst of blue
flamelike shapes. The giant on the right has a body of more
healthy proportions, but he seems to be covered with a
mottled skin disease. This giant is chained at the wrists
directly to the ground, and he looks up despairingly from
within red flames. Whenever such a pair appears prominently
in Blakes work, it is not farfetched to be reminded of a key
concept that we have touched on before: the opposition of
contraries.
Dantes morality is about avoiding contrary extremes of
behavior. It is based on balance and a life on the golden mean.
Following Aristotle, he defines sin as a misdirection away
from the straight path that threads between extremes and
leads toward God. The pilgrim Dante learns on his journey
through Hell exactly what divergence from the best path leads
to: extremes of too much or too little, overspending or
tightfistedness, extremes of hedonism or of sullenness. Blake,
on the other hand, had learned from Boehme about the
necessity of the extremes, and how Cusanus taught that
Heaven is not the absence of extremes but their complete
coincidence. In God, the straightest and the roundest are the
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same. Gods infinite viewpoint, which Blake aspires to, sees

how the best and the worst are united; it is only our fallen
viewpoint that separates them, and our fear of extremes that
makes us believe they exist outside of ourselves.
Blake has shown the three beasts of canto 1 here in the
illustration to canto 2 as a reminder of this. These
externalized extremes peek out from behind the giant on our
left, once again frightening the pilgrim.
The two giants symbolize the contraries. The one on the left is
stiff, unable to move for lack of desire or from an excess of
self-control. What look like blue flames surrounding him may
in fact be stalagmites of ice, entrapping him, or may refer to
cold fire, an alchemical term Boehme used to symbolize
the will of God to remain unmanifest, unrevealed.26 Blake
often used images of cold to represent abstract reason.27
Opposite the cold giant is one full of energy and the desire to
move, but this figure is frustrated by the shackles holding him
to the ground. He is engulfed in the red flames of excess
passion. Boehme used hot fire as a symbol of
externalization seeking fulfillmentit is an individuation
through self-manifestation.28 In an 1808 watercolor for
Paradise Lost, Blake had shown one of the rebel angels as a
figure almost identical to the hot giant, also in the extreme
lower right corner of the page.29
These figures at once demonstrate the type of fallen morality
that the pilgrim will find in the world below, governed by the
Urizenic God of this world, as well as the division of the
contraries that occurs when we fall into that world. In contrast
to Blakes illustrations of Heaven, which emphasize the
merging of friends, these giants are forced to remain apart.
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The pilgrim must pass through this divided condition in order

to return to a realm where the split may be healed.
S. Foster Damon, in his Blake Dictionary, names justice and
mercy as an example of contraries: Cruelty is the Negation
of Mercy, but Mercy and Justice are Contraries, which
ultimately are synthesized, for each is essential to the
other.30
Damon is of course correct to say that these two things often
appear contrary in the world we know. Mercys desire to
forgive, and justices need to punish, seem incompatible. We
should be aware, though, that there is a danger in discussing
these concepts as abstractions, or as real things that we hope
somehow to approach. Abstractions are illusions. If we talk
about a final synthesis of justice and mercy, it would be a
mistake to imagine that we hope to achieve a third abstract
thingsome quality of justice/mercy, which we can hold up
as an ideal course of action. In fact, any discussion of any
abstract concept, including justice or mercy, is for Blake an
error. What a final synthesis would look like is a particular
action, or thought, that perfectly embodied, or incarnated,
both of these things that look like abstracts to fallen minds.
The rejoining of the two is not in a third abstraction, but in
particulars.
It is frightening to think that we might have to give up our
abstractions. We are more comfortable believing that such
things as justice and mercy exist, if not here then in some
world toward which we are moving. Dante believed that when
justice and mercy were rejoined at their source, that source
would be God, and God would be unchanging and ideal.
Blake felt that an unchanging state would be hellish, and, as
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we have seen, his myth of the Fall revolves around Urizens

misguided endeavors to create such a world of safety. Urizen
wishes to find a stable condition in which the contraries dont
trouble us.
Blake would have us avoid Urizens error, and resist the
desire, born of fear, to settle on one unchanging truth. Yet if
we cannot expect to reach an unchanging truth through
reason, what hope is there of progress or improvement? Are
we doomed to chaos? It turns out that Blake was not alone in
his era as he worked to establish a dynamic ontology based on
the primacy of activity and energy. Punter writes:
[I]t is during the years when Blake is writing his
major Prophetic Books that dialectic is being given
its classic modern formulation in the philosophy of
Hegel. [Dialectic] is a way of transcending
reliance on logical and scientific
formalismtypified, for Hegel, by Kantian
philosophy, and for Blake by the systems of
Newton, Bacon and Locke.31
The key point of dialectic is change. And in case anyone is
tempted to conclude that dialectic settles into a Golden Mean
or an Aristotelian middle way, Karl Marx is here to tell us
otherwise. For him, the bourgeoisie is the group that desires
Urizenic stability, and dialectic is the means to break the
chains. Dialectic is
a scandal and an abomination to bourgeoisdom
because it includes in its comprehension and
affirmative recognition of the existing state of
things, at the same time also, the recognition of the
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negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up;

because it regards every historically developed
social form as in fluid movement, and therefore
takes into account its transient nature not less than
its momentary existence; because it lets nothing
impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and
revolutionary.32
Adorno puts the matter more calmly, calling dialectic the
serene demonstration of the fact that there are two sides to
everything33 but also hinting at the possibility of non-serene
changes, by writing that dialectic advances by way of
extremes.34
For these Hegelians as for Blake, a middle way in which the
extremes are frozen or chained would be a recipe for disaster.
We do not progress by carefully threading between, but by
engaging and opposing the contraries. In this illustration,
Blake has embodied those contraries as giants, and shown that
the pilgrim, wisely, hesitates to travel to the place where they
must be subdued. Yet the land he must enter is under the rule
of the God of this world, the God of judgment and the
supporter of worldly power, and his poetic guide is waiting to
show him what lies beyond this threshold.

The Gate of Hell

The next illustration shows Virgil, still urging the pilgrim
onward, at the moment when he steps through the gate of
Hell. The famous inscription on the gate is legibly penciled at

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the top in both Italian and in an English translation that is

different from either Carys or Boyds. Cary renders the line
faithfully to the Italian: All hope abandon, ye who enter
here (Hell, 3; Cary, 10). Boyds version is a good example of
the poetic license he took with the original. Ye heirs of Hell,
/ Here bid at once your lingrring hope farewell, / And mourn
the moment of repentance past!35 Blakes wording is a bit
disordered. He has written the line: Leave every Hope you
who in Enter (fig. 22).
The gate is about twice the height of the figures and is wide
enough for four to pass through abreast. It is roughly cut from
the stone at the top, but the bottom has been squared. Trees or
heavy vines stand on either side, emphasizing again the
connection between wood and the material world. Beyond the
gate we see a series of hills eerily lit by tall blue and red
flames. At a distance, on the crests of two of the hills, are tiny
figures, some with their arms raised expressively. We also see
a small portion of the river that makes up the main subject of
the next watercolor.
Roe refers to the four hills beyond the river and the smaller
one just inside the gate as the four continents plus Atlantis,
a reading I find overly imaginative.36

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Figure 22. The Inscription Over the Gate, chalk, pencil, pen
and watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource, New York).

321

The picture of the gate resembles a motif Blake used

throughout his career, from at least the time of his 1793 set of
engravings called For Children: The Gates of Paradise and
later reworked under the title For the Sexes: The Gates of
Paradise.37 This recurring image shows a door parallel to the
picture plane, through which a male figure is about to pass. In
the earliest version, the figure is elderly and stooped, and the
engraving is labeled Deaths Door.

322

323

Figure 23. Design by William Blake, engraved by Luigi

Schiavonetti, The Soul Exploring the Recesses of the Grave,
from The Grave, 1808; etching and engraving, leaf size:
35.7 28.8 cm (collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013
William Blake Archive; used by permission).

The motif appears twice in Blakes illustrations for Robert

Blairs book The Grave. In plate 9 of this work, a figure robed
like Virgil and Dante in the Comedy illustrations passes
through the portal of a cave (fig. 23). In this case, her hair
style indicates she is female, but other than that she is very
like the androgynous characters of the Comedy pictures. She
carries a candle, and beyond her, inside the cave, we can see a
corpse and flames. A troubled-looking young man stands on
the top of the cave entrance. The plate is captioned The Soul
Exploring the recesses of the Grave. Plate 11 is more similar
to the one in The Gates of Paradise, except in this case a
naked youth, who may be the resurrected man, sits on top of
the portal.38
The last version of this motif occurs as the frontispiece to
Jeru?salem. Now the door has become a Gothic arch, and the
person entering is Los, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and
carrying a lighted globe. Plate 31 of Jerusalem describes how
Albion, the universal man, has fallen into the material world,
called here Generation.
Albion hath enterd the Loins the place of the Last
Judgment:
And Luvah hath drawn the Curtains around Albion
in Valas bosom
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The Dead awake to Generation! Arise O Lord, &

rend the Veil!
So Los in lamentations followd Albion, Albion
coverd,
His western heaven with rocky clouds of death &
despair.
Fearing that Albion should turn his back against the
Divine Vision
Los took his globe of fire to search the interiors of
Albions
Bosom, in all the terrors of friendship, entering the
caves
Of despair & death, to search the tempters out,
walking among
Albions rocks & precipices! caves of solitude &
dark despair,
And saw every Minute Particular of Albion
degraded & murderd
[E 194]
So Albion has entered Valas bosom, which is the world of
nature. Los, the imagination, fears that this fall might be so
great that resurrection will be impossible, so he enters into
Albions bosom, which now contains caves of despair and
death, rocks and precipices. The line The Dead awake to
Generation! is completely Neoplatonic; this soul has died to
the higher world by being born into ours.
So the picture of Los entering deaths door shows him passing
through the door into humankinds bosom, to descend into the
world that you and I call the world of the living. Here Loss
pose is similar to that of Virgil in the illustration of the gate of
Hell. His back is to the viewer but he is active, and his right
325

foot is on the threshold. For reasons described earlier, Virgils

appearance is very different from that of Los, but the situation
of the door parallel to the picture plane, and the conviction
that this entry to death will not be final, makes the themes of
the pictures very similar.

The Acheron and Charon

Classical tradition said that there were five rivers in the
underworld: the Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, and
Lethe.39 These rivers exact locations and relations were not
clear, and different writers described them differently. One
river might become a lake or a swamp, as required for
narrative purposes. Typically, Dante followed tradition in
using the same names for his rivers, but he clarified their
places and functions. He relocated the Lethe to the Earthly
Paradise, as we shall see, due to its amnesiac properties.
It is a part of nearly any katabatic story that the underworld
can only be reached by crossing a body of water, usually a
river, and, in Greek literature, always one of those mentioned
above. The Styx was most often seen as the boundary, but
Virgil had made the Acheron and the Styx confluent, and
Dante follows him by requiring his pilgrim to cross the
Acheron on his downward journey.
Blake also employs rivers throughout his work to do their
traditional duty as boundaries, symbols of flowing time, and
places of purification. As we would expect, he is freer in his
use of which river may serve which function, as he uses the

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names of biblical, classical, or local British rivers for his

symbols. In Milton, when the title character has begun his
return to the material world, he meets Urizen at the banks of
the Arnon River. Essick and Viscomi explain that the Arnon
is a river in Jordan, the border of Moab in Numbers
21:1314 and the limit of the realm of Molech in Paradise
Lost 1.399. Because it flows into the Dead Sea, the Arnon is
associated with the Eternal Death (12:14) of biological
existence.40
Thus Miltons fall into the material world is associated by
Blake with a river that divides the Israelites from two of their
enemies and flows into death. At the shore of this river the
character Milton uses clay and water to give Urizen a human
shapeyet another indication that the death this river leads to
is embodiment in our physical world.41 A little later in the
same book, we see the familiar symbol of weaving women,
spinning fibers to make material bodies and singing
songs of amorous delight
And melting cadences that lure the Sleepers of
Beulah down
The River Storge (which is Arnon) into the Dead
Sea:
Around this Polypus Los continual builds the
Mundane Shell [E 134]
So for Blake to employ a river in the illustration for canto 3 of
the Comedy requires no departure from his own mythology,
even though he is not exactly in accord with Dantes. The
River Acheron here takes up the lower half of the painting,
and its source, the Sea of Time and Space, spreads to the
horizon above. This is not a pleasant river. Blake has shown it
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as mostly gray, with tinges of brown and yellow, appropriate

for its Hellish role (fig. 24).
Virgil and Dante are standing on a rise in the narrow bank at
the foreground of the painting, in the lower right corner. They
are still on the near side of the river, which means that they
are not yet in Hell proper. This is the vestibule of Hell,
allocated to those people in life who were so lukewarm that
they did nothing either to deserve merit or punishment. The
pilgrim has his back to the scene but is looking over his
shoulder at the souls who, as the Comedy describes, are being
led by devils carrying flags and are tormented by wasps in the
air and worms on the ground. At least two of these souls are
crowned. As Roe points out, Dantes glance at the souls and
Virgils indifference in this watercolor are a visual equivalent
to Virgils telling the pilgrim to guarda e passalook, and
pass them by (Hell, 3; Cary, 11). Dantes Italian for the
living things at their feet is vermi, which may be rendered
into English either as worms or as maggots. Blake has
shown them as earthworms from a healthy British garden, but
the size of small snakes, and disgusting enough.
Higher in the picture plane, on the right, are the weeping
souls who are waiting to be transported across the Acheron
into Hell. Charon is on his way to fetch them in his barque,
having just now delivered a group to the other side.
The only element of this picture that isnt a clear reference to
something in the Comedy is the line of souls standing on a
line of cloud at the top of the painting. Roe plausibly suggests
that these are the angels who chose not to take sides when
Lucifer led his rebellion in Heaven. Dante mentions them,
saying that the people here are
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Without praise or blame, with that ill band

Of angels mixd, who nor rebellious proved,
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were only
[Hell, 3; Cary, 10].
These figures are not quite mixd into the group of human
souls, but I cant think of any other reason for them to be
there.
Charon is more clearly visible in the next watercolor (fig. 25).
He has arrived at the outer bank of the Acheron and is
exhorting those on shore to get into his barque, which is
already half full of despairing souls. Dante and Virgil are on a
bluff overlooking the scene. As is often the case with Blakes
monstrous characters, Charon looks rather comical here. The
Comedy says that around Charons eyes glared wheeling
flames (Hell, 3; Cary, 12), a detail Michelangelo used to
frightening effect in the Last Judgment painting in the Sistine
Chapel, but which Blake renders as something like rubber
goggles.

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Figure 24. The Vestibule of Hell and the Souls Mustering to

Cross the Acheron, pen and ink and watercolor over pencil
330

(National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest,

1920 [9893]).

Figure 25. Charon and the Condemned Souls, watercolor,

black ink, graphite, and black chalk (Harvard Art
Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L.
Winthrop, 1943.445, President and Fellows of Harvard
College).

Limbo
Charon refuses to take Dante across the Acheron in his
barque, because the pilgrim is neither dead nor damned. At

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the end of canto 3 the pilgrim faints, and he wakes at the

beginning of canto 4 to find himself transported in some
unexplained way to the other side of the river. Blakes
illustration for this canto is far from finished, but we can
make out the sleeping Dante, with Virgil bending over him, in
the top left corner, on a rocky crag overlooking Limbo.
This is the least bad circle of Hell. Most of the region is a
shadowy realm with no punishment beyond the sadness of
eternal dissatisfaction. There are no screams here, only sighs.
Here, as mine ear could note, no plaint was heard
Except of sighs, that made the eternal air
Tremble, not caused by tortures, but from grief
Felt by those multitudes, many and vast,
Of men, women, and infants
[Hell, 4; Cary, 1314].
Virgil explains that these are guiltless souls whose only lack
was that they were not Christian.
these of sin
were blameless; and if aught they merited,
It profits not, since baptism was not theirs,
The portal to thy faith.
for no other evil, we are lost;
Only so far afflicted, that we live
Desiring, without hope [Cary, 14].
The narrator of the Comedy devotes very little time to the
majority of the inhabitants of Limbo. Like Aeneas in Hades,
he moves quickly to the area where the best souls live, which
in the Aeneid is called the Elysian Fields and in the Comedy is
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a garden-like space enclosed within castle walls. There are

seven concentric walls with seven gates. Here the pilgrim sees
the greatest pagans of the preChristian ages, including the
epic poets and philosophers. This is where Virgil spends
eternity (fig. 26).
The unfinished nature of Blakes illustration means that we
can conclude very little about it. The dominant figure in the
illustration is Homer, whose appearance is of Blakes
standard patriarchal type, with a white beard and broad-set
eyes. He carries a sword, as the narrator describes, and wears
the bays. He is not depicted as blind, as tradition would have
it. Blake has labeled him Homer, which is not really very
helpful for us, since he is the only figure we can identify here
even without a label. On either side of Homer are three other
figures who are not clearly drawn enough to identify; the
narrator says that Homer is accompanied by Horace, Ovid,
and Lucan, so that even if Blake has added Dante and Virgil
to their number, it is still not clear why there are a total of
seven figures here instead of six.
Behind these figures are seven roughly drawn concentric
circles. Some of the spaces between the circles are numbered:
the area between the second and third circle is labeled 3,
and the next-to-innermost labeled 7. At first glance these
circles might be thought to represent the walls of the castle in
Limbo, and this would follow in the tradition of other artists
illustrations for this scene.42 If that were so, it would indicate
that the very loosely drawn group of figures just below and to
the right of Dante and Virgil, inside the outermost circle,
might depict some of the less famous inhabitants of Limbo;
there appear to be some child-sized members of this group. At

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the top of the circles Blake has penciled Limbo of Weak

Shadows, which looks like a label for the design below.
On closer examination, though, it appears that Blake intended
to make these concentric circles a map of Hell, in which case
the figures in the small group just mentioned are inhabitants
of the circle just beyond that of Limbo, where we will meet
Paolo and Francesca. The fact that two of the tiny sketched
people are in flying poses might confirm this. The strongest
clue that the circles indicate the circles of Hell, though, is the
fact that at their center, between Homers right shoulder and
his sword, is a tiny bust that Blake has labeled Satan. Since
Satan is located at the deepest point of Dantes Hell, the
center as seen from above, it seems to confirm that this was
the intended meaning of the sketched circles.

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Figure 26. The Shades of Homer and Other Poets of

Antiquity, watercolor, black ink, graphite, and black chalk
(Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of
Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943. 442, President and
Fellows of Harvard College).

Within the outermost of these circles Blake has written the

words of criticism we have quoted before:
Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for
Tyrannical
Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of
All & the
Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost
.....
& the Goddess Nature <Memory> <is his
Inspirer>
& not <Imagination> the Holy Ghost.
Round Purgatory is Paradise & round Paradise is
Vacuum or
Limbo. so that Homer is the Center of All I mean
the Poetry of
the Heathen Stolen & Perverted from the Bible [E
689]
Blakes opinion of Homer and the other classical greats is not
entirely consistent. As I have detailed in Part III of this book,
he did declare the Greek and Roman thinkers to be overly
dependent on reason, and he associated the classical age with
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the veil of nature. But he also allows that their works contain
allusions to deeper visionary truths, as we saw in his
illustration to Porphyrys explication of a scene from the
Odyssey. The inscription on this Comedy illustration, though,
shows Blake in his most anti-classical mood, blaming the epic
poet for the theft and perversion of biblical ideas. He puts
Homer at the center of the crime, writing, Homer is the
Center of All, and making the central location literal in the
watercolor. Because the figure of Homer is the most nearly
finished element in the illustration, Blake gives him more
prominence than Dante does in the Comedy. Dante does state
that Homer is of all bards supreme (Cary, 15) but does not
indicate that he is geographically or hierarchically at the
center of Limbo, which contains all manner of philosophers
and heroes as well.
In my opinion, Blake has structured this watercolor to
associate Homer, a low point of visionary literature, with
Satan, the limit of Opakeness (E 189). The Comedy puts
Homer in a respected but marginal position in Limbo, and
locates Satan at the center of everything. Blake conflates
these by putting Homer in the center of the page and then
drawing behind him a map of Hell, with Satan just over
Homers shoulder. In this way he can make his illustrations
follow Dantes narrative order while showing that Homer and
Satan are nearly equally guilty in their shutting-down of
vision. Once more we see that in a nonPtolemaic universe
that has no permanent center, but a center that is everywhere,
as Cusanus described it, the association of spatial points
depends on perspective. Blake is telling us that from his point
of view, Satan is the low point, but so is Homer, though they
are in different places.

336

Above the map of Hell, with Satan/Homer at its center, Blake

has drawn a rough map of the solar system in the leftover
space at the top and right of the page. The planetary spheres
are clearly labeled, but, oddly, the center sphere, which ought
to be the Earth, is labeled Purgatory, and the outermost,
which should be Heaven, is called Vacuum. Over the circle
called here Purgatory are the words Terrestrial Paradise
and beneath it It is an Island in Limbo. This reordering of
Dantes system is hard to warrant. In the Comedy, the
Terrestrial Paradise is at the top of the mountain of Purgatory,
and both are far removed from Limbo. Blake surely knew
Dantes views well enough by this time not to mislabel the
locations out of simple error. In this map, too, he has
intentionally restructured things so that it fits neither Dantes
view nor Blakes own, but a false universe as perceived by
those who put Homer at their center. The Terrestrial Paradise
has been relocated to the low point because it is a terrestrial,
not celestial, realmVala, not vision. Heaven has been
reduced to vacuum because those who make This World the
Foundation of All perceive nothingness where Heaven
should be.
The next illustration is also a depiction of Limbo, and though
this one is less diagrammatic, it is hardly more true to Dantes
description (fig. 27). The pilgrim and Virgil are on a cliff,
looking down into the forest of Limbo. Again, no castle walls
are visible here, unless the rectangular object at the extreme
left, projecting slightly above the trees, is the top of one wall.
Standing on this object is a figure sketched in profile, in front
of a massive flame. This figure corresponds to nothing in the
Comedy, and I am at a loss to explain why Blake included it
here. Most of Limbo is shown as forest, reminding us again
that we are in the material world. Five figures are visible in
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the lower left corner; four of these wear laurel crowns and one
carries a sword, indicating that we are again seeing Homer
and his companion poets, though Blake has drawn one more
than the four whom Dante describes here. (Roes description
of these as personifications of the five senses seems arbitrary
to me.)43 At right there is a man blowing a pipe, leaning with
his female companion against a tree. The pastoral effect of
this pair makes it easy to imagine they are virtuous pagans,
sighing in the region outside the walls of Limbos castle. The
souls flying in pairs through the air in the left center of the
picture are a glimpse of the next level of Hell, where the
lustful are caught in the storms of passion.

Figure 27. Homer and the Ancient Poets, pencil, pen and
watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource, New York).

338

Minos
After crossing the Acheron, souls destined for eternal
punishment descend to the second circle of Hell.
There Minos stands,
Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all
Who enter, strict examining the crimes,
Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath,
According as he foldeth him around:
For when before him comes the ill-fated soul,
It all confesses; and that judge severe
Of sins, considering what place in Hell
Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft
Himself encircles, as degrees beneath
He dooms it to descend
[Hell, 5; Cary, 1819].

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Figure 28. Minos, pen and ink and watercolor over pencil
and black chalk (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
Felton Bequest, 1920 [9903]).

In other words, Minos is the one who determines where in

Hell each soul will spend eternity. After hearing a sinners
confession, Minos encircles the unfortunate soul with his tail,
and the number of times the tail is wrapped around is the level
of Hell to which the soul must then descend (fig. 28).
Blakes depiction of Minos is another of his muscular
patriarchal types, though this time the bearded figure is shown
nude. He is also crowned, and while only the tip of his tail is
visible, Blake has shown his wavy white hair entirely
covering his throne and falling even below his feet on the

340

platform where he sits. He is surrounded by suffering souls,

most of whom are in pairs, indicating that they belong to the
portion of the second circle of Hell that punishes the lustful.
Beyond them we see some souls who are submerged up to
their necks in blood, perhaps to give us a glimpse of the Styx
in a later circle of Hell. In the distance, beyond the red river,
is a wall that may be the wall of the City of Disalthough if
Blake is showing us here the wrathful souls in the Styx and
the walls of the city beyond, he has omitted both the
gluttonous and the greedy, who live between Minos and the
Styx.
The illustration shows the moment when Minos warns the
pilgrim that he should not proceed, and Virgil tells Minos,
Hinder not his way / By destiny appointed (Hell, 5; Cary,
19).
Minoss role in the Comedy is brief, but his duties here are of
a type that Blake would find particularly objectionable. A
judge who measures and assigns eternal blame embodies two
concepts that Blake thinks are errors of the fallen world.
First, we should recall Blakes conviction that while a
persons state may be evil, the eternal soul of the person is not
to be blamed. Second, we have seen that he associates
measuring and division with the narrowed state of the senses
in which we can no longer perceive the infinite in everything.
In The Four Zoas, when Urizen puts people into the bondage
of the material world, the compasses of measurement play an
evil role:
For measurd out in orderd spaces the Sons of Urizen
With compasses divide the deep; they the strong
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scales erect
And weigh the massy Cubes, then fix them in their
awful stations
.....
The enormous warp & woof rage direful in the
affrighted deep
[E 31819]
We have seen that in an unfallen condition, the imagination
creates what it perceives and is unfettered by divisions of time
and space. Because each thing is in infinity, and infinity
excludes nothing, it is an error to ascribe a limited set of
attributes permanently to anything or anyone. Part of the
narrowing of perception that occurs when we fall is the onset
of the illusion that things or people have fixed attributes. As
Stempel puts it: The fall of man is the division of the subject
among its attributes and the usurpation of being by those
attributes.44
When a person falls, in other words, he becomes merely his
attributes. He is no longer an infinite eternal soul, but a soul
who is good or bad or greedy or generous. This is the role that
Minos plays in Blakes re-imagining of the Comedy: he is the
one who names the dominant and determining attribute of
each soul. Dante says that Minos discerns the souls condition
and assigns it an appropriate location based on its personality;
Blake sees such an assignation as the truly evil act. Minos
acts precisely as the sons of Urizen did in the lines from The
Four Zoas quoted above, measuring out the souls, dividing
them from infinity, and fixing them in their awful stations.

342

Punter writes, The nature of man is to have no fixed, limited

nature: or rather, to reside constantly in the activity of
self-transcendence.45 Minos, then, is the force that divides
the falling souls into fixedness, into (apparently) permanent
identification with only one of their sins, in a way that ties
them down and seems to prevent the activity of
self-transcendence. The fact that the souls nearest Minos are
male/female pairs also reminds us that it is here where the
ungendered inhabitants of the upper world must split into men
and women.
Since Blake is reminding us that the Fall is division, we
should recall that the unfallen condition is unityin
particular, the unity of the four Zoas, the four elements of the
universal man that form Blakes basic symbol of balanced
personhood. In their eponymous poem, it is the split within
the person of Albion that constitutes the Fall. Blake has not
neglected to remind us of their importance in this picture of
Minos, as well. Behind Minoss throne is a wall of blue
flame, and behind the flame rises billowing black smoke.
Peeking out from between the flame and the smoke are four
faces, each encircled with a halo. Each is slightly different:
clockwise from top right, one face is unmoved or even
slightly amused, one is severe, one is concerned, and the last
shows surprise. These are the four Zoas, putting in a last
unified appearance as Minos prevents the falling souls from
perceiving any more their balance. We should recall that
because the Fall is perceptual, the split of the Zoas and the
identification of each soul with only one of its attributes is in
fact an illusion: the Zoas are eternally present and ready to be
reintegrated whenever the soul becomes able to perceive them
once again. But Minos has hidden this factthe Zoas are
occluded by his flame. We will not see them again until, at
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the top of Purgatory, they appear in glory in the car pulled by

Christ.

Paolo and Francesca

Leaving Minos behind, the remainder of the second circle of
Hell is assigned to the punishment of lustful souls. The
pilgrim hears them before he can see them in the darkness.
Now am I come where many a plaining voice
Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came
Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groand
A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn
By warring winds. The stormy blast of Hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirld round and dashd amain with sore annoy.
......
I understood, that to this torment sad
The carnal sinners are condemnd, in whom
Reason by lust is swayd. As in large troops
And multitudinous, when winter reigns,
The starlings on their wings are borne abroad;
So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls
[Hell, 5; Cary, 19].
The strong winds of this level propel the sinners through the
air just as their passions drove them in life. They appear to the
pilgrim like flocks of birds flying together, except that these

344

souls cannot control their flightthey are at the mercy of the

storms (fig. 29).
Here the pilgrim has the first of many conversations with the
souls he meets in the afterlife, hearing from Francesca da
Rimini about the circumstances of her sin. At the end of the
canto, overcome by the emotion of her tale, the pilgrim faints.
Blake shows the pilgrim prostrate on the ground, with Virgil
looking down at him. Paolo and Francesca are in a sort of
cloud or air stream, flying away from him. The other souls in
the storm are enclosed in another stream of wind, beginning
at the bottom right hand corner of the page and swirling
through a full circle before passing beyond the top left corner
of the picture.
Famously, Blake never objected to the pleasures of the flesh,
nor was he concerned that in his age Reason by lust is
swayd. In fact in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he
declares that the Fall will be undone through pleasure, and the
world will once again appear infinite. and holy whereas / it
now appears finite & corrupt. / This will come to pass by an
improvement of sensual enjoyment (E 39). So we may have
confidence that the souls in this illustration are not in the
same condition as Dante would have us believe.

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Figure 29. The Circle of the Lustful: Francesca Da Rimini,

engraving, leaf size: 39.0 54.2 cm (collection of Robert
N. Essick; 2013 William Blake Archive; used by
permission).

We saw in the picture of Minos that when this character

narrows each soul to some small collection of attributes, each
individual becomes male or female as well. Blake was clear
that in the four-tier cosmology he imagined, souls in Eden are
also genderless and only divide into male and female
emanations as they descend to lower points. The level below
Eden, where the emanation occurs, is called Beulah, from a
biblical word for marriage. Souls exhausted from the
mental fight of Eden descend temporarily to Beulah, and by
emanating a partner there gain the possibility of sexual
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pleasure as restorative comfort. As long as the imaginations

of the souls in Beulah are undimmed, they may rise up again
at any time and rejoin the active life of Eden. It is only when
they are tempted to remain constantly within the comfort of
Beulah, or are attracted to lower levels, that the imagination
loses its power and the souls acquire the illusion that their
emanations are truly separate.
The souls in the illustration to canto 5 of the Hell have not
come from Beulah; as we have seen, they have arrived via the
original state of innocence. Yet they are in the same
predicament as those souls who fall out of Beulah into
Generation or Ulro. Now that they have split into male and
female, they believe that gender is a permanent division. As
when Minos indicates one of our attributes and uses this as
our permanent identification, gender here becomes an
unchanging attribute rather than an emanation which may be
rejoined at will. The couples propelled through the air by the
storms find that they are at the mercy of external powers, no
longer understanding that their imaginations create the world
around them. Blake has provided them, though, with reminder
of their ideal joined condition: a kind of white sun directly
above the figure of Virgil shows a couple tightly
embracingor perhaps in a single body, as Aristophanes
describes in his speech in Platos Symposium.
Read in this way, we may interpret the figures of Paolo and
Francesca in a manner similar to my view of the three beasts
in the dark forest at the beginning of the Hell. The wind that
engulfs them seems to generate from the body of the pilgrim
himself, and the lovers seem to fly outwards from him. This
indicates that these two are also creations of the pilgrimthe

347

passion that he may not keep joined now that he is in the

lower world.
This illustration forms the basis of one of only seven
engravings that Blake began for the Comedy pictures. It
would be tempting to conclude from this fact that he found
the scene particularly important in his interpretation of Dante,
but we must also remember that the story of Paolo and
Francesca, along with that of Ugolino, was by far the most
famous scene from the Comedy among British art lovers at
this time. Its possible that he wanted the well-known scene to
be among the first finished.

Cerberus
Blakes illustration for the third circle of Hell, where the
gluttons are punished, is only roughly sketched, but wide blue
and grey washes give it an appropriately gloomy feel. The
pool in the foreground has penciled indications of the souls
submerged there, and a few other figures are sketched here
and there, but the work is not finished enough to discern
where Blake intended to show Dante and Virgil. The only
clear figure finished enough to be sure of is the three-headed
dog Cerberus, shown in a cave at left. There is a puzzling
group of upside-down figures at top right, apparently falling
or swirling in the sky. The placement seems inappropriate for
storm-tossed figures from the previous circle, and they do not
seem to be in pairs. Beyond them, however, visible in a gap
between the mountains, we can see a flat plain or river and

348

castle walls, which provide a glimpse of the next circle: the

River Styx and the walls of Dis.
Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,
Through his wide threefold throat, barks as a dog
Over the multitude immersed beneath.
His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,
His belly large, and clawd the hands, with which
He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs
Piecemeal disparts
[Hell, 6; Cary, 23].
Then my guide, his palms
Expanded on the ground, thence filld with earth
Raised them, and cast it in his ravenous maw.
Een as a dog, that yelling bays for food
His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall
His fury, bent alone with eager haste
To swallow it; so droppd the loathsome cheeks
Of demon Cerberus
[Hell, 6; Cary, 24].
Cerberus is a consistent character in katabatic literature. He is
described in Hesiods Theogony as the brazen-voiced hound
of Hades with fifty heads.46 In the Iliad and the Aeneid he is
down to only three heads, but has gained a clearer role as
watchdog at the entrance of the underworld. Taylors book on
the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries has no trouble fitting
him into the Neoplatonic symbolism of descent stories: By
Cerberus we must understand the discriminative part of the
soul, of which a dog, on account of its sagacity, is an emblem;
and the three heads signify the triple distinction of this part,

349

into the intellective [or intuitional], cogitative [or rational],

and opinionative powers.47
Blake might have named the divisions differently, but he
would be happy to assimilate the use of the three-headed dog
as a symbol for the (apparent) division of the soul as it falls
into the material world. We have already seen that Aeneas
hears the barking of dogs as he enters Hades, and that Taylor
interprets this as Matter herself.
Blake made two similar watercolors depicting the scene in
which Virgil silences Cerberus. They differ mostly in the
color scheme and in the prominence of the human figures.
One picture shows Cerberus against a background of red
flames, with Dante and Virgil tiny in comparison to the dog
and nearly off the page in the upper right. The other has the
dog in front of blue flames and the human figures shown
much larger (fig. 30). This picture also shows a bit of deep
space to the right of the pilgrim, revealing the crenellated wall
of the City of Dis in the distance.

Plutus and Fortune

There is some disagreement about the order of the three
illustrations following the pictures of Cerberus. Roe, Butlin,
and Erdman show the painting of Plutus next, followed by
that of the souls in the Stygian Lake and then the painting of
Fortune.48 Klonsky and Bindman see the order as Plutus,
Fortune, and the Styx.49 I see no justification for placing the
picture of the souls in the Styx before that of Fortune; I can

350

only imagine this was an error on Roes part that was taken
up by the others on his authority. All three subjects are named
in canto 7, but the Comedy makes the order clear: Plutus
appears in the fourth circle of Hell, and Virgil explains the
motions of Fortune while the pilgrim is in that circle. The
River Styx isnt seen until Dante and Virgil have descended
to the fifth circle near the end of the canto.
Plutus was the personification of riches in classical
mythology (Cary, footnote, 27). The resemblance of his
name to Pluto, god of the underworld, is probably only
coincidence, though Cicero and Isidore of Seville worked out
a connection between them based on gold and silver coming
from underground and on the importance of greed as a source
for ills.50 Canto 7 of the Hell begins with Plutuss shout of
Pape Satn, pape Satn aleppe! Modern translators agree
that these are nonsense words, but Cary has bravely
interpreted them to mean Ah me! O Satan! Satan! (Yet
Carys version is surely a safer bet than Boyds: Prince of
the Fiends, arise; Behold thy realms exposd to mortal
eyes!)51 Blake has depicted Plutus in the act of shouting
these words, one hand in the air and the other on a bag of
coins. He is shown as one of Blakes patriarchal types, this
time nude and with a pointed white beard and hair that goes
up into two points like flame. He is seated at the bottom of the
picture while Dante and Virgil walk down a slope toward him
(fig. 31).

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Figure 30. Cerberus, pen and ink and watercolor over

pencil and black chalk (National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [9913]).

The next illustration in the series (by my reckoning) shows

the souls punished in the circle over which Plutus presides.
The avaricious and the prodigal are both guilty of greed,
either by hoarding their money or by spending it foolishly.
Their punishment is identical: they must push huge stones
forever in a circle around the circumference of Hell, the
avaricious going in one direction and the prodigal in the
other. When they collide, they shout at each other and reverse
direction. Blakes illustration is very sketchy, but we can
make out two sinners, bent low to push the heavy weight, at
the moment of collision. Various loops to the sides indicate

352

that Blake planned to show many such souls in the

background. Beneath this scene, in the lower half of the page,
is a painting of the goddess Fortune. Virgil explains the role
of Fortune in distributing the riches of the world. Because
from Gods perspective the amount of ones wealth is
unrelated to merit, who is rich and who is poor is decided
solely by this pagan goddess, who makes sure to keep her
wheel turning, so that one person may be on the rise while
another loses everything. Fortunes role is explained in this
canto, but she is not described as being present in this circle
of Hell. Still, Blake has drawn her here adjacent to the greedy
souls.

353

Figure 31. Plutus, pencil, pen and watercolor (Tate,

London/Art Resource, New York).

354

Virgils explanation doesnt say that Fortune is at all troubled

by her function. Blake, though, has shown her chest deep in a
kind of pit, clutching at her hair, clearly pained by her duties.
Submerged with her are circles of various sizes, probably
intended to represent bags of money and coins. The contents
of the pit are colored yellow, which alludes to the color of
gold, but nevertheless succeeds in making Fortune appear to
be chest-high in excrement. Penciled above her, on the side of
pit, we can see Blakes opinion of this goddess, who, it must
be admitted, had failed to help his finances:
The hole of a Shit house
The Goddess Fortune is the devils servant ready to
Kiss any
ones Arse [E 689]
Whereas Dante, in this canto, is careful to be indifferent to the
distribution of wealth in the world, finding it cause for neither
praise nor blame, Blake understandably indulges in a rare
moment of revenge on the goddess who had done nothing for
him. The words are washed over with a thin layer of color,
and probably would not have remained visible if the picture
had been finished.

355

The Styx
In the fourth circle of Hell the pilgrim sees a well (or spring,
depending on the translation) from which flows murky
waters. The dismal stream flows into a lake called the Styx.
From the shore, the pilgrim sees the wrathful souls.
Intent I stood
To gaze, and in the marish sunk descried
A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks
Betokening rage. They with their hands alone
Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,
Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs.
Virgil explains that the angry souls visible at the surface are
not alone in this swamp.
underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoeer it turn.
The submerged souls are the sullen. If those on the surface are
out of control from anger, those on the lake bed are those who
turned their anger inward and lie paralyzed from sadness.
Fixd in the slime, they say: Sad once were we,
In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun,
Carrying a foul and lazy mist within:
Now in these murky settlings are we sad.
Such dolorous strain they gurgle in their throats,

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But word distinct can utter none

[Hell, 6; Cary, 30].
Blakes watercolor shows the lake in cross-section, not
according to the view the pilgrim has. The outwardly angry
are at the top, though still slightly submerged, and the sullen
are beneath them, lying on their backs on the lake bed. The
water has been colored indigo, perhaps in direct response to
Carys adjective inky. There are six outwardly angry souls,
divided in two groups of three and facing each other with
clenched fists (fig. 32). Three of these are of Blakes
patriarchal figure type, while one of them seems younger and
appears to be wearing laurels. The pair who are nose to nose,
farthest from the picture plane, are of types unusual for Blake
to draw. One has mutton-chop sideburns and the other has
projecting lips; both seem like faces one would see in a
Gillray cartoon rather than in Blakes work. There are three
souls on the lake bed. They are clothed, and two of them are
of the patriarchal type. The figure on the left has his eyes
open, staring into space, while the eyes of the one on the right
are closed, with an expression of chronic sadness. The figure
in the center is also unusual in Blakes work. Perhaps this is a
woman, because her headdress is something like a nuns.
After Dante and Virgil view the wrathful souls, they arrive at
the foot of a tower, and the beginning of the next canto
explains that this is a signal turret, communicating by beacon
lights with another distant tower. To cross the Styx, they must
ride in a ferry piloted by Phle?gyas, who soon arrives,
mistaking the pilgrim for a condemned soul. In the illustration
Phle?gyas is shown riding at the stern of his boat, which
incongruously looks like a pleasure boat with a sail, but the

357

figure is too small and sketchily drawn to determine his

appearance (fig. 33).
The whole painting is mostly blocked out in large shapes of
gray paint with few details. The signal tower is a tall mass in
the foreground, and the rough shapes of Dante and Virgil
stand near it on the shore, waiting for the ferry to arrive.
Across the wide river are mountains under low clouds and
another tower just visible at left. The only remarkable feature
of the picture is that the lights in the tower seem to be two
crescent moons, not quite attached to the tower itself. This
turns out to be a result of Carys idiosyncratic translation: he
says that when the pilgrim and Virgil look up to the top of the
tower, we markd uphung / Two cressets, which I believe
has caused some confusion. Dantes word to name the signal
lights is not in modern Italian dictionaries. Fiammette
appears to be an invented word from fiammaflame. At least
one translation renders this flamelets,52 Durling opts for
two small flames.53 Cary has used the rare English word
cressets, which Merriam-Webster defines as an iron vessel
or basket used for holding an illuminant (as oil) and mounted
as a torch or suspended as a lantern. This is a logical choice
in the context, although it adds information absent from the
text, since the poet has not specified how the signal lights are
generated. Blake has apparently mistaken the seldom-seen
word cressets for crescents and draws them accordingly.
As the boat carrying Dante, Virgil, and Phlegyas crosses the
Styx, one of the souls who is punished in the water accosts
the pilgrim (fig. 34). Dante asks, Who art thou? and the
shade replies: One, as thou seest, who mourns. The pilgrim
recognizes him as Filippo Argenti, who, according to a

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footnote in Carys edition, was a Florentine noble, notorious

for his furious temper and overbearing conduct (Cary, 32).
Then stretchd he forth
Hands to the bark; whereof my teacher sage
Aware, thrusting him back: Away! down there
To the other dogs!

359

Figure 32. The Stygian Lake, with the Ireful Sinners

Fighting, pen and ink and watercolor over pencil
360

(National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest,

1920 [9923]).

Dante and Virgil on the Edge of the Stygian Pool, gray

wash, graphite, black ink, black chalk, and watercolor
(Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Bequest of
Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.658; President and Fellows
of Harvard College).

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Figure 34. Dante and Virgil in the Skiff of Phlegyas Are

Hailed by Filippo Argenti, watercolor, black ink, graphite,
and black chalk (Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum;
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.439; President
and Fellows of Harvard College).

This is the moment shown in Blakes illustration. Dante,

standing up in the boat at the far left of the picture, has his
back to us, while Virgil energetically puts his hand on Filippo
Argentis head to push him back down into the water. Filippo
has both hands in the air and a suitably fanatical expression
on his face. Only Phlegyas seems indifferent to the exchange:
he sits with his hand on the tiller of the boat and glances at
Filippo unmoved. In the distance, across the expanse of the
Styx, we see mountains and the signaling tower.

362

Roe reads this design as signifying a wise repulsion of

materiality. For him, each of the four figures in the picture
represents one of the four Zoas. Filippo represents the Zoa
called Tharmas, the purely material aspect of man, and
Virgil has here become a symbol of Los. Roe writes, Mortal
man should direct his life under the guidance of reason in
such a way that error (materialism and
selfishnessattributes which breed anger instead of love) is
cast out.54
Here I think Roe is making a fundamental and Urizenic error.
Tharmas is the Zoa representing the senses, and therefore is
closely associated with the body, but this doesnt mean that
he is something to be repressedand certainly not put under
the guidance of reason. This desire to favor one attribute
over another, and to deny the necessity of each of the Zoas, is
precisely the error that occurs when we fall into the material
world of Urizenic morality. As Damon points out, it is at the
moment when reason (in the person of Urizen) gives up
attempts to dominance that the Fall is corrected.55 In The
Four Zoas, the Last Judgment occurs when Urizen learns to
regret his attempts to control the other Zoas. He realizes that
the Eternal is always present to the wise (E 390) and
announces,
I cast futurity away & turn my back upon that void
Which I have made for lo futurity is in this moment
.....
Rage Tharmas[,] Urizen no longer curbs your rage
[E 390]

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This act sets Urizen free, and he rises again.

Then glorious bright Exulting in his joy
He sounding rose into the heavens in naked majesty
In radiant Youth [E 391].
I cannot agree with Roe, then, that Filippo is to be identified
with Tharmas and that casting him out is the road to
redemption. Instead, I think we are free to see Filippo as
symbolic in the way Dante used him: as wrath, and not force
him into the role of one of the Zoas. The act of pushing him
away is therefore an error caused by the fact that the episode
occurs in the material world. As we saw with the three beasts,
in this world we separate our passions from ourselves due to
their frightening power. Eventually the pilgrim will rise by
reintegrating his emotions, including wrath, but that moment
is not yet; he is still in the lower world and has not acquired
the experience necessary to achieve reintegration.

The Gate of Dis

The fifth and sixth circles of Hell are separated by a wall of
the type that formerly surrounded Italian towns. Virgil and the
pilgrim, having crossed the Styx, approach the gate of this
wall to enter the City of Dis and proceed deeper into the
underworld. They are opposed by the guardians of the gate,
including the Furies of Greek myth and Medusa. Unable to
advance, Virgil momentarily loses confidence, and the
pilgrim fears that his journey will end here in defeat. Their
doubts, however, are quickly overcome. Dantes trip has been

364

ordained by God, and when Virgil proves unable to proceed,

assistance from on high is quickly sent. Before the pilgrim
can see the angel coming to assist them, he can hear the sound
of its approach.
And now there came oer the perturbed waves
Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made
Either shore tremble, as if of a wind
Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung,
That, gainst some forest driving all his might,
Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls
Afar; then, onward passing, proudly sweeps
His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly
[Hell, 9; Cary, 36].
When the angel comes into sight, we can see that he is
running over the surface of the Styx, sending the angry souls
jumping.
As frogs,
Before their foe the serpent, through the wave
Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one
Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits
Destroyd, so saw I fleeing before one
Who passd with unwet feet the Stygian sound.
He, from his face removing the gross air,
Oft his left hand forth stretchd, and seemd alone
By that annoyance wearied
[Hell, 9; Cary, 37].
The illustration for this scene, in its unfinished state, is done
primarily in washes and tenuously brushed lines of grey
watercolor (fig. 35). At the left, light red washes indicate
365

flames. The wall and its gate appear at lower right, the two
human characters indicated with only the briefest of lines. A
white space above the wall and a few pencil marks indicate
where the Furies would have appeared. The angel, nude, is
entering from the left, crouched like a runner in a sprint and
with wings spread wide. The dominant element in the
painting are the huge black swirls at the center, ensuing from
the angel and curling up over the wall. Here Blake has
indulged his tendency to illustrate elements in the authors
description that are not meant as literally present, but as
verbal descriptions of the scene. Dante writes that the sound
the angel makes at his arrival is as if a wind / Impetuous
proudly sweeps / His whirlwind rage. The poet indicates
that the sound of the angel is like a whirlwind, and the
illustrator has echoed the metaphor by including a visible
whirlwind in the painting. The metaphorical storm makes
beasts and shepherds fly, and though there are no shepherds
here in Hell, Blake has shown the whirlwind lifting souls out
of the waters of the Styx and dumping them, like some
mythical rain of frogs, onto the shore in front of the city wall.
In this case, I see no reason to conclude that Blake is at odds
with the text he is illustrating. Here he is employing images
from the poetry of the Comedy to convey more powerfully the
feeling that the poet intended. Blakes willingness to translate
verbal metaphor into visual symbols, we will see, accounts
for several more difficult images later on.
The large whirlwind swirls of this illustration, in addition to
showing forcefully the power of the angel, repeat visual
motifs of the earlier illustration of Paolo and Francesca.
Though the picture is rough and lacking detail, it has a bold
impact that makes it among the most successful in the series.

366

Viewers of our own time are no doubt better able to

appreciate its severe beauty than at any time previous.

Figure 35. The Angel Crossing the Styx, pen and ink and
watercolor over pencil (National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [9943]).

The next illustration, showing the angel standing before the

gate, is very different in feeling from the previous picture (fig.
36). It is lightly tinted and nearly symmetrical, with the angel
standing in the center, his back to us, and the wall of the city
parallel to the picture plane. Medusa leans her head over the
wall in the exact center of the top edge. Virgil is covering the

367

pilgrims eyes to protect him from Medusa and bustling him

out of the lower left corner. The ink lines and pale colors used
here make this painting of a powerful angel, appropriately,
similar to Blakes earlier watercolor series illustrating
Paradise Lost.
The text describes the moment of the angels arrival this way:
Ah me! how full
Of noble anger seemd he. To the gate
He came, and with his wand touchd it, whereat
Open without impediment it flew
[Hell, 9; Cary 37].
After opening the gate, the angel pauses to address the
demons above it:
Outcasts of heaven! O abject race, and scornd!
......
Whence doth this wild excess of insolence
Lodge in you? wherefore kick you gainst that will
Neer frustrate of its end, and which so oft
Hath laid on you enforcement of your pangs?
[Hell, 9; Cary 37].

368

Figure 36. The Angel at the Gate of Dis, pen and ink and
watercolor over pencil and black chalk (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [9953]).

The moment shown in the painting is out of sequence from

the events as described in the poem. In the picture, the angel
has his left hand raised, as if he is addressing Medusa and the
other creatures at the top of the wall, but the gate is not yet
opened. The action and the speech seem to have been
reversed. In his right hand the angel holds a long stick, taller
than he isnot how we would normally imagine a wand.
Inside the city wall the pilgrim sees the open tombs of the
heretics. Except for Dantes physical appearance, which I
have described above, the illustration for this scene seems

369

entirely in keeping with the poets description (fig. 37). In

particular the figures of Farinata degli Uberti and Cavalcante
Cavalcanti, who both appear in the same tomb, are accurately
portrayed in their relation to the pilgrim. I will only note here
what Roe has correctly described in his book: the classical
mausoleum in the background reminds us that Blake
associated this kind of antique architecture with the material
world and with the domination of reason in our fallen state.56

Figure 37. Dante Conversing with Farinata degli Uberti,

graphite and watercolor ( The Trustees of the British
Museum/Art Resource, New York).

370

The Map of Hell

Dantes Hell is so clearly imagined that one may easily draw
it in a simple map. Nearly every edition of the poem includes
a diagram, more or less detailed, to help the reader visualize
the pilgrims progress from Italy to the deepest part of the
underworld. Indeed, we are so accustomed to the familiar
funnel-shaped diagram that Blakes map, sketchy as it is,
strikes us immediately as one of the most thoroughly
re-imagined pictures in the series. Blake has not written a
canto number on this page, so it isnt certain where in the
series he intended to place it, or if, as in many editions, the
map was supposed to go in an explanatory preface. I place the
picture at this point in the series because in canto 11, after
visiting the heretics, Virgil explains to the pilgrim the
structure of the underworld.
Despite this pictures diagrammatic character, it still tells us
important things about Blakes view of the Comedy (fig.
38).We have already addressed, in Part III of this book, the
inscriptions penciled in the lower corners of the page. This is
where we find the words
It seems as if Dantes supreme Good was something
Superior to
the Father or Jesus [as] <for> if he gives his rain to
the Evil & the Good & his Sun to the just & the
Unjust He could
never have Builded Dantes Hell nor the Hell of the
Bible neither
in the way our Parsons explain it It must have been
originally
Formed by the Devil Himself & So I understand it to

371

have been
Whatever Book is for Vengeance for Sin &
whatever Book is
Against the Forgiveness of Sins is not of the Father
but of Satan
the Accuser & Father of Hell [E 690]

372

Figure 38. The Nine Circles of Hell, pencil and traces of

watercolor ( The Trustees of the British Museum/Art
Resource, New York).

373

Why Blake chose to write these words here and not, for
instance, on the portrait of Satan, becomes clear when we
examine the idiosyncratic way he has drawn the map.
There are two obvious differences in Blakes map from every
other: first, it is upside-down, and second, the circles of Hell
arent level. We will find that there are good reasons for both
of these unique choices.
First, why did Blake draw Hell upside down? He has written
the obvious answer on the extreme right edge of the sheet.
This line reads sideways along the edge, from top to bottom:
This is Upside Down When viewd from Hells Gate
The next lines reverse direction, and continue from bottom to
top:
But right When Viewd from Purgatory after
they have passed the Center
In Equivocal Worlds Up & Down are Equivocal
This is true of course; when the pilgrim is at the gate of Hell,
he is in the northern hemisphere, Hell is below him, and Satan
would be head-up if he were visible. Purgatory is in the
southern hemisphere, though, and the pilgrim has passed
through the center of the earth, so if he looked down from this
position Hell would be upside-down, with Satan feet-up at the
top. All readers of the Comedy know this, but Blake is the
first to take advantage of the equivocal viewpoint to draw
Hell from this angle. It sometimes surprises students who
assume that everyone in the Middle Ages thought the world
was flat to discover that Dante not only knew the earth to be a
374

sphere but knew that gravity would reverse direction if one

travelled through the midpoint of the planet. When the
pilgrim descends to the very bottom of Hell, and crawls
through a passage past the exact center of the earth, he has to
turn himself over and begin climbing up. The pilgrim is
confused, but of course the poet knows that he has traveled
beyond the midpoint and is now headed up again, toward the
surface and the mountain of Purgatory. The structure of Hell
isnt visible from any point in Purgatory (half the earth blocks
his view), so Blakes words When Viewd from Purgatory
apply to Gods vision.
So the first reason Blake had for drawing the map upside
down is to remind us that the perspective of the perceiver is
always crucial, and that a view that seems upside down to a
soul in Hell (or in Italy) is correct when seen from a higher
place.
In addition, the map in this form shows the pilgrims starting
point at the bottom of the page, and instead of moving
downwards and changing at the midpoint, we can see him as
consistently going up. This, too, is true from the higher
perspective: if Italy is at the bottom of the world, the
pilgrims progress through the circles of Hell and around the
levels of Purgatory is always in the right directionup. The
journey through Hell is then not a descent at allthe pilgrim
was already at the lowest point when the story began, as the
pilgrim passed through the dark wood of materiality into the
world below. Showing the map of Hell upside down
emphasizes that after he has mounted to its topnormally
its bottomhe continues in the same direction in order to
reach the top of Purgatory and then rise toward Heaven.
Figure 39 shows a map of Hell within the earth as seen in
375

typical diagrams of Dantes Inferno. Figure 40 is the overall

view, showing Hell in its proper upside-down position. The
general direction of the pilgrims movement throughout the
Comedy (simplified of the spiraling motion of his course
through Hell and Purgatory) is indicated by the dotted line.
Placing Satan at the top of Hell also reminds us that he is the
one who created the sins of Hell in the first place. Though he
is, in one sense, the low point, the limit of contraction, he is
also the lord of Hell because he is the one who organized its
system. In Milton, we read:
He [Satan] created Seven deadly Sins drawing out
his infernal scroll,
Of Moral laws and cruel punishments upon the
clouds of Jehovah
To pervert the Divine voice in its entrance to the
earth
With thunder of war & trumpets sound, with armies
of disease
Punishments & deaths musterd & numberd; Saying
I am God alone
There is no other! let all obey my principles of
moral individuality
I have brought them from the uppermost innermost
recesses
Of my Eternal Mind, transgressors I will rend off for
ever,
As now I rend this accursed Family from my
covering [E 103].

376

Figure 39. Map of Dantes world, with Jerusalem at the

top.

377

378

Figure 40. Map with Purgatory at the top, showing the

general direction of the pilgrims journey.

Though hanging head-down, then, Satan belongs at the top of

Hell, looking over the realm of suffering he created when he
perverted Gods voice and invented morality. The pilgrim, in
Blakes version, needs to rise out of this sad state, passing
above the moral arbiter of the lower world, in order to
advance.
A Hell that wasnt upside down, in which the bottom is a
dead end and there was no possibility of rising out of it,
would indeed be a Hell that Blakes God could never have
Builded. Blake has corrected this error merely by turning the
map over. The idea that Hell is a place of progress, through
which we pass in order to reach the higher levels, also
explains why the circles in Blakes diagram are oddly tilted.
This Hell is not divided into discrete levels, but is organized
like a spiralor to use a word that was important to Blakes
system: a vortex.
In another context, Abrams describes the trajectory of the
vortex as a combination of circular return with hope for
progress.
The self-moving circle, in other words, rotates along
a third, vertical dimension, to close where it had
begun, but on a higher plane of value. It thus fuses
the idea of the circular return with the idea of linear
379

progress, to describe a distinctive figure of

Romantic thought and imaginationthe ascending
circle, or spiral. Hugo von Hoffmannsthals later
description of this design is terse and complete:
Every development moves in a spiral line, leaves
nothing behind, reverts to the same point on a higher
meaning.
Goethes description of what he calls spiral
development uses the alchemical term Steigerung
(enhancement) for this result: The two great
drive-wheels of all nature are the concept of
polarity and of enhancement. Every phenomenon
must separate itself in order to manifest itself as a
phenomenon, but the separate seeks itself again and
again and if the separate first enhances itself it
brings forth through the union of the enhanced parts
a third, new, higher, totally unexpected thing.57
We see that the vortex is a visualization of a form of dialectic:
the advance and the return, but the return that arrives at a
better, higher level than the starting point. Or as Punter puts
it:
In speaking of a spiral form, we return again to the
question of cyclicism and progress, which is near the
heart of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction
and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate,
are necessary to Human existence (E 34).58
Essick and Viscomi point out another quality of vortices:
when seen head-on, they look like globes.59 Seen from a
380

narrowed, material perspective the globes of the cosmos

(stars, moons, sun) appear to be spherical and unchanging. To
the open-eyed perceiver, however, nothing is unchanging: the
Newtonian universe of spheres becomes an ever-evolving
interaction of vortices. By passing through the vortex of
globular reality (such as the earth), humans can achieve a
state of consciousness (heaven) free of Newtonian limits.60
This is precisely what the pilgrim is doing: passing through
the earth, which is a globe to Dante but a vortex in Blakes
map, to free himself of Newtonian limits.

The Violent
The circle of Hell inhabited by the souls of the violent is
divided into three sections. The first holds those who were
violent against other people, the second is for those who did
violence to themselves, and the third is for the souls who were
violent towards God or his will.
Blakes illustrations for the first two sections are in keeping
with our analysis so far and require no further comment. The
Minotaur and the centaurs who guard the first circle can be
seen as emblems of peoples violent passions, externalized as
were the three beasts in the opening canto of Hell (fig. 41).
The same is true of the harpies in the forest of the suicides
(fig. 42). Moreover, the fact that the suicidal souls are
changed into trees is another instance of the association of
materiality with wood.

381

The third portion of this circle is more complex, because

Blakes idea of what constitutes Gods will is so different
from Dantes. Blake devoted five illustrations to this
sub-circle, more than he did to any area except those of the
thieves and the corrupt politicians. Our understanding will
benefit from a closer examination of the punishments and
symbols here.
Those who were violent against God are punished in a desert
circle, where there is only hot sand and a never-ending rain of
fire. The combination of sinners here strikes the modern
student as, at first, incongruous: there are blasphemers,
sodomites, and bankers. Of course bankers deserve to go to
Hell, but why are they grouped with sinners who, relatively
speaking, did so much less damage? Guy P. Raffa explains
that we are to see these three categories as representing direct
violence against God (blasphemy), violence against nature,
which is Gods creation (sodomy), and violence against art or
human industry (usury).61 As we might expect, Blake takes a
different view of these things than Dante does.

382

Figure 41. The Minotaur, watercolor, black ink, graphite,

and black chalk (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum;
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.437; President
and Fellows of Harvard College).

383

Figure 42. The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies

and the Suicides, graphite, ink and watercolor (Tate,
London/Art Resource, New York).

The first illustration for this part of Hell serves as a kind of

orientation. We are not shown a particular moment in the
narrative, but a general view of the circle, showing all three
types of sinners in the postures that Dante has assigned them
(fig. 43). In the distance are the usurers, seated on the ground,
hands raised against the falling flames. The blasphemers are
in the lower left, laid out full-length on the sand.
Blake has emphasized the sodomites most: their figures are
shown much larger at the center of the picture, running from
left to right. The pilgrim stands at right, with Virgil behind
384

him, looking from his safe pathway into the rain of fire. The
fact that Blake has shown a woman as one of the runners is
perhaps an indication that he is not interpreting this group in
the traditional way. Of course women may participate in
sodomy, but sodomites are traditionally described as
homosexual men, and all of the figures the poet mentions in
this circle are male. The Bible never condemns female
homosexuality per se. I will return to this subject in my
discussion of the fourth picture made for this circle.
Canto 14 names as an example of blasphemy a character from
the Roman poet Statiuss epic work the Thebaid. This is
Capaneus, a proud warrior, who refuses to pray to any of the
gods of the Roman pantheon. Durling and Martinez tell us
that in the tenth book of the Thebaid, he is the first to
surmount the walls of Thebes, he disdains its earthly
littleness, challenges Bacchus and Hercules (its patrons) to
defend it, and then, disdaining lesser gods, challenges Jupiter
himself; Jupiter strikes him with a thunderboltanother
instance of fire from Heaven.

385

Figure 43. Dante and Virgil Among the Blasphemers,

watercolor, black ink, graphite, and black chalk (Harvard
Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Bequest of Grenville L.
Winthrop, 1943.433; President and Fellows of Harvard
College).

No doubt Blake noted that when the poet Dante wished to

single out a famous blasphemer, he chose one who had
challenged not the Christian God, but Jupiter. For Blake, this
would be no sin. Certainly the painting of Capaneus hardly
makes him look worthy of condemnation (see fig. 44 in the
color insert). He is a massive, muscular figure whose
expression makes him seem not defiant but long-suffering. He
is not of the patriarchal bearded type that Blake uses to show
either good saints or false gods, as with the God of This

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World in the third illustration to Hell. He seems entirely noble

and bravely enduring his punishment. The pilgrim and Virgil
are pushed to the extreme left of the painting; the rest is
devoted entirely to Capaneus.
This painting appears to be complete. It is one of the most
beautifully painted pictures in the Comedy series, and ranks
among the most skillful watercolors that Blake ever produced.
It shows a dark place lit entirely by burning sands and the
flames emanating from Capaneus himself. Dante doesnt
write that the lightning Jupiter threw continues to strike
Capaneus in the underworld, but Blake has shown it here in
four zigzag streaks. Few paintings in watercolor have ever
achieved the dramatic and otherworldly light that flashes
through this work.
The drama in this work reminds us of a late engraving, from
the set of illustrations to the Book of Job. The eleventh print
in that series (fig. 7) shows Job at his low point, threatened by
lightning and the false God stretched over him, lit from below
by the fires of Hell and grasped at by demons. It is Jobs
turning point. The motto below the picture says, With
Dreams upon my bed thou searest me & affrightest me with
Visions. But the inscription at the top is more reassuring:
The triumphing of the wicked is short, the joy of the
hypocrite is but for a moment[.] We see that Jobs trials will
be, after all, short-lived.
The painting of Capaneus is, similarly, a turning point. This is
the first of the figures in Blakes underworld who retains his
revolutionary fire, who has not locked himself into a body of
dead wood but keeps his eyes upward toward resurrection.
The God who has put him here, after all, is not, for Blake, the
387

true God, but is the God of materiality and morality. It is a

God who should be blasphemed against.
The figure from Blakes personal mythology who comes to
mind here is Orc, the spirit of revolution. Orc is the
enemythe contraryof Urizen, who, in The Four Zoas,
descends to the cave where Orc is entrapped. There, Urizen
finds burning pastures / Round howling Orc whose awful
limbs cast forth red smoke & fire (E 353).
Blake knew from contemporary events that revolution all too
easily turns to blood and its own tyranny. Still, Orc is a
necessary component in freeing man from his fetters.62 In the
Book of Urizen, shortly after Orc is born, he begins to fulfill
his role:
The dead heard the voice of the child
And began to awake from sleep
All things. heard the voice of the child
And began to awake to life [E 80].
In Blakes mythology, only Jesus brings redemption, but Orc
provides the fire that opens the eyes of the sleepers.
I will reiterate here that it would be excessively strict to
pronounce that one character in the Comedy illustrations may
be given a one-to-one correspondence with any of the
characters in Blakes own system. It would be too simple to
say, here, Capaneus is Orc. Even in The Four Zoas, Orc
changes his state and becomes Satan; these characters are
always fluid. The character provides us with a constellation of
forces and tendencies, a state that anyone might pass through
and that reoccurs in history and literature. Capaneus plays the
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role that Orc plays, or serves to introduce the Orc-function

into the Comedy. Thanks to his flames, the revolution may
begin.
Damon writes, Revolution, which clears away ancient errors,
is a conflagration, whether the flames of Orc or the Tyger
burning in the forests of the night.63
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell teaches us,
The ancient tradition that the world will be
consumed in fire at the
end of six thousand years is true. as I have heard
from Hell.
...
the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy
whereas it now
appears finite & corrupt [E 39].
And the Vision of the Last Judgment assures us, Error or
Creation will be Burned Up & / then & not till then Truth or
Eternity will appear (E 565).
It is necessary to be violent, in mental fight, against the false
God of Hell. The fires in the level of Hell where we first meet
the Orcan revolutionaries are therefore not punishments; they
are the passion required to begin ones ascent.

389

Figure 45. The Punishment of Rusticucci and His

Companions, watercolor, black ink, graphite, and black
chalk (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Bequest of
Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.447; President and Fellows
of Harvard College).

We can be sure, then, that when Blake shows the three

running souls who greet the pilgrim in this level, we are not to
condemn them as sodomites (fig. 45). In Dantes text, the
pilgrim is standing on a rocky ledge next to a river of blood,
but Blake has shown a blue-green, lawn-like mound. Dante
describes the three souls who run in a circle as Florentine
noblemen who turn like naked wrestlers, but Blake has drawn
men with such passion of movement that their feet nowhere
touch the ground. Moreover, they are not engulfed in

390

punishing flames but in a kind of whirlpool of light, mostly

colored red but with blue and yellow touches as well. The
pilgrim has a startled look on his face, as if he is shocked by
their energy. The contrast with the forest of the suicides could
not be greater. Those souls were locked into wood, rooted
forever in materiality. In the revolutionary fire of this circle,
however, motion has been restored. As of yet it is not
progressing, moving in unending circles, but this condition
will change soon.
Blakes vision of the land of Beulah, where souls may rest
from the activity of Eden, included the pleasures of sexuality.
Descent to that world meant temporary division into male and
female, so it seems that he shared the opinion of his time that
heterosexuality was the norm. Yet nowhere did he condemn
homosexuality or homosexuals, or pronounce that this was a
state that is worse than others. I think that the three figures
circling in this illustration, then, are not meant to be
condemned for their sodomy, if indeed that act is at all
relevant to Blakes message here. What the fire has freed in
them is the capacity for pleasure. This becomes clear if we
look more closely at lines I have mentioned before:
The ancient tradition that the world will be
consumed in fire at the
end of six thousand years is true. as I have heard
from Hell.
......
the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy
whereas it now
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appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of
sensual enjoyment [E 39].
What these men enjoy is less important than that they can
enjoy. The world (of materiality) is being consumed in fire,
and the three running men are experiencing an improvement
of enjoyment.
Compared to the paintings of Capaneus and the Florentine
noblemen, it seems that Blake had little interest in the usurers.
The illustration devoted to them shows them seated on the
sands with money bags around their necks, as Dante describes
them, but the design for this picture is unremarkable and it is
only lightly sketched. After the exhilaration of the previous
two pictures, a return to these souls is an anticlimaxthey are
rooted to the ground, still in love with the material world, and
far from finding the sensual enjoyment necessary to progress.
Earlier in the circle of the violent, the pilgrim asks about the
origin of the rivers in Hell. This requires a digression about a
statue that Virgil says is located in Crete, but which Dante has
drawn from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament.
Of finest gold
His head is shaped, pure silver are the breast
And arms, thence to the middle is of brass,
And downward all beneath well-tempered steel,
Save the right foot of potters clay, on which
Than on the other more erect he stands
[Hell, 14; Cary, 61].

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The prophet Daniel interprets the figure from

Nebuchadnezzars dream as symbolizing five successive
kingdoms, each weaker than the one before (Daniel 2:3645).
Dante has blended the biblical story with Ovids allegory of
the four ages of history from his Metamorphoses. The earliest
age, symbolized by gold, was the best, and conditions have
worsened now to the point where our own time has at least
one foot of clay. Dante has added a feature that is present in
neither of his sources: a crack that runs from one foot up
through the whole figure, except for the golden head. From
this crack flow tears that run together to form the four rivers
of Hell. The details of Dantes symbol have been variously
interpreted, but in general it is believed to represent moral
decline through the ages, with the stronger leg symbolizing
the empire and the weaker the Church.
We have seen that Blake holds the prophets of the Old
Testament to be the models of all art, so we have no reason to
think he would reject Daniels image or feel the need for
major reinterpretation. Given the multiple layers that Blakes
symbols may carry, though, we can suggest that this one also
refers to his own system of four levels or states.
The highest of Blakes levels, Eden, is represented by the sun,
the planet that is traditionally associated with gold. It is also
the location of mental fight, where the imagination holds
sway in its purest form, and may therefore be assigned to the
head. The next level, Beulah, is associated with the moon,
whose metal is silver. Lesser metals and clay would be
appropriate for the lower two levels of the system (fig. 46).
In both The Four Zoas and Jerusalem Blake mentions the
four rivers of Eden, which he connected with the Four Zoas
393

themselves.64 If he sees the golden head as a symbol of Eden,

and the four rivers originating there, not in Hell, it may
explain why Blake has chosen not to show the statue as
cracked in this picture but to have the tears emanate, more
logically, from the eyes. If this is so, and the tears flow down
from Eden to pass through the four levels and pool at the feet
of the statue, we may see the rivers of Hell as fallen versions
of the rivers of Eden. They, too, have descended to a lower
state, to form the bloody swamps of the underworld.

394

Figure 46. The Symbolic Figure of the Course of Human

History Described by Virgil, pen and ink and watercolor
395

over pencil (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,

Felton Bequest, 1920 [9983]).

Geryon
The drop between the circle of the violent and the next level
of Hell is too steep and high for the pilgrim to travel on his
own. To make this descent, he must ride on the fantastic
creature Geryon, a sort of chimera assembled from a mans
face, animal claws, the body of a serpent, and the sting of a
scorpion. His sympathetic facial expression is belied by the
monstrous rear parts, a combination that shows him to be
representative of fraud or malice, the sins that are punished in
the lower part of Hell. Whereas the sinners in the upper half
were damned for their inability to control basic desires, those
below consciously used their reason to deceive or seduce.
Blakes Geryon is depicted in a way that accurately follows
the poets description (fig. 47). His face is exaggeratedly
sincere-looking, his body properly convoluted, and the sting
in the tail appropriately dangerous. The pilgrim is seated on
his shoulders with Virgil behind, just as the narrative
describes. Though he is shown as he descends through the air,
there is no sense of motion in the picture. The sky is blue, but
flames rise from below.
Is this chimera a partial reintegration? Have the beasts of
passion, separated from the observer because of their
frightening nature, begun the process of rejoining with the
body? If so, it is too soon in the Comedy for the process to be

396

completed. The levels of Malebolge and Cocytus below

contain more monsters and more suffering.

Seducers and Flatterers

The eighth circle of Hell is divided into ten concentric valleys
or ditches. Each of these is devoted to a particular kind of sin,
though all fall under the heading of simple fraud: the
intentional use of untruth for ones own gain. Dante has
coined the name Malebolge for this circle, apparently from
the Italian for evil pouches.65 With one exception, the
ditches are crossed by bridges, so that the pilgrim and his
guide can observe the sinners from above. Geryon deposits
them at the outer edge of the circle, and they slowly make
their way across the bridges inward.
Dante describes the first ditch clearly. It contains the souls
who deceived through pandering or through seduction, and
these move along in opposite directions at the bottom of the
ditch, like cars on a divided highway. Horned demons are
stationed along the rocky boundary of the ditch and lash the
souls to make them walk faster. Blake has labeled the
illustration for this scene HELL Canto 18, but he has
introduced so many extra-textual elements into the picture
that without the inscription we would not be sure where in the
eighth circle the scene is supposed to take place (fig. 48). The
ditch seems to be full of red water, a feature of other parts of
Hell but one that is not mentioned in the description of the
first part of Malebolge.

397

Figure 47. Geryon Conveying Dante and Virgil down

Towards Malebolge, pen and ink and watercolor over
pencil and black chalk (National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [9993]).

398

Figure 48. Demons Tormenting the Seducers of Malebolge,

watercolor, black ink, graphite, and black chalk (Harvard
Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Bequest of Grenville L.
Winthrop, 1943.436; President and Fellows of Harvard
College).

The souls are not walking at the bottom of the ditch but along
its edges, and some seem to be escaping, climbing up the
ridge and away. They move only right to left, not in two
directions as the text states. And despite the fact that both of
the souls named by Dante are male, most if not all of the
figures in the illustration seem to be female, which of course
is not the way we normally imagine a group of pimps. There
are two bridges over the water. The demons punishing the
souls are shown flying, which is not indicated in the text.
399

Blake has also introduced two large and puzzling figures in

the bottom left corner of the picture. These are outlined in ink
and tinted with gray wash, but they are still too roughly drawn
to be clear in structure, much less in symbolic meaning. The
nearer one seems to be human. Roe reads him as a man
wearing armor and holding a sword, though this is not certain.
The farther one, or perhaps more than one, is a Bosch-like
monster of uncertain composition. It seems to have
grasshopper-like legs, bat wings, and a head that is not
human. Roe sees its face as pointed to the human figures
neck like a vampire, but since we cant determine how the
beast is constructed, this too is unclearelements may be
eyes or ears or neither.
Something scaly, which may be the beasts tail or a third
creature, lies at left, just in front of the pilgrim and Virgil.
Beyond we can see chains and gears or other machine parts.
We have seen often enough that Blake could follow the
written description of scenes when he wanted to, so I think we
are forced to conclude that he had his own reasons for
introducing so many changes into this illustration.
The painting of this first level of Malebolge may be divided
diagonally, into a Hellish, gray section at the left and a
lighter-toned, less gloomy right side. The gray side, where the
pilgrim and Virgil stand, includes the moribund and
monstrous figures. The presence of these, and of the cogs and
chains that Blake habitually uses to indicate the mechanical,
Newtonian universe, shows us that this part of the eighth
circle is still bound to materiality, in a fallen state. The larger,
lighter section, shows a different condition. The water with
which Blake has filled the ditch reminds us of the Sea of
400

Time and Spacethat oceanic material world. The fact that

the souls on this side are not in the bottom of the ditch, but
are escaping to the upper left, means that some people here
have managed to free themselves from the Sea. We have seen
that unfallen souls are traditionally described as female or as
androgynous, so their appearance here, which is incompatible
with Dantes text, reinforces this view. Yet these souls are not
rising in majesty; they are fleeing the demons, who raise their
sticks to strike. From this I think we must conclude that the
escaping souls are like Thel; they are escaping materiality not
through transcending it but by fleeing back to an earlier,
innocent condition. Because most of the illustrations show the
pilgrims progress as moving from left to right, the souls
movement to the left here indicates a backwards motion.
Paradoxically, then, these are souls who will not get to Eden
in this journey, while the recumbent figure on the lower left
may still awake to rise in the proper direction, with the help
of Christ. The message seems to be that even souls who have
made it this far towards redemption are not guaranteed to
finish their journey in the right direction. If there is any
connection at all to Dantes categorization of souls, it is that
the fleeing people are here seduced into an easier path, rather
than the harder one that must be endured by those who
continue. The next illustration shows one of these fleeing
souls, chased by a wingless demon with a whip, in the upper
left. The pilgrim and Virgil are crouching over the ditch and
holding their noses because the souls punished below are
submerged in excrement. The female figure at right is
probably the only individual here mentioned by name, the
Roman prostitute Thas.

401

Shit was another symbol of materiality. Showing souls

submerged in it, as in the Sea of Time and Space, indicates
that the soul is still in our lower world.

Simonists and Necromancers

Though Dante and Blake differed in many aspects of their
religion, both felt that the church of their own day had strayed
so far from Christs true message that its teachings could be
described as upside down. In the third bolgia, Dante goes so
far as to show Pope Nicholas III (12771280) feet-up in the
ditch of the simonists and makes it clear that another,
Boniface VIII, will soon join him. Blake, as an antinomian
Protestant, had even less use for popes, and was not shy about
criticizing the established British church, either. We can see
his views of the official church in his parody of the Lords
Prayer, written in the margins of a translation of the Greek
original by Robert Thornton, a Cambridge physician. (Blakes
text was not written for publication; it contains numerous
changes and additions.)
Our Father Augustus Caesar who art in these thy
<Substantial Astronomical Telescopic> Heavens
Holiness to thy Name <or Title & reverence to thy
Shadow> Thy Kingship come upon Earth first &
thence in Heaven Give us day by day our Real
Taxed <Substantial Money bought> Bread [& take]
<deliver from the Holy Ghost <so we call Nature>
whatever cannot be Taxed> [debt that was owing to
him] <for all is debts & Taxes between Caesar & us

402

& one another> lead us not to read the Bible <but let
our Bible be Virgil & Shakspeare> & deliver us
from Poverty in Jesus <that Evil one> For thine is
the Kingship <or Allegoric Godship> & the Power
or War & the Glory or Law Ages after Ages in thy
Descendents <for God is only an Allegory of Kings
& nothing Else> Amen [E 669]
This parody does not specifically accuse the church of
simony, which involves the purchase of church offices, but
does flip head-to-toe everything Blake believed about true
religion.
The watercolor of the simonist pope shows, at top, Virgil
carrying the pilgrim (see fig. 49 in the color insert). This is
because the pair have left the ridge overlooking the ditch and
descended to its lowest point in order to observe the souls in it
more closely. Virgil offers to carry the pilgrim on the more
dangerous path. The damned soul is shown here, as in Dantes
text, with his feet protruding from a fiery well, a sort of
Hellish baptismal font. Blake has made this well partially
transparent, so that we can see the full figure of the pope
inside it, although the painting doesnt show the numerous
other souls who Dante says are crushed underneath the
topmost figure.
A similar reversal is shown in the next watercolor, which
shows the souls who practiced divination or necromancy and
are punished in the fourth bolgia (fig. 50). Because these
souls attempted to see ahead, into the future, in an illegitimate
way, their punishment is to have their heads turned
backwards. As they walk forward, they face only where they
have come from. As with the simonists, Blake never singles
403

out such diviners for blame in his work. Still, he is as

incensed as Dante by those who, he feels, have reversed
Gods order.
Dante names six diviners here, four from the world of
classical myth and two from his own age. It is significant that
Blake portrays only the four from the ancient world: he has
chosen not to follow Dante in condemning the more recent
seers because they were Christian visionaries, not entirely
different from Boehme or Blake himself. The only figure in
the illustration we can identify with certainty is Manto, the
daughter of Tiresias, because Blake shows her as clearly
female with an upswept classical hairstyle. Dante names only
one woman diviner in the canto. The other three figures are
shown with long beards, as the patriarchal type of character
whom Blake so often used to indicate false belief.

404

Figure 50. The Necromancers and Augurs, pen and ink

and watercolor over pencil and black chalk (National
405

Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920

[10013]).

We have seen repeatedly that Blake believed Gods truth was

delivered to the Hebrew prophets but was then stolen and
distorted by the Greeks and Romans. He has used this
watercolor to reiterate that position; in this picture the
damned souls are not necessarily condemned for being seers
but for putting topsy-turvy Gods true order. In this as in the
picture of the upside-down pope, Blake agrees with Dante on
the theme, and is happy to borrow the symbolism, though the
strict definition of the sin punishedsimony or
divinationis less important to Blake than the more general
corruption of true religion.

Corrupt Public Officials

Blake made eight paintings of the next part of Malebolge, the
ditch containing the corrupt public officials. The large
number of illustrations devoted to only two cantos may reflect
the artists frustration with the powerful people in his world,
but it is likely due as well to the colorful events and
characters Dante includes in this episode. The devils who
punish the souls here are portrayed in more detail than
elsewhere in the Comedy, and their antics provide the poem
with its only humor. The modern sense of the word comedy
is applicable only to this section. If we recall the sly humor of
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where the devils

406

arguments persuade the angels to burst into flame, we can see

why Blake would be attracted to the lively demons here.
For the most part, the illustrations follow the events of the
poem. The pilgrim and Virgil see a newly arrived soul carried
on the back of a devil and thrown into the boiling pitch that
fills the bolgia. The devils do their best to torment the souls
submerged in the pitch, but they fight among themselves, and
two of their number end up in the hot tar cooked like tempura.
The chief devil assigns a cohort of his lieutenants to
accompany the pilgrim on his way, but in the end Dante and
Virgil hurry away while the devils are distracted.
Blakes pictures for these scenes may be interpreted along the
lines we have developed already in this book: being
submerged in another unpleasant substance stands for our
incorporation into the material world, and the torments
inflicted by the devils represent the troubles we face in this
life. The devils themselves are our passions and desires, all
the things that we have projected into the world from within
ourselves and lost the ability to control, because we no longer
recognize them as our own. Nothing in the illustrations here
specifically ties the punishments or the punished to men in
public life; no individual is recognizable as a bureaucrat or
politician. In Blakes version of the Comedy as in Dantes,
this episode is largely the opportunity for a recapitulation of
themes and some comic relief.

407

Figure 51. The Devils Under the Bridge, pen and ink and
watercolor over black chalk and pencil (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10003]).

Only one illustration from among these eight includes an

element that we would not expect to find in any other artists
depiction of these scenes (fig. 51). Confusingly, Blake has
labeled this picture HELL Canto 18, though it clearly
belongs to the area described in cantos 21 and 22. In the
foreground are four devils, one of whom is attempting to
hook a soul whose head and shoulders are above the level of
the pitch. Other figures can be seen on the opposite shore and
on an arching bridge in the distance. The painting also
includes a rocky arch that begins as a column-like structure in
the lower left foreground of the picture and curves along the

408

top edge to the right. What makes the stone remarkable is that
Blake has shown it as composed of human parts, oversized
and ordered randomly. There is a foot at the base of the
column, but directly above that is a face, above that an
abdomen, an ear, and another foot. Perched above the ear is
another figure lightly sketched who is the same size as the
soul in the pitch. This rocky composite of body parts
corresponds to nothing in the text, though a similar rocky
column appears in one of the later illustrations.
Blake began his pictures with very rough pencil lines, loosely
sketched. One wonders if in this stone column he is
opportunistically emphasizing accidents of drawing, finding
pictures of body parts in his almost-random first draft as one
sees shapes in clouds, or as Leonardo recommended artists
throw a paint-soaked rag at a wall to imagine landscapes. The
presence of body parts can also be accounted for, as Roe
does, by recalling that The Four Zoas speaks of the scatterd
portions of fallen Albions immortal body (E 385), or how
the Book of Los describes
The Immortal stood frozen amidst
The vast rock of eternity; times
And times; a night of vast durance:
Impatient, stifled, stiffend, hardned [E 92].
Blake chose to engrave two of the watercolor designs for this
bolgia. One shows the soul Ciampolo, who has been lifted out
of the tar (fig. 52). In a particularly painful-looking scene, we
see the devil Libicocco hook Ciampolo:

409

darting forth a prong, [Libicocco] seized on his arm,

And mangled bore away the sinewy part
[Hell, 22; Cary, 94].
Cary leaves the devils names untranslated, perhaps out of
tact; Libicoccos name means Love Notch. In Blakes
picture, Libicoccos chin has a notch-like cleft, indicating that
the artist didnt depend entirely on Carys translation for
understanding. The devil at the back shows the characteristics
of Ciriatto (Big Pig), from whose mouth a tusk / Issued on
either side, as from a boar. The one in front is identifiable as
Barbariccia (Curly Beard). The fourth devil in the scene is
mostly obscured by the others wings, but his eager, upturned
expression means he is probably Rubicant (Ruby Face).
The detail Blake has given to this engraving, and the apparent
pleasure he had in making it, makes us regret that he didnt
have time to create more of the prints for the series. Although
some of the more colorful watercolors would not have
benefited from being translated into the black and white
medium, a comparison of the sketch of the four devils with its
engraving shows how much of Blakes drawing would have
been more fully worked out in a completed print (figs. 52,
53). The background has more depth, the ground has more
detail, and the Michelangelesque bodies are more solidly
drawn. The ink lines with red tinting in the sketch give us the
main idea of the devils placement, but in the engraving their
personalities and expressions are masterfully shown. We see
that these are not conventional scary devils but smug,
duplicitous types. They are enjoying their jobs and take a
warm pleasure in pulling peoples biceps out. Their attitudes
remind us once again that, as the Songs of Experience
showed, the evil we do is as often as not based on the feeling
410

that we are doing what God wishes. If the devils are indeed
meant to be externalized portions from our own souls, these
unbearable portions may include smugness and
self-righteousness.
The second engraving from this episode shows the two devils
fighting each otherboth Alichino (Harlequin) and
Calcabrina (Trample Frost) are about to fall into the pitch.
This engraving is less finished than the previous one. The
devils upraised arms and the figures in the upper left quarter
are all left as rough outlines (fig. 54).
We catch a final glimpse of the comedic devils at the top of
the next illustration, as the pilgrim eludes them and they fly
back to their own bolgia. Now Dante has reached the circle of
the hypocrites, who walk under the weight of gilded lead
robes. Each time they complete the circumference of the
bolgia, they trample the soul of Caiaphas, who is crucified flat
on the ground. Caiaphas, the Jewish leader who (Dante
thought) had hypocritically voted to condemn Christ in order
to silence criticism of his own misdeeds, is a figure of Blakes
patriarchal type. Here again, this type is used to portray an
example of the worldly, false representatives of God, whose
outward appearance may fool the unwary.

411

The Demons Tormenting Ciampolo the Barrator,

watercolor, black ink, graphite, and black chalk (Harvard
Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Bequest of Grenville L.
Winthrop, 1943.446; President and Fellows of Harvard
College).

412

Figure 53. Ciampolo the Barrator Tormented by the Devils,

engraving (collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013 William
Blake Archive; used by permission).

413

Figure 54. The Baffled Devils Fighting, engraving

(collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013 William Blake
Archive; used by permission).

Thieves and Snakes

The level below the hypocrites is one of the most important in
Blakes reworking of Dantes Hell. This is due not so much to
the sin punished herethieverybut to the type of
punishment involved. Sinners here are repeatedly
metamorphosed from human form into snakes, and back
again.

414

The association of snakes with stealing is of course an

obvious one: the very first sin was the theft of a piece of fruit
at the instigation of a serpent. Exactly why the thieves
transform into snakes, rather than being just bitten by them or
otherwise tormented, has inspired several explanations by
scholars. One suggests that because a persons property may
be considered an extension of his body, theft of that property
deserves the loss of ones own body as reciprocal
punishment.66 Similarly, Nicole Pinsky sees the merging or
interchange of snake body with human body as a symbol that
these thieves who ignored the boundary of thine and mine in
life now merge as shades, their shells of personal identity
made horribly permeable.67
Dante has also included this grotesque bodily change as a
direct challenge to his literary forebears. Much of the Comedy
can be seen as a reply to earlier epics or as a poets attempt to
live up to or outdo his peers, and canto 25 makes this a direct
challenge. The narrator invokes both Lucan and Ovid, and
announces that neither of them had sung of such a strange
metamorphosis as Dante will now describe. Both of these
poets had written of snakes and people transformed: Lucan, in
the Pharsalia, told of Catos soldiers attacked by serpents in
the Libyan desert, and Ovid described the transformation of
Cadmus into a giant snake. Dante aims to outdo them:
Lucan in mute attention now may hear,
Nor thy disastrous fate, Sabellus, tell,
Nor thine, Nasidius. Ovid now be mute.
What if in warbling fiction he record
Cadmus and Arethusa, to a snake
Him changed, and her into a fountain clear,
I envy not; for never face to face
415

Two natures thus transmuted did he sing,

Wherein both shapes were ready to assume
The others substance
[Hell, 25; Cary, 107].
I have never heard it suggested that Dante here names his
sources in order to avoid charges of literary theft, but he does
seem to be enjoying the challenge of his models and may
have chosen the snake imagery partly for that reason.
Dante has at least these three sources in mind, then, when he
describes snakes and thievery. Others may have been
available to him, though he doesnt refer to them directly. For
example, he knew the Timaeus of Plato only in an incomplete
Latin translation or through other authors paraphrases,68 so it
isnt clear whether he knew of Platos assertion that animals
are reincarnations of unintellectual people and that those
animals who lack feet contain the souls of the most foolish.
The race of wild pedestrian animals, again, came
from those who had no philosophy in any of their
thoughts, and never considered at all about the
nature of the heavens, because they had ceased to
use the courses of the head, but followed the
guidance of those parts of the soul which are in the
breast. And the most foolish of them, who trail
their bodies entirely upon the ground and have no
longer any need of feet, he made without feet to
crawl upon the earth.69
Later Neoplatonists, writing after Dantes time, found it easy
enough to blend this theory of Plato with the verses in
Genesis showing that the serpent had legs until it was cursed
416

by God: upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat
all the days of thy life (Genesis 3:14).
By the time Blake was working, several writers had
demonstrated that the dust to which the snakes had been
cursed was the hyle of the material world. Thomas Vaughan,
an alchemist and philosopher in the Neoplatonic tradition,
describes matter as a serpent in his 1651 book Lumen de
Lumine, or New Magical Light. He illustrates this definition
with a mythical animal that is part rooster, part snake. And a
source even closer to Blake, Jacob Bryants New System: Or,
an Analysis of Antient Mythology, records that in the ritual of
Zoroaster, the great expanse of the heavens, and even nature
itself, was described under the symbol of a serpent.70 So the
association of snakes with evil, and of evil with the material
world, was established in numerous sources Blake knew.
Blakes own work makes frequent use of serpents, in a way
which we can apply directly to his Comedy illustrations. In
his Everlasting Gospel, he alludes to Genesis when he
writes:
Dust & Clay is the Serpents meat
Which never was made for Man to Eat [E 523]
And in the same poem he gives the snake a Neoplatonic
meaning by referring to The Serpent Bulk of Natures dross
(E 524). In Milton, the serpent or reptile appears as a symbol
of the souls narrowing down to the limited perceptions that
follow the Fall.
Ah shut in narrow doleful form
Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the
417

ground
The Eye of Man a little narrow orb closd up & dark
[E 99]
In Jerusalem, when inspiration becomes impossible due to the
Fall, and reason takes over mans thoughts, the reasoning is
serpent-like.
For Bacon & Newton sheathd in dismal steel, their
terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion, Reasonings like
vast Serpents
Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute
articulations [E 159]
Nature can be depicted as a serpent:
Luvah & Vala
Went down the Human Heart where Paradise & its
joys abounded
In jealous fears in fury & rage, & like flames rolld
round their fervid feet
And the vast form of Nature like a Serpent playd
before them
[E 328]
as can the Selfhood, as when Albion beholds
the Visions of my deadly Sleep of Six Thousand
Years
Dazling around thy skirts like a Serpent of precious
stones & gold
I know it is my Self [E 255].
418

Jerusalem expands on the three lines from Milton quoted

above, tying together laws of morality, the Selfhood, Satan,
and the narrowed world of reptile perception:
O Spectre over Europe and Asia
Withering the Human Form by Laws of Sacrifice for
Sin
By Laws of Chastity & Abhorrence I am witherd up.
Striving to Create a Heaven in which all shall be
pure & holy
In their Own Selfhoods, in Natural Selfish Chastity
to banish Pity
And dear Mutual Forgiveness; & to become One
Great Satan
Inslavd to the most powerful Selfhood: to murder
the Divine Humanity
In whose sight all are as the dust & who chargeth his
Angels with folly!
Ah! Weak & wide astray! Ah shut in narrow doleful
form!
Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the
ground!
The Eye of Man, a little narrow orb, closd up &
dark,
Scarcely beholding the Great Light; conversing with
the [Void]
[E 198]
Of course we should remember that narrowed perception, the
Selfhood, and the laws of nature and of morality, are not
separate issues for Blake. The former is what gives us the
illusion that the latter two exist. So the appearance of the
serpent in Blakes work refers to all of these things: the state
419

of being that is as close to the ground, the lowest point, as we

can possibly be. The curse God places on the snake is not
only to eat dust, but to be joined to dust, and to perceive
virtually no more than dust.
Orc, the spirit of revolution, is also transformed into serpent
form in The Four Zoas, but in his case the symbolism may be
different. When he is overcome by Urizen and changes from a
force of liberation to one of enslavement (as many revolutions
do) he becomes a snake (E 356), loses all semblance to
humanity, and encircles Man with the twenty-seven folds of
the false heavens or churches.71 Yet, as so often with Blakes
symbols, there is some ambiguity here. Paley points out,
Orcs complexity is increased by the fact that his
serpent form is not a mere evil aspect but is itself
ambiguous, suggesting renewal as well as finitude.
Erasmus Darwin observed that the serpent was an
ancient symbol for renovated youth and that a
serpent was wrapped round the large hieroglyphic
egg in the temple of Dioscuri, as an emblem of the
renewal of life from a state of death.72
Serpents who shed their skins are symbols of rebirth, and of
course the Ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail, is the
symbol of eternal return.73
So we see that the snake is one of the most deeply rooted as
well as one of the most multivalent symbols available to
Blake. The appearance of the snakes in cantos 24 and 25,
nearing the end of the pilgrims trip through Hell, gives Blake
the opportunity to put them to good use, symbolically and
pictorially.
420

There are eleven illustrations for the level of the thieves, more
than for any other part of Hell. Two of these are very roughly
sketched views of the pilgrim and Virgil approaching or
leaving this ditch in Malebolge. These pictures correspond to
the first part of canto 24, before the snakes appear, in which
Virgil urges the pilgrim not to tire on his difficult journey.
Two more watercolors labeled HELL Canto 24 follow
Dantes descriptions closely. When the pilgrim can first look
down into the bolgia where the thieves are, he sees that
Amid this dread exuberance of woe
Ran naked spirits wingd with horrid fear,
......
With serpents were their hands behind them bound,
Which through their reins infixd the tail and head,
Twisted in folds before
[Hell, 24; Cary, 102].
Four of the five people in the foreground of Blakes
watercolor are tied up in this way, though only one is running.
And if we compare the illustration to the text, we see that one
part of Dantes description hasnt been shown, probably due
to Carys rather vague wording. The hands of the souls are
described as being tied behind their backs, but the snakes
heads and tails are then twisted between the persons legs to
make a knot in front. The Italian reads:
con serpi le man dietro avean legate;
quelle ficcavan per le ren la coda
el capo, ed eran dinanzi aggroppate [9496].

421

Robert Pinsky translates this as:

Their hands were tied
Behind their backswith snakes, that thrust
between
Where the legs meet, entwining tail and head
Into a knot at front.74
Even if Blake had completed the outlines of the snakes that
tie the souls, he has not left room in the drawing to show them
passing through the legs as Dante describes (fig. 55).
Flaxman, in his illustrations for the Comedy, also omits this
detail.75
Blake has shown, in addition to the bound figures Dante
describes, a female figure on the ground at left with a snake
wrapped around her waist. Behind her is a kind of composite
character, with a snakes tail and head but with wings and a
womans torso. Another winged snake shoots straight into the
air above her. At right, in the distant background, we see a
devil tossing a soul off of a cliff, into the ditch, a detail
unmentioned in the text. Another element Blake adds
throughout his pictures of this bolgia are flamesDante
doesnt mention that the souls here are tormented by fire as
well as snakes. The figures of Virgil and the pilgrim dont
appear in this first watercolor of snakes and souls, nor in the
next, the painting of a man being bitten in the neck.

422

Figure 55. The Thieves and Serpents, pen and ink and
watercolor over pencil and black chalk (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10043]).

And lo! On one

Near to our side, darted an adder up,
And, where the neck is on the shoulders tied,
Transpierced him
[Hell, 24; Cary, 103].
Immediately following the bite, the soul burns to a pile of
ashes, but just as quickly reassembles himself, leaving him
dazed. Blake has not shown the moment of burning or of
reassembling, though between the souls feet is a line of
flames, perhaps rising to consume him.

423

The pilgrim recognizes this soul as Vanni Fucci, a thief from

Pistoia who had been hung for stealing from a church in 1293.
After a short conversation between the two Italians, Vanni
Fucci curses God and makes an obscene gesture toward
Heaven, which Blake has rendered accurately in the next
watercolor (fig. 56). This picture does show the pilgrim and
Virgil at right, looking suitably discomfited by Vanni Fuccis
blasphemy. Blake has also added a blue bolt of lightning at
left and six tongues of flame aimed down toward the sinner
from the sky, details not in the text but appropriate responses
to Vanni Fuccis action. Exactly as Dante describes, two
snakes have reacted to the thiefs gesture by wrapping
themselves around his neck and arms. Others are
approaching. Dante compares Vanni Fuccis blasphemy to
Capaneus, the warrior against Thebes, whom we saw in the
circle of those who were violent to God.
I did not mark,
Through all the gloomy circles of the abyss,
Spirit, that swelld so proudly gainst his God;
Not him, who headlong fell from Thebes
[Hell, 25; Cary, 105].
And as in the case of Capaneus, we may wonder if Blakes
attitude to Vanni Fucci is the same as Dantes. Again, the
God to whom the thief is gesturing is not the true God, but the
God of This World, who enabled theft by dividing up
property in the first place. Fuccis heroic appearance and the
zigzag blue flame, a feature of the Capaneus illustration as
well, allow us to see the two figures in similar terms, as
Orc-like heroes who have nearly enough energy to escape
their punishment. Appearing later in the canticle, the thief is
standing and gesturing with more vehemence than Capaneus,
424

who was unable to rise from the burning sand. The snakes
still prevent Fuccis rise, but the pilgrim is nearing the
deepest portion of Hell (or highest portion, according to
Blakes map) and will soon find the means of egress.
At this moment the travelers are approached by Cacus, a
centaur whose mane consists of snakes and on whose
shoulders a winged dragon rides. The other centaurs of myth
were employed above, in the circle of upper Hell reserved for
the violent, but Cacus is placed here because he is famous for
having stolen cattle from Herculess herd. Blakes picture of
him is like a majestic equestrian monument; the centaur kicks
his forelegs in the air, with his arms and the wings of his
dragon outspread. His face is bearded and patriarchal, but his
expression is not evil or frightening. He is carrying a sort of
staff with a round head, not mentioned by the narrator. The
picture is only done in pencil, with a bit of ink on the outlines
and gray wash. A few souls or snakes are faintly visible under
Cacuss feet.

425

426

Figure 56. Vanni Fucci Making Figs Against God, pen

and ink and watercolor (National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10053]).

Now three souls draw near to the pilgrim, who overhears their
Italian, and pauses to watch them undergo two of the most
remarkable transformations in the Comedy. A six-legged
snake throws itself at one of the three souls, named Agnello
Brunelleschi. The snake grips his arms, waist, and legs in its
claws, wraps its tail through his legs, and bites his face. The
two beings then melt together, the line between them blurring,
and become a kind of horrible human/snake composite. Then
another of the souls, Buoso de Donati, is bitten by a small
snake, and with smoke issuing from both the serpents mouth
and the mans wound, the two change their statesthe snake
turns into a human, Guercio de Cavalcanti, and Buoso
becomes a snake. Dante describes in detail the physical
changes involved in this metamorphosis.
The serpent split his train
Divided to a fork, and the pierced spirit
Drew close his steps together, legs and thighs
Compacted, that no sign of juncture soon
Was visible: the tail, disparted, took
The figure which the spirit lost; its skin
Softening, his indurated to a rind.
The shoulders next I markd, that entering joind
The monsters arm-pits, whose two shorter feet
So lengthend, as the others dwindling shrunk.
The feet behind then twisting up became
That part that man conceals, which in the wretch
427

Was cleft in twain

[Hell, 25; Cary, 107].
Flaxman did not illustrate this scene, but Blake has not
missed the chance to show such strange transformations (fig.
57). He depicts the six-legged serpent gripping Agnello
Brunelleschi from behind, head curled over his shoulder to
bite him in the face. Flames shoot up in the background,
echoing the form of the snakes upward-pointing wings. The
horror of the image is tempered somewhat by the several
cartoonish snakes on the ground. The pilgrim and Virgil stand
at the left, slightly above ground level, and are balanced at
right by the other two souls, who watch the transformation
with terrified expressions.
In the next painting, which does not include the human
onlookers, we see Agnello in his post-transformation
condition (fig. 58). He still has the muscular,
Michelangelesque body of most of Blakes nudes, but it is
bloated into a grotesque exaggeration, scales on his skin,
claws on his toes, and spiky wings on his shoulders. A green
tail issues from his upper back. His head is thrown back in a
horrifying expression of mindless shock.
The change of Buoso de Donati and Guercio de Cavalcanti
is shown in before-and-after paintings. The pilgrim, Virgil,
and one inhabitant of this level look on in the moment after
Guercio has bitten Buoso. There is an arc of smoke
connecting the serpents mouth and the wound in Buosos
abdomen. Buoso is looking at the snake with anger and has
thrown his hands in the air, perhaps knowing what horrible
thing will happen next (fig. 59).

428

Figure 57. The Six-Footed Serpent Attacking Agnello

Brunelleschi, engraving (collection of Robert N. Essick;
2013 William Blake Archive; used by permission).

429

Figure 58. Agnello de Brunelleschi of Florence Being

Transformed into a Serpent, watercolor, black ink,
graphite, and black chalk (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg
Museum; Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.432;
President and Fellows of Harvard College).

The completed transformation is shown, again, without

onlookers in the following watercolor; Guercio is standing at
left in human form, while Buoso is lightly sketched as a snake
on the ground. The background shows only hills and flames.

430

Figure 59. The Serpent Attacking Buoso Donati, engraving

(collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013 William Blake
Archive; used by permission).

One more illustration shows the thieves and the snakes,

though it seems not to depict any particular moment in the
narration. This is a monumental watercolor of seven souls
sunk to the ground, with snakes crawling on or near them (fig.
60). In mood, it is unlike the rest of the entire series of
Comedy illustrationsthe massive bodies resemble Picassos
neoclassical nudes more than they do the other figures in
Blakes work, and the blue-grey tones, with only touches of
orange on the snakes, are unlike the multicolored paintings of
the other scenes from this bolgia.

431

Our interpretation of the pictures of this bolgia fits with the

analysis we have offered so far. The association of snakes
with dust and materiality was, its safe to say, more important
to Blake then their connection to thievery, so we see again
that the scenes from this bolgia are intended as a part of the
dusty material world. The threat offered to the human souls
by frightening animals, as weve seen before, is a separation
of interior passions from the human psyche, an agon that
forces the original division of subject and object in the
universe. Previous glimpses of beasts, however, have not
shown either the moments of separation from the observing
souls or the moments in which reintegration occurs. The souls
in this bolgia and their snakes introduce this theme.
Eventually, if a soul is to leave this lowest condition, of
materiality and separation, a reunification of all its parts will
be essential. The exuberances and guilty pleasures we feel
must no longer be feared so much that we project them away
from us, onto the world. Serpents, if we perceive them, will
no longer be terrifying, because it will be clear that they are
the products of our own imaginationsas is, in fact,
everything. The souls in this bolgia are undergoing, at an
accelerated pace, the division and reintegration that
constitutes the cycle of death into the world and rebirth into
Eden. Unfortunately, their methods and understanding are
premature. The attempted reintegrations take place wholly
within the lower world, and entirely in a material way. This is
the reintegration that a person who has not adequately shed
the Selfhood might attempt. The result, instead of true
freedom from the world of dross, results in a grotesque, like
Agnello Brunelleschi, neither wholly man nor wholly beast.

432

Figure 60. The Punishment of the Thieves, chalk, ink and

watercolor on paper (Tate, London/Art Resource, New
York).

For Blake, as a Christian, the real resurrection from the world

of death-in-life is only through Christ. That salvation will
come only after the pilgrim has reached the end of his
journey, gathered the four Zoas into one unified body, and
risen to Eternity. The futile attempts Blake shows in Hell,
therefore, we can consider nonChristian attempts at
salvation; material, scientific attempts, still under the sign of
reason. What, specifically, might we name as doomed
real-life attempts, from this point of view? One component of
fallen society that Blake thinks little of is formal education. It
is a system in which the student who is an Ox and the student
433

who is a Lion are constrained under one rule to produce the

results that their law-giving instructor has predetermined. In
the Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake had
remembered the plight of the schoolboy:
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.
But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day,
In sighing and dismay.
Ah! Then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour.
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learnings bower,
Worn thro with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy,
Sit in a cage and sing.
How can a child when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring.
O! father & mother, if buds are nipd,
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are stripd
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and cares dismay,
How shall the summer arise in joy.
Or the summer fruits appear,
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy
434

Or bless the mellowing year,

When the blasts of winter appear [E 31].
Decades later, when his imagery had grown bolder, we can
imagine Blake depicting such a suppression of exuberant
souls not as birds in cages but in the more original and
striking image of hands bound with serpents. A later notebook
puts the idea concisely. To condemn the fools who took the
advice of a schoolmaster such as Joshua Reynolds, Blake
wrote:
You say their Pictures well Painted be
And yet they are Blockheads you all agree
Thank God I never was sent to school
To be Flogd into following the Style of a Fool [E
510]
And of course the famous Proverb from Hell informs us:
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of
instruction [E 37].
Our attempts to put ourselves back together through
reasonable means, through education or science, through the
advice of clergymen or the discipline of an earthly master, are
like binding serpents of the material world. They do not, in
the end, transcend the problem, and through these efforts we
are doomed to burn again to ash or distort ourselves into
grotesques.
Here Orcs role, in his serpent form, is clear. The spirit of
revolution may end in freedom or it may not, but it is always,
in the beginning, the attempt to slip tyrannys bonds. The
435

snakes and souls in this bolgia of Hell are aggressively

attempting to rebel against their trapped condition; they attack
one another in a vain effort to free themselves, by turning the
other person into a serpent so that they may return to human
form. Or they attempt to reintegrate themselves with a soul, as
the six-legged snake does with Agnello Brunelleschi, only to
find that the rejoining is a failurea horror-movie chimera
rather than freedom. Yet they are making the attempt, boldly
and repeatedly. It is no accident then that Blake emphasizes
Vanni Fuccis blasphemy. Fuccis desperation to be free of
that gods power is justifiedthough his methods are futile.
Even Cacus, the centaur with a mane of snakes and a dragon
rider, has a noble mien in Blakes picture. His attempt at the
reintegration of his soul has resulted in a monstrous and
frightening form, but it is an attempt nevertheless. In the next
bolgia, the flames of exuberance burn even brighter.

Ulysses, Schismatics, Falsifiers

Looking into the depth of the eighth bolgia, the pilgrim likens
what he sees to a valley full of fireflies. From the top of the
bridge, he can see that each of the lights is a tongue of flame,
and Virgil tells him that each of these contains a soul. The
pilgrim notes a flame with two points, asks who it contains,
and hears that Ulysses and Diomedes are punished in one
flame for having planned together various deceptionsthis is
the bolgia in which those who counsel falsehoods are
punished. Though Ulyssess most famous deceitful plan was
the Trojan horse, when Virgil greets him they dont speak of

436

any event that is already recorded in the epics of the Trojan

War. Instead, Ulysses gives an account of his last voyage, a
story that is original to the Comedy.
In Dantes addition to Ulyssess myth, the man of twists and
turns is unable to live a settled life with Penelope in Ithaca
and soon begins a voyage he hopes will surpass that of his
epic homecoming. He sets out westward, through the Pillars
of Hercules, into the unknown. After several months at sea,
Ulysses and his sailors see an amazing sight, but meet a tragic
end.
from afar
Appeard a mountain dim, loftiest methought
Of all I eer beheld. Joy seized us straight;
But soon to mourning changed. From the new land
A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side
Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirld her round
With all the waves; the fourth time lifted up
The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
And over us the booming billow closed
[Hell, 26; Cary, 112].
The mountain Ulysses has seen is Purgatory, though he
doesnt understand this even now, in Hell. Purgatory is,
according to Dante, the only path by which a normal soul can
reach Heaven, and it is not an island one can sail to under
ones own power. Though condemned to Malebolge for his
counsel of trickery, Ulysses died because he was attempting
to accomplish by human, earthly methods what only the
redemption of Christ allows.

437

Here Dantes message coincides almost entirely with the

course of Blakes reinterpretation. In the previous bolgia, we
saw that Blake was less interested in the serpents meaning of
thievery than in their misguided attempts to reunite the
divided human soul. Likewise, Ulysses has attempted the
necessary course to reach the world above but has gone about
it in a way that cannot succeed. Using ones own clever
strategy to sail over the Sea of Time and Space and mount
under ones own power to Heaven is just not possible in
Christian theologyeven theology as personal as Blakes. In
his illustrations, then, Blake shows several examples of Orcs
flames of rebellion, attempting to release the souls from
materiality in ways that are passionately felt but doomed to
fail. Capaneus, the souls on the burning sands who run in
circles, the serpents, and the various flames in the bolgia with
Ulysses all desire in the heat of their passions to rise again to
wholeness.
Blakes watercolor of Ulysses telling his story to the pilgrim
is one of the simplest and least successful of the series. The
composition and details of the painting are simple: flames
look like teardrops, and the space and light are not interesting.
The figures of Ulysses and Diomedes are visible within the
flame but are too roughly sketched to show more than the
outline, as are the pilgrim and Virgil at the top of the bridge.
The only visual point we might note here is that the flame
containing the two souls seems to give off no lightperhaps
an intentional clue that their method of escaping from their
captivity was an unenlightened one. The double-tongued
flame is shown darker than the stone behind it, and the left
edge of the fire is shaded almost black.

438

Blake has devoted more attention to the two illustrations for

canto 28, in which we meet the souls of the schismatics. This
is one of Dantes most direct examples of
contrapassomatching the punishment to the sin. Sinners
who caused division in the world, between members of the
same political party, family, or religion, are here cut by a
devil with a sword. As they walk the circumference of the
bolgia their wounds heal, only to be reopened when they pass
again before the devil. Blake doesnt miss the opportunity to
show us the grotesque sights of this bolgia; each of the
sinners mentioned in the narrative is shown clearly in the two
watercolors. It should be obvious by this time that while
Blake would have been less inter?ested in the political or
sectarian acts that Dante wishes to punish here, the imagery is
still entirely suitable to Blakes own message. Blakes
Comedy is about the perceptual Fall and the resulting division
it brings about in the soul. The divisions in this case are not
among worldly groups, but between the soul and God, a
division which is, for Blake, the same as a division between
the parts of the individual soul. In Blakes mythology, the fall
of the Universal Man is the division within his soul of the
four Zoas into what we then perceive as separate entities, and
their subsequent divisions into their different emanations. The
two illustrations of the ninth bolgia show such divisions in
brutal bloody forma form that is easier for those of us in the
fallen world to perceive. The watercolor of Bertrand de Born
holding his head like a lantern and speaking to the pilgrim
could serve as a universal symbol of any man who has valued
his reason over the passions of the body and the feelings of
the heart (fig. 61).
The last ditch in Malebolge is the circle of the falsifiers, a
category that includes a variety of sinners. Canto 29 describes
439

those who practiced illicit alchemy, a practice recognized in

Dantes time as trickery. The next canto introduces those who
sinned through impersonating others, falsifying coins, or
falsifying words. Each of these types is punished by being
inflicted with a different disease. Blakes watercolor for canto
29 shows three differently diseased groups (fig. 62). Three
people at the left are stretched out full-length on the ground,
with one mans chin resting on anothers hip.

Figure 61. The Schismatics and Sowers of Discord: Mosca

deLamberti and Bertrand de Born, pen and ink and
watercolor over pencil (National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10093]).

440

At right are two men who scratch endlessly at their red skin.
Though Blake has made them appear suitably uncomfortable,
he has chosen not to show the unpleasant detail of the scabs
and sores that Dante describes in his text. These two are
seated on top of another group of people, who are compressed
into an unmoving lump of flesh. Only one face from this
group is clearly shown: a simply drawn but accurate face of
an ill person lacking hope and the strength to move. The
pilgrim and Virgil observe the condemned souls from a step
on a stone arch, holding their noses against the smell.
The second watercolor for this bolgia, illustrating canto 30,
shows at top two souls with rabies, who pursue and bite a
third sinner (fig. 63). Dante describes these two, in Carys
translation, as running like the swine / Excluded from his
stye (Hell, 30; Cary, 127). Blake has made the simile more
literal, giving the two running figures the snouts of pigs.
Blake has divided the top and bottom of the illustration by a
sort of stone wall or arch, which isnt described in Dantes
text. The soul who has been attacked by the rabid pig is about
to fall off this wall into the pit below, as another soul, at left,
is doing already. The wall crowds the souls beneath it into a
mass that is barely visible beyond the figures of the pilgrim
and Virgil. The character with whom the pilgrim converses
longest in this canto, Maestro Adamo of Brescia, is not
identifiable herethe narrator makes it clear that Adamos
body looks like a lute, with a swollen belly, but no one in the
picture matches that description.

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Figure 62. The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers, engraving

(collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013 William Blake
Archive; used by permission).

Botterill suggests that the sinners in this bolgia are punished

with disease because they introduced falseness into the body
politic of society,76 an explanation that, if true, makes the
contrapasso of these cantos less obvious than that of the
schismatics. In this case, the woes Dante has assigned to these
sinners may fit more comfortably with Blakes version of the
Comedy than with the original. Those who are pressed to the
ground, too ill to move, are tied to the material world and
unable to rise above it. The pig-snouted rabid souls are again
untethered passions. Blake has perhaps rendered these two as
guardians of this level rather than normal inhabitants, because

442

they seem to be pursuing more human-like souls and

throwing them into the pit below, as the centaurs chased the
violent sinners, or the devils chased the politicians. Such a
role would be consistent with their status as passions
projected out of the mind and perceived as frightening beasts.

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444

Figure 63. The Pit of Disease: Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha,

pen and ink and watercolor over pencil (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10103]).

Giants
Four illustrations depict the events of canto 31, in which the
pilgrim sees a ring of giants on the inward edge of Malebolge.
Viewed in order, these pictures follow closely the narrative of
the Comedy.
The pilgrim first sees the giants in the distance and mistakes
them for the towers of a city. Virgil corrects the
misunderstanding:
Yet know, said he, ere farther we advance,
That it less strange may seem, these are not towers,
But giants. In the pit they stand immersed,
Each from his navel downward, round the back
[Hell, 31; Cary, 131].
Drawing nearer, the travelers can see that the giants are
Uprearing, horrible, whom Jove from Heaven / Yet
threatens, when his muttering thunder rolls. The watercolor
for this scene shows the pilgrim and Virgil in the foreground,
tiny in comparison with the landscape and still-distant giants
(fig. 64). Dantes mistaking the giants for towers is made
understandable here, since the giants are drawn from the
back, their human features as yet hardly discernible. Blake
has not failed to note that the giants are still threatened by
Jupiter: jagged lightning shoots down from the clouds above
445

them. The whole scene is lashed by rain blown almost

horizontal in a strong windan anticipation of the wind and
cold of the level below.

Figure 64. The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil, graphite,

chalk, ink and watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource,
New York).

The first giant the travelers approach shouts at them in an

unintelligible language, which is a clue to his identity. Virgil
explains:

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He doth accuse himself. Nimrod is this,

Through whose ill counsel in the world no more
One tongue prevails. But pass we on, nor waste
Our words; for so each language is to him,
As his to others, understood by none
[Hell, 31; Cary, 132].
Traditionally, the Old Testament figure of Nimrod is both a
mighty hunter and the king responsible for the Tower of
Babel. Blake has allowed him to retain his crown and his
hunters horn even in this deep part of Hell.
Realizing that communication with Nimrod is impossible, the
pilgrim moves toward another giant, who is chained with one
hand behind his back. Virgil explains that this is Ephialtes,
one of the characters of Greek myth who challenged the
Olympian gods. Blake shows him with a pained expression,
larger than the giants on either side of him (fig. 65). As in the
illustration of the simonist pope, we are given a kind of x-ray
view in this picture: we can see Ephialtess forward hand
through the stone, chained in front of his body. Virgil hurries
the pilgrim on toward Antaeus, who both speaks / And is
unfetterd, and can help the travelers descend to the deepest
level of Hell.

447

Figure 65. Ephialtes and Two Other Titans, pen and ink
and watercolor over black chalk and pencil (National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920
[10113]).

According to myth, Antaeus didnt participate with his fellow

giants in the revolt against the Greek gods, so it may be for
this reason that he is unbound. Virgil knows that the travelers
need Antaeuss assistance to descend and also knows what
kind of flattery is necessary to recruit his help. Pointing out
that the pilgrim is still alive and will return to the world to
write about what he has seen, Virgil promises that Antaeuss
fame will be renewed in the world above. The poets
persuasion is effective, and the giant picks up the pilgrim and

448

Virgil and, leaning down, places them on the ice of Cocytus

(see fig. 66 in the color insert).
The giants here, frozen or bound in chains, remind us of the
two earlier giants Blake added to the narrative at the
beginning of the pilgrims journey. In the illustration to the
second canto of Hell, we saw two such giants, one on either
side of the path the pilgrim had to travel. One was bound in
ice or cold fire, the other shackled inside red flames. Those
giants, we determined, served as guards to frighten the
pilgrim away from the journey he was about to begin, and
were symbols of bound energy. Their contrast of cold and
heat signified the contraries that Blake always sees as
necessary to progression. In their bound condition, the
interplay of the contraries was forbidden, thus making true
progression impossible.
There is more variety among the giants here in the deeper part
of Hell. Nimrod wears a crown like that of the figure
worshipping the God of This World in the earlier picture in
which the pair of giants appeared. He has a wild, insane look
on his face, and hair and a beard in tight curls, like a figure in
an Assyrian relief. Ephialtes is a younger man, much like the
bound giant at right in the earlier illustration. On either side of
him we can see another giant, one bearded in Blakes
patriarchal style, and another younger figure whose face is
mostly obscured. In the next painting, Antaeus is a
monumental figure with none of the features Blake normally
gives to dangerous characters such as Urizen or other false
gods. He is not only unchained, as the text specifies, he is also
a sort of ideal male typemuscular, handsome, and helpful to
the pilgrim. The attention that Blake gave to the illustration is
also an indication that this giant can be seen as an important
449

figure. The blue behind the figure is of a purity and depth

seldom seen in the watercolor medium. The tones in
Antaeuss body are also subtle and painterly, showing a
variety of color as well as the solid form of the giants figure.
It is one of Blakes most beautiful watercolors and makes us
regret all the more that the late figure studies he created in a
medium he called fresco, which was really a kind of
distemper, have so badly lost their original color. The
fresco painting of the Ghost of a Flea, for example, has
darkened almost to invisibility.
Where the earlier giants, in the illustration to canto 2, were
completely bound and incapable of interaction, the giants here
are different. These are giants who may kick back against
their oppressed condition. The first picture in which they
appear, where we see them from a distance, shows that the
God of Hell, the bad God, is sending his lightning to oppress
them, as he did against Capaneus and Vanni Fucci. Nimrod is
not immobilized by ice or chainshe is screaming, though
his lack of comprehensible language prevents him from
escaping. Ephialtes appears sympathetic despite his heavy
chains. And Antaeus, as I have said, appears in every way a
good figure. We can see that now, as we draw near the end of
the path through Hell, the pilgrims situation has changed.
The externalized creatures that the pilgrim sees, the passions
and contraries that Urizenic reason would keep bound in the
material world, have loosened into variety, if not into
freedom. The giants, which appear identical when viewed
from a distance, on closer inspection prove to be not only
individuals, but, at least in one case, helpfula necessary
hand to the pilgrim in his progress. Whereas Dantes Hell is a
dead end and the motion that occurs there is an eternal
back-and-forth with no hope for progression, Blakes shows
450

characters that are not entirely evil, not doomed to this place
forever. Blakes Hell is like our worldin fact, it is our
worldin that some inhabitants are in better states than
others, and some will give up and flee in fear to a childish
world of innocence. Others will burn with a desire for uplift,
only to fail and fall back. Others, while currently blind, will
rise again.

Cocytus and Satan

The final six illustrations of Hell depict the sights of Cocytus,
or, in one case, the story told by an inhabitant of this circle.
Cocytus is the traditional name of one of the four rivers of the
underworld. Dante is unique in imagining it not as a flowing
river but as a frozen lake, circular at the very bottom of Hell,
with Satan himself frozen into its center. While Malebolge,
above, held the perpetrators of simple fraud, this is the circle
for those who committed treacheryplanned trickery against
someone to whom they owed a special duty. The guilty souls
are frozen into the ice for eternity, the least bad sinners
partially free, but the worst beneath the surface, visible and
conscious but unable to move.
The first souls with whom the pilgrim converses here are
brothers, frozen together in eternity because they betrayed
each other. Blake has shown this pair as protruding farther
above the ice than those souls around them, but their heads
are thrown back and their hair, apparently, is frozen together.
The other souls shown here are all facing us, sunk to the chest
in the ice. There are a variety of faces here, one wearing

451

armor, one a crown. One is crying, with the tears frozen on

his (or her) face, while two souls behind seem shocked or
scornful. In this picture Virgil has a particularly noble profile.
The surroundings are arctic and grey, with ice hills in the
distance.
As the travelers proceed over the ice, the pilgrim kicks one
soul in the head, though he cant say whether this was his
will, destiny, or chance. The first illustration of this scene
shows the pilgrim looking sorry, raising a hand in apology, as
the frozen soul protests. Wherefore dost bruise me? (fig.
67). When asked his name, this man refuses to say who he is,
claiming that, unlike the residents of the higher levels of Hell,
to spread knowledge of his fate in the world above is the last
thing that he wants.
The second illustration of this scene shows the pilgrims
reaction to this reticence: he has grasped the soul by the hair
and is threatening to pull it all out if he isnt told what he
wants to hear. In the watercolor, Dante has extended his right
leg and bent away from the soul so as to get a forceful
purchase on his hair. The soul screams in pain but refuses to
give up the information, until a nearby sinner, shown by
Blake directly in front of the reticent soul, says Boccas name
and gives away the secret.
This is Bocca degli Abbati, a Florentine traitor. At the left of
the page, partially obscured by Virgil, who is looking on, are
two larger, bearded souls; the one behind is biting the neck of
the other, and red blood is dripping out. In the next picture the
pilgrim and Virgil are in the same location but have turned to
face this pair (fig. 68).

452

From canto 33 we learn that the soul behind, doing the biting,
is Count Ugolino, and his victim is an archbishop. The
archbishops robe and discarded hat are now visible, and his
crozier is lain horizontally along the bottom of the page.
Ugolino has left off biting the archbishops neck long enough
to tell his story and has extended his hands in a
self-exculpatory gesture. This picture from the next to the last
canto of Hell brings Blakes relation to Dantes work full
circle, in a way. It was the story that Ugolino tells here that
first caught the attention of the British reading public and
appeared in works by Fuseli, Reynolds, and Blake himself,
even before the Comedy as a whole was being read (see Part
I). The familiarity of Ugolinos story may explain why
Blakes illustration for it is sketched only in pencil, as if from
memory in a single sitting. The composition is symmetrical
and virtually identical to a tempera painting now in the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Because the pencil sketch
is very light, and the Fitzwilliam painting is finished, I have
chosen to reproduce the latter here (see fig. 69 in the color
insert).

453

Figure 67.Dante Striking Against Bocca degli Abati,

engraving (collection of Robert N. Essick; 2013 William
Blake Archive; used by permission).

454

Figure 68.Ugolinos Narrative, watercolor, black ink,

graphite, and black chalk (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg
Museum; Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.441;
President and Fellows of Harvard College).

If the Sea of Time and Space is a metaphor for our world, the
material world of roiling change, Blakes Cocytus is that sea
in its worst possible condition. The constant change of an
unfrozen ocean at least allows for chaotic motion, which may
give hope for progression. But in contrast to the giants in the
previous cantos, who were powerful forces, the souls frozen
in Cocytus are as far from movement as they can be.
The final scene in Blakes Hell is a full-length portrait of
Satan (fig. 70). As Dante describes, he is frozen to the waist
455

in ice. He has huge bat-wings and three faces. He is enormous

in scale, as we can see from the tiny figures of the pilgrim and
Virgil, to the left of his thigh.
Blake has finished only the center face to the point where we
can determine its expressionthis is a figure of the
patriarchal type, but from the look on his face we can see that
this is not a figure to emulate. Even with the legs of Judas
dangling from his mouth, this Satan looks merely stupid. He
is not an active evil or a sympathetic character as in Paradise
Lost. He is, as we have seen, merely the limit of opacity (E
338). He looks worried, confused, and weak. Though Dante
doesnt describe him as crowned, Blake shows all three of his
heads topped by the thin-spiked crown we have seen before in
this series. We are reminded that he is the king of Hell,
although far from ruling powerfully over the abyss, he is
dangling, ridiculously, head-down, when seen from the
perspective of Eden.
More interesting than Satan here are the four other figures at
his feet, frozen horizontally and half hidden in the ice. At
least two of these are crowned, as well, and they are clearly
not of the same type as the other souls frozen in Cocytus, as
they are far too large and peaceful-looking. The fact that there
are four of these figures persuades Roe that they are the four
Zoas, trapped here at the limit of opacity.77 The absence of
any other depiction of the Zoas as crowned, however, makes
it difficult for me to agree. Crowns, as we have seen, are
Blakes symbols of the temporal powers of the earth, or of
fallen characters. Personified Death, in an illustration for
Paradise Lost, is shown crowned, but Los never is.78 I will
thus resist identifying these figures as specific characters from
Blakes own mythology or from history, and leave them
456

instead to remind us of the great powers of man that currently

lie frozen in potential, awaiting the day when, Blake says, the
dead will rise at the Last Judgment.

457

458

Figure 70. Lucifer, pen and ink and watercolor over pencil
and black chalk (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
Felton Bequest, 1920 [10133]).Hell: Conclusion
No one gets out of Dantes Hell. It is sempiternal punishment,
and any motion that goes on there occurs without the hope of
progression. The type of sinner varies from place to place,
circle to circle, but in the end their fate is the same: more of
what they have now, forever. When William Blake, on the
other hand, writes of eternal death, he means that the state
of death may last forever but the person who is there will
eventually move on. When he shows us Hell, the people we
see there are not only suffering in different ways but have
different strategies, different points of view, and different
prospects for getting out. The frightened souls in the first of
the eight bolgia are running up the wall, heading back to their
preFall state, avoiding pain but giving up on progression to a
higher condition. Ulysses and the snake people have devised
plans of escape but, being stuck in a state of Urizenic reason,
dont see why they are doomed to fail. The spirit of revolution
lives on here. It may burn in a futile way, as with Capaneus,
seeing no way out, or it may make futile gestures, like Vanni
Fucci, but it still burns. The giants that we see near the end of
Hell are in a better condition than the ones at the entrance.
The demands they make may sound like nonsense, or their
chains may take another millennium to break, but they have
made enough progress to rouse the God of Hell to anger. His
angry lightning strikes at them, which is a good sign.

459

Dantes Hell is Blakes London, or anywhere else in this

material world that we happen to be. The bad news, from
Blake, is that we are in a fallen condition, our imaginations
are near dead, and suffering is everywhere. The good news is
that Orc is still alive, that although most of our efforts are
futile, the potential for redemption is never gone entirely.
In the next canticle, Purgatory, Dante shows us the means by
which imperfect souls are made pure and ready to enter
Heaven. Blakes concern is not with purity but with
perception. Still, his Purgatory serves a similar purpose: it is
the real means by which souls may remake themselves and
rise.

10. Purgatory

William James defines conversion thus: the process,

gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and
consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and
consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its
firmer hold upon religious realities.79
James describes such personal changes as shifts in a persons
attention or aims. As a minor example, he imagines a
president of the United States who replaces one group of aims
for another when he goes out for a day of fishing.
Our ordinary alterations of character, as we pass
from one of our aims to another, are not commonly
460

called transformations, because each of them is so

rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse
direction; but whenever one aim grows so stable as
to expel definitively its previous rivals from the
individuals life, we tend to speak of the
phenomenon, and perhaps to wonder at it, as a
transformation.80
Thus, transformations come about through an inner shift of
focus. Life-changing conversions occur when aspects of life
that formerly held little or no interest take on new importance
to such a degree that we feel born again.
What brings such changes about is the way in which
emotional excitement alters. Things hot and vital to
us to-day are cold to-morrow. It is as if seen from
the hot parts of the field that the other parts appear
to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and
volition make their sallies. They are in short the
centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold
parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion
to their coldness.81
Blake, as we have seen, insists that a change in spiritual state
does not require spatial removal. For him, with God
immanent throughout space, an ascent to bliss is a
reformation of ones vision and does not require physical
relocation. Similarly, James points out that the vocabulary of
here and there is metaphorical. In speaking of the aim of
our consciousness, he says,
we involuntarily apply words of perspective to
distinguish it from the rest, words like here, this,
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now, mine, or me; and we ascribe to the other

parts the positions there, then, that, his or
thine, it, not me. But a here can change to a
there, and a there become a here, and what
was mine and what was not mine change their
places.82
Blakes philosophical idealism, as we have seen, makes all
this quite literal. It is our perception, which is dependent on
our attention, that creates here and now, as separate from
there and then. The process of conversion is a process of
changing ones perceptions.
James agrees with Blake that the larger, spiritual world has
existed for us in potentia all along. He uses a metaphor from
psychology to describe the state of the spiritual world as
present even when we are not aware of it:
I attach a mystical or religious consciousness to the
possession of an extended subliminal self with a thin
partition through which messages make irruption.
We are thus made convincingly aware of the
presence of a sphere of life larger and more
powerful than our usual consciousness, with which
the latter is nevertheless continuous.83
The implication that the more complete self is
subliminalbelow a thresholdmight not meet with
Blakes approval, since he usually considers our fallen state to
be that which is below, and the awakened condition above.
Still, since above and below depend merely on the point from
which one views them, Jamess description is useful to us.
The mystical stateindeed, God himselfis not separate but
462

continuous with our current nature, and access involves an

opening of perception.
The question before us now is how we may achieve this
perceptual shift. What action or personal realization opens our
doors of perception to the point that we are no longer in a
self-forged Hell? James has described, in psychological
terms, what the change consists of, but he confesses that his
field is unequipped to show the deep causes of conversion.
Now if you ask of psychology just how the
excitement shifts in a mans mental system, and why
aims that were peripheral become at a certain
moment central, psychology has to reply that
although she can give a general description of what
happens, she is unable in a given case to account
accurately for all the single forces at work.84
For detailed information on how personal revelation and
ascension occurs, we turn back to William Blakes visionary
illustrations.
Dantes Purgatory, as the name suggests, is about purgation.
Although everyone in Purgatory will eventually reach
Heaven, very few peopleperhaps only Christ and his
motherwere pure enough at death to go to Heaven directly.
The purpose of the slow ascent of the mountain of Purgatory
is to remove the inevitable vestiges of sin. (Beatrice seems to
have accomplished her ascension of the mountain in under ten
years. She died in 1290 and guides Dante through Heaven in
the spring of 1300. Other, more sinful people may spend
centuries on the mountain before they are ready to ascend to
Paradise.) Cleansing of the soul is accomplished through
463

education, not punishment, although each sin is purged

through a particularly harsh sort of training.
Purgatory is a mountain in the southern hemisphere, at a point
on the globe directly opposite Jerusalem. The lowest part of
the mountain is a kind of waiting room, where people who
were excommunicated or who delayed living morally on earth
until late in life are made to wait before beginning the process
of purification. After passing through a narrow gate guarded
by an angel, souls travel up the mountain, purging sins one by
one. There are seven terraces on the mountain, one for each of
the Seven Deadly Sins (fig. 71).
On the flat top of the mountain is the Earthly Paradise, the
original Garden of Eden. Souls who reach this point have
been purified of all sin, and are nearly ready for the ascent to
Heaven.
William Blake, as we have seen, has an entirely different
view of the process necessary to rise to Heaven. For him, the
Fall had nothing to do with sin; sin is a mistaken concept we
believe in while we are fallen, and souls who have left the
underworld (our world) have no need of that concept. The fall
into the lower world occurred through a division of ourselves,
which divided us from God and caused a narrowing of
perception. The ascent from this lowered condition, therefore,
is accomplished through renewed perception and
reintegration. No strict training imposed by God is necessary
for renewal, only imagination. Paley, describing The Four
Zoas and Milton, writes:
In both epics the agent of regeneration is the
Imagination, identified with Los, whose function is
464

now to restore Fallen Man to his original unity. This

view of the Imagination is part of and inseparable
from the theme of regeneration in Blakes later
works.85

Figure 71. Purgatory.

465

Among the later works Paley mentions, we should in?clude

the illustrations for the Comedy. Blakes version of the
Purgatory is not a hard training course but a joyful restoration
of the senses and the unity of the soul. The great difference
from Dante in the method described in this ascent means that
Blake has had no need for most of this canticle. There are
only twenty illustrations for the Purgatory. Three of these
show events at the base of the mountain, three show the level
of the proud, and three show the Earthly Paradise, leaving
only eleven for the majority of the mountain. None of these
was engraved.

Cato and the Arrival of Souls to Purgatory

The pilgrim and Virgil have passed through a tunnel that
leads from the center of the earth through half the globe and
opens on the beach at the foot of Purgatory. They arrive at
dawn, while the sky is the color of sapphire but the stars are
still clearly visible. The pilgrim notices a constellation of four
stars that is never visible from the northern hemisphere. He is
quickly accosted by the soul of Cato of Utica who, though he
was not a Christian, serves as the guardian at the base of the
mountain.
Cato has never seen souls arrive through the path from Hell.
Virgil must explain to him, as he had explained to Charon at
the Acheron, that the pilgrims trip has been sanctioned from

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on high. Cato relents but tells Virgil to purify the pilgrim

before beginning the ascent.
The illustration for this scene never progressed beyond
penciled outlines. The three characters are standing side by
side, at an equal distance from the picture plane. The pilgrim,
in the center, holds up both hands in a gesture of apology.
Virgil is at left, gesturing upwards, to indicate the direction
they wish to go. Cato is of Blakes familiar patriarchal type,
which he uses to show both the great and the false-great, but
Catos expression is finished enough in this drawing for us to
be confident that he is of the better type. He is surrounded by
a mandorla-like cloud and points downward to indicate that
the travelers must begin their upward climb from the very
bottom of the mountain, where the shore meets the ocean.
The next illustration shows the travelers kneeling by the water
and a line of reeds (fig. 72). The pilgrim is on all fours as
Virgil ties a reed around his forehead. The almost-vertical
slope of the mountain is at left. The only color Blake has
added to this picture is in the sky: beautiful washes of blue
show the dawn. The arc of the sun has just appeared over the
horizon.
Canto 2 of the Purgatory begins with the travelers ready to
begin their ascent. Before they start to climb, however, the
pilgrim sees on the horizon
A light, so swiftly coming through the sea,
No winged course might equal its career.
From which when for a space I had withdrawn
Mine eyes, to make inquiry of my guide,
Again I lookd, and saw it grown in size
467

And brightness: then on either side appeard

Something, but what I knew not, of bright hue
[Purgatory, 2; Cary, 153].
When the speeding light draws nearer, it becomes discernible
as a boat, piloted by an angel; the projections from each side
are the angels wings. This apparition has brought a new
group of souls, recently died from the world, who are ready to
begin their long process of purgation.
Blake has shown the moment when the boat, emptied of its
cargo, speeds away (fig. 73). The pilgrim has recognized one
among the group and is embracing him. Virgil stands at left,
arms crossed in an impatient gesture. In this illustration, too,
there is minimal color. The ground is washed broadly with
green and the sky with blue and purple. The boat has touches
of yellow.
There is no illustration for canto 3, in which the pilgrim
passes through the level of those who were excommunicated
and pauses to speak with Manfred, the son of Emperor
Frederick II. Blake had no interest in decrees from the official
church, and thus would not have cared about the process of
overcoming excommunication that is explained here.

The Ascent to the Gate

The two illustrations for canto 4 emphasize the height of the
mountain and the difficulty of the climb. According to Dante,
as the pilgrim reaches the upper levels of Purgatory and is
cleansed of sin, the ascent will become easier, but at this point
468

the path is narrow and steep. The first watercolor shows

Virgil leading the way up a difficult trail (fig. 74). He has
turned back for a moment to encourage the pilgrim, several
steps lower, who must climb the path using both hands to pull
himself upwards. The right third of the page shows the ocean
stretching to the horizon, and over that the sun, partly
obscured by an ominous black cloud.

469

470

Figure 72. Virgil Girding Dantes Brow with a Rush,

graphite and watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource,
New York).

471

Figure 73. The Angel in the Boat Departing After Wafting

over the Souls for Purgation, graphite, pen and ink, with
472

watercolor ( The Trustees of the British Museum/Art

Resource, New York).
The sun plays an important role in the Comedy, both narrative
and symbolic, and much of canto 4 is devoted to discussing it,
because the pilgrim has noted that as he faces east toward the
dawn, the sun is on his left. Virgil explains patiently about the
equator and the difference in the apparent position of the sun
now that they are in the southern hemisphere. Here the
explanation is astronomical, but elsewhereincluding later in
this cantothe appearance of the sun and its light represent
more theological matters.
Dante frequently refers to the sun periphrastically, using such
terms as the great minister of nature (Paradise, 10; Cary,
335) or the parent of all mortal life (Paradise, 22; Cary,
394). He is also aware of the homiletic and liturgical
traditions calling Christ the sun of righteousness (sol
justiciae) and identifying the rising sun with the
Resurrection.86 In canto 7 of the Purgatory sunlight is used as
a symbol of Gods grace, and throughout the Comedy the
emanation of Gods qualities is compared to light from the
sun. The symbolism of dark and light is used through so much
of the Comedy that when, near the end of canto 4, the pilgrim
meets his friend Belaqua sitting in the shade of a rock, the
meaning of the shadow is clear. Belaqua was idle in life and
delayed his Christian duty, so now he sits out of Gods light,
waiting perhaps for decades before he may advance up the
mountain and into Purgatory proper.

473

Blake used the sun as a symbol in two ways that dont occur
explicitly in Dantes work. First, as we saw in our discussion
of the Arlington Court painting in Part III of this book, the
sun is the gate through which souls return to the ideal world
from the material. This use derives from Porphyry and other
Neoplatonists after him. Second, as Paley reminds us, Blake
followed in the tradition of Paracelsus and Agrippa by
identifying the sun with the human imagination.87 The name
of Blakes character Los, the personification of imagination,
may well be Sol in reverse.88 Both of these meanings
present themselves as likely readings of the prominent
presence of the sun in the illustrations to the Purgatory.
Having left the lower, material world, the souls who climb the
mountain are aiming to pass through the gate of the sun back
into the ideal. The suns rise in cantos 1 and 9, and its
appearances through the rest of the canticle in various degrees
of occlusion, are therefore signs that the goal is in sight.
Perhaps more importantly, and certainly more uniquely
Blakean, is the use of the sun in the Purgatory to refer to
human imagination. As we have seen, imagination for Blake
is the fundamental human faculty through which we relate to
the world. In our fallen condition it loses its power, and we
forget that we create everything we see through this faculty.
In Eden, however, the power of the imagination is restored,
and once again imagining is identical to creation, and the
world contracts or expands just as we wish to see it. The
horrors of Hell exist only because the souls there (i.e., here)
have lost the ability to perceive the world freely; this means
that the light of the imagination has gone dark, and,
symbolically, the sun (Los/Sol) has gone out. Little by little as
souls climb the mountain of Purgatory, the sun rises and
peeks from behind the clouds. When the pilgrim reaches
474

Paradise, which Blake has remade into his own vision of

Eternity, everything is drenched in light and the imagination
is back in its full power. The sun itself appears on Christs left
hand when he appears to the pilgrim in Heaven.

475

476

Figure 74. The Ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory,

graphite, ink and watercolor (Tate, London/Art Resource,
New York).

The second illustration to canto 4 is less finished than the

first, but here, too, direct sunlight is blocked by cloudin this
case a series of pink clouds that reach from the sky to the
terrace of Purgatory where the travelers are resting. This
picture, too, serves mainly to emphasize the height of the
mountain: the pilgrim and Virgil appear as tiny figures
between enormous cliffs. They are seated next to a grey wash
of shadow, but the figure of Belaqua is not indicated.
Another swirl of pink cloud figures prominently in the
illustration for canto 5, where the pilgrim meets the souls who
died violently but repented at the last moment. In another
reference to the light of the sun, these souls notice that the
pilgrim casts a shadow. (The others dont, because they dont
have material bodies.) Two of the souls approach the pilgrim,
then return to tell the others that they may approach. The
group rushes to meet Dante:
Neer saw I fiery vapours with such speed
Cut through the serene air at fall of night,
Nor Augusts clouds athwart the setting sun,
That upward these did not in shorter space
Return; and, there arriving, with the rest
Wheel back upon us, as with loose rein a troop
[Purgatory, 5; Cary, 165].

477

Blakes watercolor for this scene is another example of the

artists tendency to literalize in his drawing what was
metaphor in the text (see fig. 75 in the color insert). Dante
compares the speed of the souls to air-born vapors, but
doesnt say that the souls themselves fly. Blake has shown the
entire group of souls wheeling through the air, leaving a sort
of pink vapor trail, as they rush to greet the pilgrim. Only one
of the several souls mentioned in the canto is a woman, but
the figures in the illustration are nearly all female. Virgil
greets them with an open-armed gesture, and the pilgrim has
raised both arms in apparent joy.
While its possible that Blake misread the simile and thought
that the souls were in fact flying, it is more likely that he has
changed this detail intentionally, remaking the meaning of the
canto. Again, he has no interest in the theological points
Dante discusses here or the historical figures whom the
pilgrim meets. He has remade this scene to show the joy of
the souls freed from the material world, so the freedom to fly
through the air, unfettered by Newtons gravity, is an
important sign of their new condition. The pilgrim and Virgil
stand on a ledge, with the green-tinted slope of the mountain
to their right, but the flying souls are jetting freely against the
background of sky and sea. There are no hints here of death
by violence or of a lateness to repentonly of the pleasure
these reborn souls feel.
In contrast, the souls in the next illustration are seated quietly
in a green bower. Blake has carefully reproduced Dantes
description of the geography in this scene: the pilgrim and
Virgil, with their guide on this terrace, are on a slight ridge,
looking into a hollow or depression that is full of colorful
grass and flowers. This is the terrace for rulers whose duties
478

in life prevented them from paying attention to the conditions

of their own salvation. They must wait here for some time
before they begin the process of purgation, though the place
where they wait is pleasant enough. Blake has drawn the
monarchs carefully and, for once, respectfully; these are not
the evil kings of this world but rulers who look as if they
deserve to go to Heaven (fig. 76). The watercolor shows the
moment in canto 8 when, just as the sun is about to set, the
souls of this level are momentarily threatened by a snake.

Figure 76. The Lawn with the Kings and Angels, pen and
ink and watercolor over pencil (National Gallery of
Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10163]).

479

The serpent is quickly turned back by two angels, clad in

green and carrying swords, who have arrived moments
before. All of these details are accurately shown in the
illustration, which is almost completely outlined in ink and
lightly tinted with color.
Roe identifies the grove of trees here as a symbol of error,
which continues to envelope the souls on this terrace.89
Against this view, I dont believe that we have to see every
shrub and flower as evil. In Part III of this book we examined
Blakes idea of nature and saw that while the soul is in a
divided condition, Vala, the personification of nature in The
Four Zoas and Jerusalem, is perceived as a dead and
dangerous state. Yet after the Universal Man has been
reunited, she is pure relaxation and safety. Of Luvah, the
passions, Vala sings:
My Luvah here hath placd me in a Sweet & pleasant
Land
And given me fruits & pleasant waters & warm hills
& cool valleys
Here will I build myself a house & here Ill call on
his name
Here Ill return when I am weary & take my pleasant
rest
So spoke the Sinless Soul & laid her head on the
downy fleece
Of a curld Ram who stretchd himself in sleep beside
his mistress
And soft sleep fell upon her eyelids in the silent
noon of day [E 397]

480

The green bower in Purgatory, then, is the nature that is

available to us after we have been released from the material
world. Unlike the frightening and monster-filled nature of the
lower world, this glade is only beautiful colors and sweet
smells, and angels who guard us in the night. Blake has had
no need to change the imagery in this scene, because in this
case Dantes symbolism and his own are in perfect accord.
Souls on their way up the mountain, when weary and in need
of rest, can stretch out here in comfort.
A day and a night have now passed in the journey up the
mountain. The pilgrim awakes in a new place, disoriented,
because he has no memory of leaving the bower of the
previous night. Virgil explains that while the pilgrim slept, St.
Lucia came and carried him up the difficult slope, to a point
just in front of the narrow gate to Purgatory proper. This is
the second time Lucia has assisted the pilgrim; it was she
who, responding to Marys request, had called on Beatrice to
help Dante while he was in danger in the dark wood. Blake
has shown her here as she cradles the pilgrim against herself
and dashes effortlessly up the slope of the mountain. A large,
bright halo surrounds her head (see fig. 77 in the color insert).
Virgil follows a step behind, with a particularly contented
expression on his face. The slope, like the grove in the
previous scene, is covered with pleasant vegetation, and the
lightening sky is full of stars. The rays of the rising sun shine
up from below. Except for Lucias face, this watercolor is
nearly complete, one of only three for the Purgatory that have
been this attentively worked. In this picture, too, the visual
imagery from Dantes poem is entirely suited to Blakes
theological view, even if the reasoning is somewhat different.
We need not identify the main figure here strictly as Lucia; it

481

is enough to see her as a sign of mercy, as in the poem

Morning:
To find the western path
Right thro the gates of Wrath
I urge my way
Sweet Mercy leads me on
With soft repentant moan
I see the break of day
The war of swords & spears
Melted by dewy tears
Exhales on high
The Sun is freed from fears
And with soft grateful tears
Ascends the sky [E 478]
Without his will or even his awareness, the pilgrim has
received this mercy here.
Now the pilgrim can see the narrow gate that leads to the
terraces where the sins are purged, and the angel who watches
over that gate. Dante writes:
I could descry
A portal, and three steps beneath, that led
For inlet there, of different colour each;
And one who watchd, but spake not a word.
.....
I markd him seated on the highest step,
In visage such, as past my power to bear.
Graspd in his hand, a naked sword glanced back
482

The rays
[Purgatory, 9; Cary, 185]
Blake shows the three steps colored as Dante describes, and
very large in relation to the figures of the travelers (see fig. 78
in the color insert). The angel sits above the steps, his wings
folded behind him. The gate is a Gothic pointed arch.
The most dramatic feature of this painting is not mentioned in
the text: Blake has shown, at the top left of the picture in the
distance beyond the mountain, huge red clouds obscuring the
bright sun. These are angry clouds, full of energy, not the
white or pink ones we have seen so far in this canticle. They
remind us of the very first time that Orc appears in Blakes
work, in the early book America:
Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels
of blood
And in the red clouds rose a Wonder oer the
Atlantic sea;
Intense! Naked! A Human fire fierce glowing, as the
wedge
Of iron heated in the furnace; his terrible limbs were
fire [E 53].
Though Orcs human form doesnt appear in this illustration
to the Purgatory, the terrible red clouds are there, over the
Atlantic. This is the beginning of the restoration of the intense
energy necessary for souls to ascend. In contrast to the rather
tired-looking angel, the fiery red clouds with the light of the
sun behind them indicate that beyond the gate the ascending
soul finds the energy that was lost in the fall into division.

483

The pilgrim humbly asks the angel for admittance.

I cast me, praying him for pitys sake
That he would open to me; but first fell
Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times
The letter, that denotes the inward stain,
He, on my forehead, with the blunted point
Of his drawn sword, inscribed. And Look, he
cried,
When enterd, that thou wash these scars away
[Purgatory, 9; Cary, 187].
The illustration of these lines is filled from top to bottom by
the Gothic gate and its steps, although the left third of the
picture is still open to sky and sea. The clouds here are less
angry-looking, being tinted yellow, but they still hide the sun
entirely. Blake has emphasized the rays of light coming from
behind the cloud by outlining them with ink. The angel is
writing something on the pilgrims forehead, though only one
of the marks reads clearly as a Pfor Peccatum: sin.
Each P stands for one of the seven sins and is erased as the
purgation of that sin is completed. Dante uses this device as a
clear method of counting down the levels that the pilgrim has
completed; he emphasizes the erasure of each P by the wing
of an angel as the traveler ascends to a new terrace. Blake,
being uninterested in sin and believing that ascension takes
place through other means, doesnt show us these erasures.
Nor are the Ps visible on the pilgrims forehead in any later
illustration.
The idea of being branded with the mark of sin, and
undergoing training that amounts to torture in order to be free,
is so inimicable to Blakes thought that we might wonder why
484

he illustrated this scene at all. It may be that here as elsewhere

he has used the imagery of the Comedy to convey a
completely different symbolic meaning. For example, in his
most famous lyric, Blake had mentioned a number of
weapons that may be employed for spiritual ends, including
the sword.
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land [E 96].
The fact that the sword in Purgatory is used to write, rather
than for violence, and that it is applied to the forehead,
indicate that it is a part of the unending and creative mental
fight that occurs in Eden. We will see in a later canto that the
pilgrims absorption into the arts is necessary for his advance;
this first writing from the point of the angels sword may also
refer to Blakes conviction that the arts are the means we use
to free the imagination.

The Terraces of Purgatory

Now the pilgrim has passed through the gate and entered the
portion of Purgatory in which sins are cleaned away. On each
terrace of the mountain the souls being purified are presented

485

with examples of the sin in question and of its oppositeon

the first level, where the sin of pride is purged, there are bad
examples of pride and good examples of humility. Each level
communicates these examples in a different way, either
through voice, or dreamlike vision, or other means. The
terrace for pride is the only one employing the visual arts:
here are relief sculptures, created in white marble by God
himself, to show us pride and its opposite. The good examples
are vertical, on the walls of the terrace, and the bad ones are
carved into the floor.
In Blakes drawing of the good example, the pilgrim and
Virgil stand at a respectful distance from the reliefs, like
well-behaved tourists in an art museum (fig. 79). They raise
their hands in appreciation of the beauty of the works.
Of the three examples mentioned by Dante, Blake shows us
two: Davids entry into Jerusalem with the Ark of the
Covenant, and the Annunciation to Mary. Both of these
stories fit Blakes remaking of the theme of the Purgatory,
when read with visionary eyes. David, a favorite of God and a
musician and poet, in this scene is dancing naked, joyful that
the Ark has finally arrived in his city. His wife looks
disapprovingly down from a window. Blake, another poet
favored by God, must have felt similar societal disapproval
for his religious ecstasies, yet there is no doubt that he
considered them to be examples of true religion. The
Annunciation to Mary, while less energetic, is also a story of
receiving important information directly from a supernatural
being, something Blake experienced almost daily.
The third relief described by Dante as a good example, a story
of the Emperor Trajan, doesnt appear in Blakes picture, and
486

its easy enough to imagine why he would omit it. As we

have seen, he considers the Biblethe source of the two
reliefs that he picturesto be the true moral guide, while
classical emperors do not, for him, provide real guidance.
The souls on this terrace are purged of their pride by carrying
huge stones on their backs, an act that bends down their stiff
necks and lowers their high noses. Blake has drawn their
positions accurately but has added two elements to the picture
that are contrary to the narrative and serve to change the
meaning (fig. 80). First, we can see that as the souls bearing
their stones progress, they are climbing a staircase, something
not described in the text. It goes against the structure of
Purgatory to think that these souls could ascend while still
burdened. According to Dante, they must circle the level
terrace for many years before making the slightest upward
movement. Second, in the sky we can see the crescent moon.
This is impossible according to Dantes text: the pilgrim
woke at dawn in front of the gate, so this scene takes place in
midmorning at latest. The next time the sun sets the pilgrim
has travelled through all the levels of Purgatory and spends
the night on the steps just beneath the summit of the
mountain. I cannot explain why Blake has added the moon
here. The addition of the steps, however, is in keeping with
the artists transformation of the levels of Hell from
concentric circles into a vortex, as we saw in his upside-down
map of the Inferno. Motion in Purgatory, too, is not a
punctuated rising from level to level, but a spiraling upwards.

487

488

The Rock Sculptured with the Recovery of the Ark and the
Annunciation, graphite, ink and watercolor (Tate,
London/Art Resource, New York).
The bad examples of pride, carved in relief into the floor of
this terrace, include Lucifer, Nimrod, and several others from
the Bible and from the classical world. Blake has shown this
terrace from a high viewpoint, making the horizontal marble
surface seem almost parallel to the picture plane (fig. 81). He
has not drawn the scenes and characters in the reliefs as
framed separate pictures, as the good examples were, but
jumbled one on the other, to make a single wild combination.
The pilgrim and Virgil stand at the bottom of the page, so that
we see their bodies against the background of the relief
images. Indeed, except for the touches of color on their
clothes, their figures nearly merge with the images of the
prideful. This, I think, is intentional and important.
Again and again we have seen that the Fall means the division
of the soul, and ascent requires reunification. In this
illustration, the merging of the travelers with the artistic relief
and its characters indicates that reintegration is under way.
The biblical and mythical characters are not put discretely
into separate frames, and the observers of these figures are
held at no distance whatsoever. They have all become one. If
we ask why the bad examples, the devils and monsters, are
shown merging with the pilgrim while the good examples
werent, we can see that it was these immoral cases that
caused the division to occur in the first place. It was our fear
of the three beasts in the dark forest that forced us into the
illusion that they exist outside of us. Likewise, it isnt the
489

pleasant scene of the Annunciation that requires

reintegrationit is the giants and devils that we have
externalized. To pull these back inside us, to eliminate the
perceptual barrier that made them appear separate, is a
necessary step in the ascent to Heaven.
Its entirely appropriate within the world of Blakes thought
that such a reintegration occurs through a work of relief
sculpture. For Blake, it is the arts that embody the
imagination and allow reintegration. Morris Eaves writes:
For Blake art promises to restore a potential integrity of
imagination (and personality) that society and nature
disrupt.90 Art is the expression of mental integrity. It allows
the entirely free emanation of all the feelings in imaginative
form: Art, the product of imagination, is the natural
embodiment of the synthesis of sensation, emotion, and
thought.91
The function of the relief sculpture in Blakes pictures is
therefore entirely different from their use in Dantes narrative.
Insofar as humility, prides opposite, requires us to knuckle
under to the authority of the day and obey the kings and gods
of this world, Blake is against humility. On the other hand,
pride may also cause division. This may occur because we
have mistakenly started to believe that we can survive entirely
through our own efforts, without the help of others, or it may
come about through the false idea that the absolutely
immanent God is somehow more present in our own hearts
than in someone elses. In such cases, it is necessary to
relieve that pride through reintegration.

490

Figure 80. The Proud Under Their Enormous Loads,

watercolor with pen and ink over pencil (Birmingham

491

Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham Museums

Trust).

492

Figure 81. The Angel Descending at the Close of the Circle

of the Proud, pen and grey ink with watercolor over
493

graphite ( The Trustees of the British Museum/Art

Resource, New York).

Now that the pilgrim has accomplished this difficult

restoration, he is visited by an angel who is much more lively
than the one at the gate below. This angel comes dashing
around the curve of the mountain at a sprint, wings held wide.
He is emanating otherworldly light and enters the scene
directly in front of the sun, showing that his light and the
symbolic suns are the same. He is glancing down at the
pilgrim with a pleased smile. Dante describes the angels
arrival in canto 12:
The goodly shape approachd us, snowy white
In vesture, and with visage casting streams
Of tremulous lustre like the matin star.
His arms he opend, then his wings; and spake:
Onward! The steps, behold, are near; and now
The ascent is without difficulty gaind
[Purgatory, 12; Cary, 197].
Dante makes the angel say that now the climb up the
mountain will be easy because, in his system, pride is the
worst sinthe one that enables all the othersand now that it
is purged the others will be more easily erased. For Blake, the
message is the same but for different reasons. The elements of
the pilgrims personality that he feared and externalized have
been recalled. Now there only remains a final kindling of the
full imagination to achieve the reintegration of the four Zoas
themselves.

494

So much has been accomplished on the terrace of pride that

Blake has made only one illustration for the next twelve
cantos, and that one illustration is just a sketch without detail
or color. It is a picture of the second terrace on the mountain,
directly above that of pride, where souls are purged of envy.
The souls there are educated in a particularly horrible way: by
having their eyes wired shut. This torture is so unsuited to
Blakes reinterpretation that he has refused to show itfor
him, the ascent of the mountain is intended to reopen the
narrowed senses; restricting anyones vision is exactly wrong.
It is possible that the drawing he made for this terrace began
as an attempt to reinterpret the meaning of the canto.
Although some souls are turned blindly away from us with
their faces toward the mountain, at least one seems to have
sprung free from this condition, and, contrary to the
description in the text, many more seem to be climbing the
steep path away from the terrace. Whatever Blake intended
the message of the drawing to become, it is not finished
enough to interpret it with any confidence.
We now skip over a third of the canticle. Blake has taken no
interest in the purging of wrath, sloth, greed, or gluttony. Its
only when we approach the terrace of the lustful that he picks
up the story again, and, we will see, he has used Dantes
symbolism for his own purpose.
Though it might surprise modern American Christians, Dante
believed that lust is the least bad sin. Lust earned the least
harsh punishment in Hell, and it is the last to require purging
in Purgatory. As we have seen, sin for Dante is not a breaking
of rules but a misdirection of love. Carnal desire only
becomes evil when by its excess it drives us from the middle
path that aims to the source of all good, which is of course
495

God, and sets another goal higher than Heaven. Inordinate

desire for fame or gold is bad in the same way, but since these
desires are less intrinsic to human nature Dante considers
them worse. People are made in Gods image, so love of them
is less of a diversion than love of precious metals.
Perhaps Dante knew that suppressing sexual desire is not an
effective way to overcome it. Long before Freud, experience
must have warned of the dangers of the return of the
repressed. The Comedys means of purging lust therefore is
not a cold shower but a consumption in fire. The physical
desire that burns and distracts us is burned away forever in
the highest terrace of Purgatory, so that the soul may continue
its ascent to Heaven with only spiritual love intact.
Blake is also concerned with the things that distract us from
seeing God, but his solution is more extreme. He doesnt plan
to burn up our lust, but the whole world:
The ancient tradition that the world will be
consumed in fire
at the end of six thousand years is true. As I have
heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby
commanded to
leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does,
the whole
creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. And
holy whereas
it now appears finite & corrupt.
This will come to pass by a improvement of sensual
enjoyment
[E 39].
496

In this case, of course, the world means the Guinea sun

world, the distracting illusion we have of the material world
that is not God, not imagination. That world was created by
Urizen when he sought to harden the eternal changes of
Eternity into the stability of moral law. The petrification he
caused required the birth of Orc, the spirit who rebels against
tyranny, but when the law is removed, Orc, too, is consumed.
And now fierce Orc had quite consumd himself in
Mental flames
Expending all his energy against the fuel of fire [E
395]
The release from tyranny, and its concomitant end of the need
for rebellion, allows the divided soul to reassemble. The
passions (Luvah) and nature (Vala) then become companions
of reason, not enemies.
The Regenerate Man stoopd his head over the
Universe & in
His holy hands recievd the flaming Demon &
Demoness of Smoke
And gave them to Urizens hands the Immortal
frownd Saying
Luvah & Vala henceforth you are Servants obey &
live
You shall forget your former state return O Love in
peace [E 395]
What burns up is the illusion of division and the struggles it
causes. When its gone, reason is in balance with the other
four Zoas, and man is regenerated.

497

Blake has made two watercolors of the flames. The first

shows the pilgrim, Virgil, and their traveling companion
Statius on the steps approaching the terrace where the fire is.
The pilgrims pose is drawn as Dante describes it: My hands
together claspd, / And upward stretching, on the fire I
looked (Purgatory, 27; Cary, 261). The sun, however, is not
shown according to the text. Dante makes it clear that these
events occur at sunset and that the sun is behind the travelers
as they gaze on the flames. A voice from within the fire urges
the pilgrim on by reminding him that there is little time left in
the day and that he cant advance after sunset. Blake has not
found this situation appropriate for the restoration of full
perception that the flames will grant, and has made the picture
differently. Over half the page shows the sun at the horizon,
but it seems to be rising, not setting; it is tinting the sky pink
and its position on the right makes it appear to be in the east.
The sun is not behind the travelers, as they mount the stairs,
but facing them directly. Clearly, Blake has chosen to ignore
the hour of the day that the narrative specifies in favor of the
one that suits his interpretation of events: the light of God will
soon illuminate the perceptions.
In the next illustration, too, the pilgrims arms are stretched
over his head (see fig. 82 in the color insert). Virgil has
already entered the flames and is facing back to the pilgrim,
urging him on. Above Virgil is the angel whose voice
encourages the pilgrim. The flames are tinted with various
colors, pink and blue and yellow, and appear far less
frightening than the fires we saw in Hell or in the eleventh
illustration for the Book of Job. Moreover, the four souls
engulfed in the flames dont appear to find the fire painful at
all. Though Dante describes the burning as hotter than molten
glass, these soulsall of them femaleseem to be leaping
498

with pleasure. This is not the purifying furnace of affliction

from Isaiah 48:10 but something altogether more joyful.
If we disregard the gender of these four souls, we may detect
here a biblical allusion from a different prophet. In the Book
of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar orders three worthy men to
be executed in a fiery furnace, but when he looks into the
flames he sees four people there.
Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and
rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his
counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into
the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto
the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I
see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire,
and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is
like the Son of God [Daniel 3:2425].
The intended execution, far from harming the three, results in
the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of this world, to
belief in the true God. The four souls in the fires of Purgatory,
clearly unharmed, have the same effect on the pilgrim.

Beulah and Eden

After passing through the flames on the last terrace, the
travelers spend the night on the stairs just beneath the top of
the mountain. Blakes illustration returns us to the time of day
as described in the text: the stars are out, and a huge moon
shines in the sky (fig. 83). The travelers have each stretched
out on a step. The pilgrim and Statius are asleep, while Virgil
499

looks into the sky, relaxed and content. On both sides of the
staircase there are abundant small laurel trees.
The restfulness of the scene, the presence of the moon, and
the location of the steps, above the errors of the material
world but below Eden, all tell us that Blake has set this
illustration in the land that he calls Beulah. It is a brief but
important stop. In The Four Zoas, Blake describes Beulah this
way:

500

501

Figure 83. Dante and Statius Sleeping, Virgil Watching,

watercolor with some pen and black ink over indications
in graphite (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford).
There is from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant rest
Namd Beulah a Soft Moony Universe feminine
lovely
Pure mild & Gentle given in Mercy to those who
sleep
Eternally [E 303].
The paucity of Blakes punctuation means that the last lines
above, given in Mercy to those who sleep / Eternally, may
be rephrased to mean either that Beulah is given forever to
those who sleep, or is given to those who sleep forever.
Either way, since we have seen that for Blake it is the states
rather than our residence in them that last foreverdeath is
eternal but we may rise out of itwe need not see the sleep
of Beulah as unending.
Beulah exists between the material world, below, and
Eternity, above. Because souls in Eternity engage in endless
mental fight, a space of rest is essential, and souls may
descend to sleep in Beulah at will. Blake depicts souls in
Eternity as male, but on descent to Beulah they divide into
male and female, because of the sensual enjoyment and
comfort that this brings. This is not a division like that which
occurs to the soul when it enters the material world, however.
Souls may reascend from Beulah to Eternity at any time, and
in so doing recombine their emanations. The divisions of
Beulahthe word comes from a word in Isaiah meaning
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marriedare not so great that conflict occurs; Beulah is a

land Where no dispute can come (E 197).
We can see, then, that the illustration to canto 27 is both a
fine depiction of Beulah and true to Dantes description of the
rest on the night before the pilgrim climbs to Eden. The
couches that hold the sleepers in Beulah (E 126, 395) are
also steps in the staircase. Virgil here looks particularly
feminine, with a sweet expression, flowing locks, and a pose
like an odalisque. The moon is so bright that there is no
darkness to fear.
In canto 27, Dante describes a dream the pilgrim has while
asleep on the stairs. In it, Leah and Rachel, Jacobs two wives
in the Book of Genesis, represent the active and the
contemplative lives: Leah weaving a garland and Rachel
gazing into a mirror. Blake has cleverly depicted the content
of the dream on the surface of the moon, penciled lightly but
visibly. Rachel is at right, seated beneath leaves, and Leah is
at the left. Blake shows Leah seated at a full upright loom,
another clear indication that this scene represents the land of
Beulah. Her weaving appears as both a depiction of her
activity in the dream and a symbol of the main activity of the
Daughters of Beulah, who show mercy on those who fall into
the material world by weaving bodies for them. We have seen
them before, just before the pilgrim passed between the giants
to enter the lower world.
Though a step lower than the highest world, Beulah is open to
Eternity. After a nights rest from the exertions of the climb,
the pilgrim is ready to enter the Garden of Eden at the top of
the mountain. Dantes Eden, of course, is the Earthly
Paradise, the garden where Adam and Eve began life.
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Because no one with sin may live there, it is now accessible

only to people who have completed the purification process
on the mountain. From there, the souls launch themselves
upward to Heaven. Blakes cosmology also includes Eden,
although, as we might expect, it is not quite the same as
Dantesin fact, it is among the most variable and
multivalent of his symbols. The changing uses that Eden
serves in Blakes work mean that, like everything in his
world, we are to think of it as a construction of the
imagination, which may expand or contract as necessary. If,
therefore, Eden as he draws it in the Comedy illustrations is
not quite the same as the Edens that exist elsewhere in his
work, this is not something to give pause. Damon writes that
Eden partakes of Eternity, but differs from it in that it also
partakes of this world.92 This definition will serve for the
garden that we see at the top of the mountain in the
Purgatorypartaking of Eternity in that it is above the
material world and above Beulah, but also partaking of this
world, because it is still below Eternity, which Blake
illustrates in his pictures for Dantes Paradise.
The first watercolor of Eden is a wide-angle view of the
garden, combining several events from the final cantos of the
Purgatory (fig. 84). Virgil and Statius stand at the lower right,
behind the pilgrim, who has advanced to the edge of the River
Lethe. He is greeted from the other side of the stream by
Matilda, shown in white. Behind her, under arches of leaves,
we can see the great procession of symbolic beings who
parade through Eden for the pilgrims benefit, providing an
allegorical embodiment of the Bible. Beatrice is visible
between the upraised wings of the carriage that is central to
the pageant.

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Blake has made this watercolor an accurate illustration of the

text. He finds no need to correct any of the paintings of
Dantes Eden because it is here that the two poets methods
are in closest accord, representing the truth of the Bible
through living characters and not reasoned discourse.
Whereas Virgil has done a lot of explaining throughout the
Comedy so far, and the souls the pilgrim encounters in
Heaven will do more, the events and characters in Eden
operate in a manner much like Blakes own. As in The Four
Zoas or Jerusalem, the six cantos of the Comedy set in Eden
introduce a large number of living characters without
explanation. Like Blakes characters, they invite us to read
them as allegory for a theological view, but some are more
easily read than others, and the wide variety of interpretations
since the fourteenth century demonstrates that their
symbolism is not obvious. Dante has drawn largely here from
the Apocalypse of John but also introduces non-biblical
characters as well, in Blake-like abundance. There are giant
candlesticks, groups of slowly advancing elders, dancing
nymphs, and strange beasts. Our heavily footnoted
translations assure us of the intended meanings, but Dante
does not, and none of his characters pauses to explain things,
as happens in other parts of the Comedy. Ciardi, in his notes
to this section, writes: Dante has not presented any allegory
of such formality up to this point, and some readers have
thought the allegory of the Pageant stiff and lifeless. One
should bear in mind, however, that Dante is beginning to deal,
now, not with reason but with revelation.93 We can be
confident that Blake noted this point.

505

Figure 84. Beatrice on the Car with Matilda and Dante,

watercolor over graphite ( The Trustees of the British
Museum/Art Resource, New York).

The majority of commentators take the pageant to represent

the history of the world, from Genesis to Apocalypse. The
twenty-four white-clad elders who precede Beatrices car are
said to stand for the twenty-four books of the Old Testament.
The gryphon who pulls the car indicates Christ, and the seven
elders who walk after it are the writers of the New Testament.
As Ciardi notes, these elders are not the real writers of the
scripturesSt. John, for example, appears twice in this
pageant and again, in a different guise, in Heaven. The people
in the parade are embodiments not limited to one historical

506

form or individual. In this, they operate in the same way as

Blakes characters.
Durling and Martinez point out that the gathering of the elders
into one place also serves to collapse time.94 Genesis and
Apocalypse are no longer so far apart that an individual may
not see both, but standing within the pilgrims view in the
garden. They are people, and moments in history, and books,
and stand before us now. This, too, is parallel to Blakes
method in his epics, in which cause and effect, past and
future, may appear in visionary order, unrelated to historical
time. The time and space that we perceive in the fallen world
have regathered to a single point.
The numerological, astrological, and theological references in
Dantes pageant, intended by the author or only perceived by
ambitious scholars, have inspired nearly as much interpreting
as Blakes books have.
The next-to-last illustration of the Purgatory is the most
finished in the series and among the most beautiful works that
Blake ever created (see fig. 85 in the color insert). It forms the
climax of Blakes Comedy, and we might almost see it as the
climax of his career as well. Its amazing colors, unaffected by
time, its visionary intensity, and its merging of biblical
prophecy with his personal symbolism make this one of his
finest works. It is also, we should note, a collaborative effort
that spans millennia, combining as it does the visions of
Ezekiel, John, Dante, and Blake. This painting alone is
sufficient to explain Blakes interest in the Comedy, his
attraction to Dantes symbolism, and his choice of this project
as his final work.

507

This painting shows the merkabah as it appears in the

Purgatory. The merkabah is the wheeled car surrounded by
the four living creatures, which first appears in the first
chapter of Ezekiel.
4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out
of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself,
and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst
thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of
the fire. 5 Also out of the midst thereof came the
likeness of four living creatures. And this was their
appearance; they had the likeness of a man. 6 And
every one had four faces, and every one had four
wings.
.....
10 As for the likeness of their faces, they four had
the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right
side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left
side; they four also had the face of an eagle. 11 Thus
were their faces: and their wings were stretched
upward; two wings of every one were joined one to
another, and two covered their bodies.
.....
13 As for the likeness of the living creatures, their
appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like
the appearance of lamps: it went up and down
among the living creatures; and the fire was bright,
and out of the fire went forth lightning. 14 And the

508

living creatures ran and returned as the appearance

of a flash of lightning.
.....
18 As for their rings, they were so high that they
were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes
round about them four.
.....
28 As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud
in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the
brightness round about. This was the appearance of
the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I
saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of
one that spake [Ezekiel 1].
John repeats much of this in his Apocalypse, although, as
Dante points out, Johns tetramorphic creatures have six
wings, not four as in Ezekiel. John describes the merkabah
appearing with the twenty-four elders and the seven lights, as
we see also in Dante. Both Ezekiel and John see the
tetramorphs surrounding the throne of God itself. Following
St. Jeromes interpretation from the early fifth century, it is
traditional to see the tetramorphs as the four evangelists, but
of course Ezekiel was writing six centuries before Christ, and
John never makes this connection explicit.
Its impossible to exaggerate the importance of the merkabah
for Blake. Harold Bloom writes:

509

The central image of Blake, from whenever he first

formulated his mythology, is Ezekiels, the
Merkabah, Divine Chariot or form of God in
motion. The Living Creatures or Four Zoas are
Ezekiels and not initially Blakes, a priority of
invention that Blakes critics, in their search for
more esoteric sources, sometimes evade. Ezekiel, in
regard to Blakes Jerusalem, is like Homer in regard
to the Aeneid: the inventor, the precursor, the shaper
of the later works continuities. From Ezekiel in
particular Blake learned the true meaning of
prophet, visionary orator, honest man who speaks
into the heart of a situation to warn: if you go on so,
the result is so; or as Blake said, a seer and not an
arbitrary dictator.95
Someone who tells you what truth is, as the Virgil of the
Comedy sometimes does, is in danger of becoming that
arbitrary dictator. To say this is true is to exclude it is also
false, though we have seen, thanks to Cusanus, Boehme, and
Blake, that in God all contraries are true. Critics of the
Enlightenment have dealt with this danger of intellectual
fascism in different ways. Adorno, for example, sought to
avoid dogma through negative dialectics. Blake felt that the
way to speak with sincerity but without Urizenic authority
was to emulate Ezekiel: as prophet and visionary who uses
images to elicit the participation of the reader, who
encourages the viewer to reenact the revelation. In the early
Marriage of Heaven and Hell he recounts his visionary
meetings with Ezekiel as the model of prophecy. And his four
Zoas, the central imagery of his late work, are derived from
these four fourfold creatures. He included a picture of the

510

merkabah in his painting of the Last Judgment, and in the

description of that work he tells us:
the Four Living Creatures mentiond in Revelations
as Surrounding the Throne these I suppose to have
the chief agency in removing the [former] old
heavens & the old Earth to make way for the New
Heaven & the New Earth to descend from the throne
of God & of the Lamb [E 561].
This is the function they have in his Comedy illustrations, as
well. The appearance of the merkabah in Eden signals the
climactic event of the story, as the pilgrim moves beyond the
educational experiences of his trip and arrives at the point
where a vision like this is possible. He is now in the company
of those like Ezekiel and John, who may see these things
directly. Christopher Rowland writes: Here in the
apocalyptic climax is what John of the Apocalypse says, we
shall see his face, as indeed Ezekiel does. For Blake that
divine vision is the fullness of humanity revealed and
enjoyed.96
The car is where the four Zoas, who were divided at the Fall,
are reunited. Their unification is the climax of the journey; it
is the Resurrection.
The illustration of the vision shows Blakes loyalty to his
predecessors as well as his creativity. Only the heads of the
tetramorphs are visible. Like many other artists (e.g.,
Raphael, in the painting in the Palazzo Pitti), he has shown
each of the four heads with only one face, instead of each
with four as Ezekiel describes. Their wings point upwards
like blue flames and are covered in eyes, a detail many
511

painters neglect to show. The problematic wheels within

wheels, the complicated circles on which the car moves,
Blake has shown as a whirl of color, also covered with eyes
and incorporating human faces within. As Dante, but not his
predecessors, indicates, the car is drawn by a gryphon, half
eagle and half lion. Dante describes the front, eagle parts as
gold and the rear, lion half as a mixture of white and red.
Most commentators take this to refer to Christs double
nature: the part who lives above is indicated by gold and the
earthly incarnation is shown with the colors of flesh and
blood. Blake has ignored the colors specified and painted the
whole animal with touches of primary colors, reminding us
again that for him the duality of body and soul, above and
below, is illusion that will not survive the reappearance of this
creature.
The personifications of the Three Christian Virtues appear
with the car, painted as Dante and tradition require, in green
for Hope, red for Caritas, and white for Faith. Caritas, the
greatest virtue, is shown burning with yellow flames, and
also, oddly, surrounded by red babies. Faith walks forward to
gesture to the gryphon, her other hand pointing to a book.
Where Dante differs from his predecessors, in an almost
heretical way, is his placement of Beatrice at the center of the
car, where the Bible specifies the throne of God. Her presence
here has been explained symbolically in many different ways
by commentators. She has been called, among other things, a
personification of theology, a symbol of new life, and divine
wisdom, who is described as a woman in the Old Testament
named Sophia or Sapientia.97

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Blake has shown Beatrice crowned, with long wavy golden

hair. In this illustration she is not dressed as Dante describes
her, in the colors of the Three Virtues, but in robes that are
multicolored like the gryphon. The text describes her as
looking toward the gryphon as often as toward the pilgrim,
perhaps indicating that this symbol of Christ is more
deserving of her attention. Blake has drawn the pilgrim
directly in front of the gryphon, so its impossible to tell
which of the two she is looking at.
My view of this watercolor is so opposed to Roes that our
interpretations may coincide only in the mind of God. Roe
identifies all of Purgatory with Beulah, not in the sense of the
place of rest, but in its more dangerous aspect, as the level
from which the soul may fall into materialism. He is sure that
Blake could not see the female Beatrice as a positive symbol
of salvation and so concludes that she is the delusion of Vala,
and that, in a reading exactly the opposite of mine, this
watercolor shows the moment of the Fall. He counts it a mark
of Blakes genius that he could leave the imagery of this
scene intact while completely reversing the direction of its
movement.98 To his credit, the lines from Jerusalem that he
quotes do parallel the imagery of this picture.
I see a Feminine Form arise from the Four terrible
Zoas
Beautiful but terrible struggling to take a form of
beauty [E 230]
Feminine forms are associated with the Fall, but they may
also appear in moments of redemption. From The Four Zoas:

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Thus shall the male & female live the life of Eternity
Because the Lamb of God Creates himself a bride &
wife
That we his Children evermore may live in
Jerusalem
Which now descendeth out of heaven a City yet a
Woman
Mother of myriads redeemd & born in her spiritual
palaces
By a New Spiritual birth Regenerated from Death [E
391]
Boehme had seen wisdom as female, and declared that she
was Christs wife.99 Jerusalem appears as a city and a
woman, descending from Heaven for a new spiritual rebirth.
In addition, if we follow Roe in seeing the watercolor of the
merkabah as the moment of the Fall, we are left with the
problem of the final canticle following on from this point. If
the Fall is just beginning, why do we now proceed to Heaven?
Roes interpretation of the Heaven illustrations are a mixture
of positive and negativesome of the souls in the upper
world demonstrate Blakes Eternity, and some show the fallen
world. The painting of the pilgrim with St. John, for example,
shows the final stage in the gradually expanding degrees of
perception,100 but the final drawing, of the Rose of Heaven,
depicts only the evil dominion of the Female Will.101
Despite the unusual presence of Beatrice as a representative
of salvation, I think we may see Blake as following in the
direction Dante meant to take us. From the Garden of Eden,
the pilgrim launches to Heaven, which Blake calls Eternity.

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Here is a passage from Jerusalem that parallels this

movement:
The Four Living Creatures Chariots of Humanity
Divine Incomprehensible
In beautiful Paradises expand These are the Four
Rivers of Paradise
And the Four Faces of Humanity fronting the Four
Cardinal Points
Of Heaven going forward forward irresistible from
Eternity to Eternity [E 258]
The four living creatures, who are Blakes four Zoas (Zoa
comes from the Greek for animals) bring divine humanity
on their chariot, to beautiful Paradise where the four rivers
flow, the four faces of humanity may be seen, and the four
directions face Eternity, to which they go forward irresistibly.
There follows in Jerusalem a description of activity in
Eternity, which we will see Blake has faithfully followed in
his illustrations to the Paradise.

515

igure 86. The Harlot and the Giant, pen and ink and
watercolor over pencil and black chalk (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10193]).

And they conversed together in Visionary forms

dramatic which bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous
majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating exemplars of Memory
and of Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the
wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination [E 2578].

516

Before we launch for Heaven, we take one backward glance

at the corruption of the world (fig. 86). Now that we are
capable of direct vision, we may see that the world and the
church are not what we thought they were. Blakes last
watercolor for the Purgatory, following Dantes description,
shows us what the fallen institutions look like to those in a
purer condition. These figures, too, derive from Johns
Revelation: they are the Whore of Babylon, the Great Beast
of Revelation, and a giant. For Dante, they probably described
the corruption of the Church in collaboration with worldly
power, a misfortune that Blake thought continued in his own
time. In Fryes words, the fallen, traditional Church,
visualizes itself as the Bride of Christ and man as a creature
of God. Yet this view holds only until the upper limit of
Beulah. Now that we have progressed above Beulah to Eden,
our divided souls have been united and our perception
restored, we can see that Church and Fallen Man are like the
corrupt creatures of the Revelation: beastly and whorish.
Guarda e passa!

11. Heaven

In Eden we left behind proof through argument and acquired

the ability to receive revelation. Northrop Frye tells us that
this is how the Bible is to be read:
Job is a dramatic poem, the Song of Songs a
love-poem, the Apocalypse an allegory, the
teachings of Jesus mainly parables, and all the
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prophecy and doctrine is continuously visualized

and illustrated. Only the poetic imagination can
comprehend the Bible, and the Bible introduces that
imagination to a mental world of inspired wisdom,
culture and beauty in which all religions are one.
The place of honor in art goes to the artist who has
passed through religion and come out on the other
side. Such an artist, in Blakes symbolism, has gone
with the church to the upper limit of Beulah, where
it visualizes itself as the Bride of Christ and man as
a creature of God, and has then burst through the
ring of fire into the Eden where man is no longer a
creature but a creator and is one with God. There he
is a citizen of the free city which all human life
strives to realize in this world, and which is the
Word of God or body of Jesus; and whenever he
speaks to other men in the language of the creating
mind he recreates that Word in time.102
We have seen that the pilgrim left Beulah and broke through
that ring of fire into Eden. In the Paradise, we see him in that
free city where the citizens speak in the language of creation.
The first of Blakes illustrations for Heaven is the lightest of
pencil sketches. It shows a stairway not mentioned in Dantes
text but clearly intended for ascension into the upper world,
much like the painting of Jacobs Ladder that Blake had
completed some years earlier. In that painting the scale of the
staircase is smaller than in the illustration for Dante, but the
ascending figures, the stars, and the upward spiral are similar.
The drawing for the heavenly stairs is a sort of companion to
Blakes map of Hell. As you recall, he turned that diagram
518

top-to-bottom, so that Hell narrowed as it reached the top, just

as this staircase does. He also changed Hells horizontal rings
into a spiral, emphasizing upward movement. That drawing
converted Dantes vision of a Hell with no escape into a
difficult but inevitable ascent; the spiral shape made the
pilgrims path through Hell into what Blake calls a vortex, a
circular movement that, because it also involves a progression
in a third dimension, makes each complete revolution bring us
to a point higher than where it began. According to Dantes
description, the ascent of Purgatory is roughly spiral,
combining a level circular motion with vertical ascents from
level to level. The downward trip through Hell proceeds
similarly. Between the Earthly Paradise and the Empyrean,
the rise to Heaven occurs in a straight line. Blake, however,
has transformed the movement through each canticle into an
identical shapea smooth spiral vortex. This is a spatial
representation of the progression through contraries that he
held to be so important.
Including the drawing of the staircase, there are only eight
pictures for the Paradise, as opposed to seventy-two for Hell
and twenty for Purgatory. This is because, as his other epic
poems show, Blakes main theme as an artist is the Fall and
redemption of mankind, not what mankind does after it is
redeemed. Once the horrors of division have been shown in
Hell and the reuniting of the four Zoas occurs at the top of
Purgatory, the drama is complete. Only a few pictures are
necessary to describe the world we are aiming for. Nor is
Blake interested in the discussions of physics and theology
that occur in the early part of the canticle; he skips the first
thirteen cantos and takes us to what is, in a sense, the main
message of the Comedy: the vision of Christ.

519

Blake makes no allusions to the events of the text in canto 14,

where Christ appears; he shows only the pilgrim, kneeling
and with his arms upraised, adoring Jesus. The cross is not
visible, though Christs arms are outstretched (fig. 87).
In an original addition to the scene, Blake has place three
glowing circles or globes at the extremities of Christs body:
one behind each hand, and one beneath his feet. Each of these
is painted in a primary color. From the upper globes to the
lower one there are wavy lines of fire which, with the
horizontal line of Christs arms, form an inverted triangle.
This is the same diagrammatic form that Blake used in the
Job illustrations to show true religion. In that series, a triangle
superimposed with crucifix-like arms occurs in four of the
engravings following Jobs restoration and elevation to true
visionary faith. The consolidation of the primary colors, the
completion of the full triangle, and the direct vision of Christ
all show us that the pilgrim has achieved the rise to Eternity.
The composition of this painting, with the pilgrim at the
bottom in a pose of adoration and Christ, much larger, above,
will remind us of the painting near the beginning of the series,
in which a crowned figure was shown worshipping the Angry
God of this World. Here, near the end of the series, that image
is corrected, and the true God, who is Christ, is revealed.
Blake believed that Christ is the Universal Man, who is all
men united. Writing of the four Zoas, he declared:
Four Mighty Ones are in every Man; a Perfect Unity
Cannot Exist [except] from the Universal
Brotherhood of Eden

520

The Universal Man. To Whom be Glory Evermore

Amen [E 300301]
Blakes own notes to these lines refer us to passages from the
Gospel of John, which emphasize unity.
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me,
and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that
the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And
the glory which thou gavest me I have given them;
that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them,
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in
one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent
me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me
[John 17:2123].

521

522

Figure 87. Dante Adoring Christ, pen and ink and

watercolor over pencil and black chalk (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10203]).

The existence of the many in the One is a key characteristic of

Blakes Eternity, a point he repeated in various works. A late
poem in the notebook reads:
My Eyes more & more
Like a Sea without shore
Continue Expanding
The Heavens commanding
Till the Jewels of Light
Heavenly Men beaming bright
Appeard as One Man [E 683684]
The Heaven of this poem, like Dantes, is beaming with light.
Men who live in Heaven appear as one. This does not mean
that, as in Buddhist ideas of Nirvana, the individual
personality ceases to exist. Perfect perceptual freedom, the
ability to shape existence through free use of the imagination,
means that we perceive ourselves as both one and many:
We live as One Man; for contracting our infinite
senses
We behold multitude; or expanding: we behold as
one,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One
Man
We call Jesus the Christ [E 180].

523

And as the imagination is the man, and all men are in Christ,
Christ himself is imagination: All things are comprehended
in their Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour the
True Vine of Eternity The Human Imagination (E 545).
The imagination, as we saw in Part III, is the faculty of mind
that makes a world from the noumena, and thus, it is the
creator of the human world. The imagination, then, is the
creator of all, who is God, who is Christ. Worship of Christ is
not like the monarchs of the earth worshipping the Angry God
of this World, because we know that imagination exists only
in people, and therefore worshipping Christ is worshipping
the creative source in ourselves and everyone else. God is not
distant but immanent in all of us, and the creative principle, or
Logos, is us: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
In canto 19, the pilgrim has ascended to the sphere of Jupiter,
the sphere of the just and temperate rulers. At this level he
sees the souls of several great kings, including David, Trajan,
and Constantine, and he sees a vision of a great eagle. Blake
shows none of this. Instead, he has invented a sort of
recording angel of a type that appears nowhere in the
Comedy. The watercolor is labeled PAR. Canto 19, but
without that hint we would be hard pressed to know where to
place it. This angel is similar to the one at the gate of
Purgatory: a seated patriarchal type with long, up-pointed
wings (fig. 88).
He is also similar in appearance to God as Blake shows him
in the Job series. Perhaps most importantly, he is much like
the evil God of this World that we met as the pilgrim
524

descended into Hell at the beginning of the series. We knew

that was a false God largely because his left foot was an oxs
hoof, but Blake has been careful to expose the left foot of the
angel in Paradise and reassure us that it is a human foot.
Contrary to other interpretations, then, I will conclude that
this figure is not intended to be the stern God of the Old
Testament. But nor is he intended to be the true God, either.
We saw the true God, for Blake the only God, in the previous
illustration.
This angel was drawn in response to the pilgrims discussion
with the visionary eagle about the nature of divine justice.
Because the rulers he meets in this sphere were just ones, the
pilgrim takes the opportunity to ask them about Gods justice,
a subject that remains inscrutable to those of us on earth. The
eagles answer, though beautiful, is not one that will satisfy
Blake. The eagle tells us that Gods wisdom so much
surpasses peoples ability to understand that we may not
fathom the operation of his justice. The eagle poses a question
similar to the ones God asked Job:

What then,
And who art thou, that on the stool wouldst sit
To judge at distance of a thousand miles
With the short-sighted vision of a span?
[Paradise, 19; Cary, 379]
We are told to have faith and not try to understand.

525

There would assuredly be room for doubt

Even to wonder, did not the safe word
Of Scripture hold supreme authority.
As weve seen, none of this is acceptable in Blakes theology.
When he is in Eternity, man, who is God, will have nothing
hidden from him and will not have to rely on the authority of
a book. This is why Blake has responded to the eagles words
with the drawing of this particular angel. Though he has
wings, this angel is very much earth-boundthe only
character in the Heaven illustrations who is not flying free.
He is seated on what appears to be a tree trunk, indicating
rootedness to the earth. Though he is not an evil angel, he is
also not a very wise one: he looks up toward Heaven with a
sort of confused expression, waiting for inspiration on what to
write in his scroll of justice. Unlike the God of this World
whom we saw at the beginning of the series, no one is bowing
down to him; hes alone in a light but monotonous space. The
only indication that this angel, too, may mean well is the
triangle in which he sits. The overall symmetrical
composition of the picture forms a triangle that is emphasized
by three stars, two at the angels feet and one just above his
head. These are not as illuminating as the globes of light with
Christ, but they are also not a sign of evil. The contrast
between this rather weak-looking being and the illuminating
Christ of the previous illustration shows us what Blake
thought of the idea of divine justiceit becomes dim and
slightly laughable when compared to the direct vision of God.
The illustrations now skip over the sphere of Saturn and most
of the events in the sphere of the fixed stars. The watercolor
labeled Paradise Canto 24 is based on the opening lines of
that canto, but Blake has used it, as so many of the others, for
526

his own purposes. This and the next three pictures should be
read as a series; they form a sort of independent work within
the set of Dante illustrations, explicating the theme of unity in
multiplicity and of the blissful debate among spirits in
Eternity (fig. 89).

527

528

Figure 88. The Recording Angel, watercolor with pen and

ink over pencil (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery,
Birmingham Museums Trust).

In the sphere of the fixed stars the pilgrim sees myriad souls,
who appear as flying lights. They combine to form larger
shapes.
Beatrice spake;
And the rejoicing spirits, like to spheres
On firm-set poles revolving, traild a blaze
Of comet splendour: and as wheels, that wind
Their circles in the horologe so work
The stated rounds, that to the observant eye
The first seems still, and as it flew, the last;
Een thus their carols weaving variously,
They, by the measure paced, or swift, or slow,
Made me to rate the riches of their joy
[Paradise, 24; Cary, 399400].

529

Figure 89. Dante and Beatrice in the Constellation of

Gemini and the Sphere of Flame, watercolor and some pen
and black ink over graphite and black chalk (Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford University).

A horologe is a clock, and clockwork is often, in Blakes

writing, a symbol of the Newtonian universe, but better
wheels also exist above. In Jerusalem, Blake mentions
those of Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony
& peace [E 157].
Here he shows the flying souls making giant wheels of light,
pure and unmechanical. The watercolor is unfinished, but we

530

can see two large circles merging, like a Venn diagram,

behind the pilgrim and Beatrice, and around the circles are the
shapes of people, perhaps with wings. The pilgrim has his
back to us, but we see his profile, unusually masculine in this
picture, facing Beatrice, whose pose is the same though in
mirror-image, facing us. They seem to gaze lovingly into each
others eyes. The heart of each figure is at the midpoint of the
circles behind them, making it seem that these groups of
flying souls are emanations or halos from the two. The
diagrammatic meaning could hardly be clearer: this is the
merging of the pilgrim and his female counterpart, who is
Wisdom, or his emanation, or the female part of himself who
was divided at the time of the Fall. The Christ we saw a
moment ago appeared male, but, as Abrams reminds us,
Redemption is made possible by Christ, who in His risen
form, like man before the fall, united the masculine and
feminine in his single person (Erigena II. x.). As evil is the
principle of division, so redemption is the principle of
reintegration.103
The second in this series of four shows the pilgrim and
Beatrice, penciled lightly at the bottom of the page, rising to
meet St. Peter, who is flying to meet them (fig. 90). The saint
is surrounded by a halo of red light, which shines among the
white light of the background. He is shown much larger than
the other two figures, and has an appearance typical of
Blakes patriarchal type.
Nothing here reflects the dialogue that occurs among the three
characters in Dantes text. There, in canto 24, St. Peter
quizzes the pilgrim on the meaning of faith, and the pilgrim
answers modestly but correctly. In the watercolor, Beatrice
gestures upwards toward the saint, the pilgrim holds up both
531

hands in amazed greeting, and St. Peter holds a key in one

hand and shows the other, palm-outward. Rather than
appearing to be a question and answer session, the
composition of the picture shows the three rushing towards
each other from different points, intent on unity, a theme that
is continued in the next painting.
Now the pilgrim and Beatrice are shown overlapping, like a
single two-headed figure (fig. 91). Above them St. Peter and
St. James rush towards each other, their halos already
merging. They are identical in appearance, except that Peter
holds his key, and the two figures colors are reversed: Peter
has a blue robe and red halo, while James has a blue halo and
red robe. Again, Blake shows no interest in the content of the
dialogue between the saint and the pilgrim. The theme here is
the great conversation in Eternity, not the pilgrims
understanding of theology.

532

Figure 90. St. Peter Appears to Beatrice and Dante, pen and
ink and watercolor over black chalk and pencil (National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920
[10213]).

533

Figure 91. St. Peter and St. James with Dante and Beatrice,
pen and ink and watercolor over pencil (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10223]).

In the next painting five figures are merged in heavenly

discourse (see fig. 92 in the color insert). The pilgrim and
Beatrice appear to have combined almost completely; in this
group, she is hidden behind him, with only her head visible
above his shoulder, a combination that brings the two figures
together into the minimum of space.104 Three saints are now
floating around them: Peter at left, James at right, and St.
John the Evangelist above. Their circular halos all overlap at
a point behind Beatrices head.

534

Of all Blakes visual work, these pictures seen in sequence

depict most clearly the view of Eternity that he describes in
Jerusalem:
When in Eternity Man converses with Man they
enter
Into each others Bosom (which are Universes of
delight)
In mutual interchange. [E 244]
And they conversed together in Visionary forms
dramatic which bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous
majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating exemplars of Memory
and of Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the
wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination [E 2578].
Blake has not only managed to find in Dante the image of his
own written descriptions of Eternity, he has also solved
several visual problems that defeated other illustrators. As
Dante describes it, Paradise is a realm of light, and as the
pilgrim rises he is nearly overcome by its brilliance. It is too
bright for mortals to see. The difficulty of depicting such light
in a traditional medium is clear when we see, for example,
Gustave Dors illustrations for the same scenes. Dors
depictions of Hell have been popular since he created them in
the mid1800s. The drama of their dark engraving suits the
popular idea of the Infernos mood, and he was bold in his
depiction of the grotesque aspects of Hell. His engravings of
Heaven, on the other hand, do not succeed.105 The bright
535

light necessary for accurate illustrations proves impossible in

the black and white medium and makes the entire canticle
fade into a pale grey.
Perhaps the best approach prior to Blakes was that of
Giovanni di Paolo, a Sienese artist of the fifteenth century.106
Giovanni solved the problem by finding a sort of simulacrum:
he depicts the glories of Heaven with plentiful and expensive
ultramarine and gold leaf, assuming that the dazzle of riches
will provide an impression similar to overwhelming light.
Another difficulty for illustrators is that the souls who greet
the pilgrim in the solar system do not appear in human form.
Until the Last Judgment, when they will receive a spirit-body,
they live as disembodied lights, unrecognizable by the
pilgrim. Most illustrators ignore this detail, choosing the
easier option of drawing the souls as people. Only Botticelli
remained faithful enough to the text to show the souls without
bodies, but in that age before laser light shows he could not
imagine light without a source, so he made the souls tiny
flames. This results in all the illustrations for the last canticle
looking nearly the same: the pilgrim and Beatrice floating in
air, with what look like flaring matches all around them.
Blake also goes against the text in giving the inhabitants of
Heaven bodies, but he solves the problem of showing the
brilliance of light through a masterful use of watercolor.
Through the thin washes of color the white of the paper
shines through and reads as light. When the color is so thin as
to be almost not there, the impression is of light that
overwhelms the eye. (The effect is particularly beautiful and
accurate in a medium that Blake could not have imagined;
when viewed on a computer screen, the glow of the
536

backlighting is well suited to the brightness of the images.)

This makes his pictures of Heaven, different as they may be
from Dantes message, among the most successful ever in
depicting the feel of the canticle.
In canto 28 the pilgrim has reached the Ninth Heaven, also
known as the Primum Mobile, the sphere above the fixed
stars. From here he glimpses the nine orders of angels,
surrounding a single point, with the highest level of angel
nearest to the center. Beatrice explains why the hierarchy is
the opposite of the planetary spheres, where the highest is the
outermost, and the lowest, the earth, is in the center. In her
explanation, she mentions briefly and rather obscurely that
each order of the angelic hierarchy corresponds to one of the
planetary spheres. Cary, in a footnote, makes the
correspondence clearer:
[T]he first circle, that of the Seraphim, corresponds
to the ninth sphere, or primum mobile; the second,
that of the Cherubim, to the eighth sphere, or heaven
of fixed stars; the third, or circle of Thrones, to the
seventh sphere, or planet of Saturn; and in like
manner throughout the two other trines of circles
and spheres [Cary, 419].
This footnote is probably sufficient to explain the position in
the series of a drawing that Blake left unlabeled (fig. 93). It
shows the hierarchy of the planets orbits in the conventional
order, with the green earth at the center. On either side of the
planets are depictions of the angels corresponding to that
sphere. The lower spheres angels look the same, with sweet,
androgynous faces. At the level of Mars the figures are
appropriately martial-looking. At Jupiter, where the pilgrim
537

met the just rulers, we see two bearded patriarchal types, and
at Saturn, associated with religious contemplatives, figures
who look fittingly thoughtful. Above, in the Primum Mobile,
are six angels who look like those in the lower ranks. At top,
in Heaven itself, there is a sketch of a bearded patriarchal
type, with one hand on the top of the sphere and the other
waving in greeting. The effect of this figure is, frankly, a little
goofy. In fact the whole orderly drawing seems out of place in
the pilgrims ecstatic rise to Eternity.

538

Figure 93. The Vision of the Deity from Whom Proceed the
Nine Spheres, watercolor and some pen and black ink over

539

indications in graphite (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

University).

There is clearly a problem for Blake in putting a patriarchal

God at the pinnacle of the spheres. Nor would replacing the
top figure with Christ be a solution, since Jesus is the unity of
all things, not the top of a hierarchy. Like the watercolor of
the recording angel we saw earlier, this picture may serve as a
sort of counter-example or even as a warning. Northrop Frye
reminds us that in one version of his myth, Blake sees Orc,
the spirit of rebellion, cyclically transforming himself into his
opposite, Urizen.107 As developments in France showed too
clearly, revolutionaries may in their turn impose tyrannical
law. We must take care that our rise to freedom does not end
in the very conditions that chained us in the first place.
Much earlier we saw the blasphemer Capaneus lying on the
floor of Hell, cursing the God of this world and plotting his
escape (see fig. 44 in the color insert). His role there was to
show us Orc and the fire of rebellion that we need for our rise
to unity. Since then we have advanced nearly to the opposite
pole of the universe. The final two illustrations of the series,
still ahead of us, show that in this case our destination is not
tyranny or an eternal return of the Orc/Urizen cycle. Still,
Blake has seen fit to include this hierarchical drawing as a
record of how such journeys may fail: a rise that merely
returns us to Urizen, or to the God of this World, is not a
success.
Throughout Dantes Paradise, as the pilgrim rises higher
through the spheres, the light grows more and more intense.
540

This is a metaphor, arising from the tradition of comparing

Gods emanation of existence to the suns shining out of light.
It also reinforces the transcendental idea that, just as the sun is
too bright to look at directly, God is too much for us to see.
The closer one gets to the ideal, the pure source of all, the less
ones corporeal senses are able to meet the challenge of
perception. Dante makes it clear that, since he is not ready to
rise to Heaven permanently, he is enabled to see the higher
levels only through special grace, which grants him
temporary powers. The final eye-opening occurs in the
Empyrean, the highest realm of all, and the home of all the
souls of Heaven. Dante has devised a strange and compelling
metaphor to explain the miracle of perception in this level,
where Gods light shines most strongly of all. There is a river
of light, and the pilgrim must drink from it.
I lookd;
And, in the likeness of a river, saw
Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves
Flashd up effulgence, as they glided on
Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring,
Incredible how fair: and, from the tide,
There ever and anon, outstarting, flew
Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers
Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold:
Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again
Into the wondrous flood; from which, as one
Re-enterd, still another rose
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 428].
The effect of the drink is to render Heaven visible. Dante
compares the change to a group of carnival revelers taking off
their masks and revealing their true faces. What had a
541

moment ago looked like sparks and jewels by the river are
now seen to be the angels and souls of Heavennow, for the
first time, visible to the pilgrim in human form.
bending me,
To make the better mirrors of mine eyes
In the refining wave: and as the eaves
Of mine eye-lids did drink of it, forthwith
Seemd it unto me turnd from length to round.
Then as a troop of maskers, when they put
Their vizors off, look other than before;
The counterfeited semblance thrown aside:
So into greater jubilee were changed
Those flowers and sparkles; and distinct I saw,
Before me, either court of Heaven displayd
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 429].
This is the moment of change in the Comedy that is most
suited to Blakes theology. The revelation here is not a
physical rise from level to level but a transformation of
perception. The doors are opened, and everything appears as
it really is, infinite. The change doesnt come about through
training or through logical explanation but through symbolic
means, a drink of light in a garden of sensual enjoyment.
The top third of Blakes illustration shows the source of the
river, a blazing circle too bright for us to see, and shown to be
so by the thinnest application of red, yellow, and blue
watercolor, leaving the white of the paper to imitate
effectively the light itself (see fig. 94 in the color insert). The
river flows vertically straight down the middle of the page. In
the lower part of the picture we see the foliage on the banks
of the river, the pilgrim bending to drink on the left side, and
542

Beatrice urging him on at the right. Above Beatrice is

another, hooded figure, too sketchy to be identified, and at
left, above the pilgrim, is a man with a scroll, perhaps Blakes
inspirational Bard.
The illustration may be intended to show the instant of
change, because we see among the foliage, in the flowing
river, and all around, tiny figures. If these are the souls of
Heaven, they are visible to the pilgrim only after he drinks,
and their emergence from the background demonstrates the
transformation of vision. Or it may be that Blake, more
visionary than the pilgrim, is able to show us the souls
already, knowing them to be living among the world that
most of us see as dead and divided. One of the sources of
Blakes reputation for eccentricity was his claim that every
rock and flower possessed a human soul. In a poem to a
patron, for example, he wrote that what appears to others to
be a thistle he knows to be a man:
With my inward Eye tis an old Man grey
With my outward a Thistle across my way [E 721]
Such people are seen with the inward Eye, the eye of the
visionary, and so the drink from the river of light enables the
pilgrim to see them, all around him, for the first time.
As soon as the pilgrim drinks of the light, his eyes are opened
and he sees the highest Heaven in its true form. He remarks
that it is a special, heavenly light that makes this visible.
Dante writes:
There is in Heaven a light, whose goodly shine
Makes the Creator visible to all
543

Created, that in seeing Him alone

Have peace
God is above, as a source of light. This light reflects from the
top of the highest sphere, the Primum Mobile, to form a shape
that resembles a white rose. The souls within the rose are in
perfect peace, because they gaze eternally on God.
The pilgrim sees more than a million souls there: all those
who have been to the material world and returned.
round about,
Eying the light, on more than million thrones,
Stood, eminent, whatever from our earth
Has to the skies returnd. How wide the leaves,
[429]
Extended to their utmost, of this rose,
Whose lowest step embosoms such a space
Of ample radiance!
Though this vision covers a huge spacelarger than the
diameter of the sunit is all perfectly visible. Dante
emphasizes that such clear sight is only possible in the upper,
spiritual world.
Yet, nor amplitude
Nor height impeded, but my view with ease
Took in the full dimensions of that joy.
Near or remote, what there avails, where God
Immediate rules, and Nature, awed, suspends
Her sway?
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 430]

544

Between the rose and God a host of angels flies back and
forth, delivering peace and ardour from God to the souls in
the rose. There is no obstruction between the light and the
soulsno more interference by the aetherial spheres or the
four elements.
Already, we can see that there are elements in Dantes
Heaven with which Blake could not agree. The foremost is
the separation that still exists between the souls and God.
Though his light shines directly on them, the souls are still
below God, and still require the intervention of angels to
receive their peace and ardour. Moreover, God is still
frustratingly abstract: an unspecified source of light, nothing
like a person. Dante describes him here as not only pure light,
but as eternally inscrutable to people:
O eternal Light!
Sole in Thyself that dwellst; and of Thyself
Sole understood, past, present, or to come
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 442].
For Dante, who believed in the transcendence of God, the
separation of God and man is unavoidable. However much
Gods emanation forms the ground of existence in all levels
of the universe, God is always greater than that which he
creates. Blake, as we have seen, held that God was absolutely
immanent. When perfect perception has been achieved, there
will be no more separation between man and God.
As Blake wrote in his Auguries of Innocence:
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
545

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day [E 493]
As long as people see God as light, a nonhuman force, they
dwell in night. That is how Dante describes him. People with
true sight, who live in realms of day, see God as human.
Blakes earlier illustrations of the pilgrims ascent
demonstrated this: the vision of Christ as man, and the flying
souls who merged and debated, were correct; they lived in
realms of day. The souls in canto 30, who live just slightly
beneath God, gazing up at him, seem not to have achieved
this.
There are still elements of Dantes description in these final
cantos that would have appealed to Blake. We have seen that
drinking the light as a means of perceptual change is suited to
his theology, which requires only perceptual changes to fall or
rise. Likewise the image of the rose, which may appear as a
single form or as a multitude of souls, is also acceptable,
following as it does Blakes vision of the changing of the
scope of the senses, as in The Four Zoas:
for contracting their Exalted Senses
They behold Multitude or Expanding they behold as
one
As One Man all the Universal family [E 311]
It would also please Blake to see that in Dantes Heaven,
earthly rules no longer apply:
where God
Immediate rules, and Nature, awed, suspends

546

Her sway
[Paradise, 30; Cary, 430].
The direct relevance of this statement to Blakes thought is
even clearer in other translations. The Italian sounds more
Urizenic than Carys choice of the word sway.
ch dove Dio sanza mezzo governa,
la legge natural nulla rileva
[Paradiso, Canto 30, 122123].
Legge means law. In Singletons direct translation:
where God governs without intermediary,
the law of nature in no way prevails.108
The idea of God governing, as if he were an earthly king, is
unacceptable as long as God is transcendent, over and above,
but if we could finally realize that God is Man, the message
would accord with what Blake tells us. Laws of nature, of the
type that Newton and Bacon provided, hold sway only in a
world where imagination has lost its power. In Eternity,
human imagination is not bound by laws. In Jerusalem, we
see the souls in Eternity
creating exemplars of Memory and of Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the
wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination [E 258]
As we come to the end of the Comedy, then, reading with
Blakes viewpoint in mind, we see that Dante comes
frustratingly near to a true vision of God, only to fall short at

547

the last moment. It is only that gap between the souls in the
rose and the source of the light that needs to be closeda
final overcoming of that transcendence. The falling-short is
emphasized by Dantes repeated use of the inexpressibility
topos in these last cantos. Again and again we read that what
he experienced in Heaven exceeds his powers of expression,
vigour faild the towering fantasy, and not language nor art
can show what lies beyond the transcendental leap. Blake has
tried to complete, in a picture, what Dante failed to tell.
Blakes final illustration in the series makes the rose of
Heaven a real rose; he has drawn not only the petal-like
shapes that Dante describes but also the green sepals below
(fig. 95). The scale is much reduced from the description in
the text; if the people within are the size of earthly people, the
flower is far smaller than the diameter of the sun. Each petal
contains a soul, and other people are perched above, in poses
like those seen in Michelangelos Last Judgment. At the top
we see Mary, labeled by Blake in pencil. She is holding a
scepter and a looking glass, also labeled. Below her and
looking up at her are three female figures, and at each side of
this group is an open book, one labeled Homer and the
other Aristotle. At the far left and right of the flower are
two figures too sketchy to be identified as male or female,
labeled Thrones and Dominionstwo types of angel.
Each of these sits behind a closed book. The book on the left
is labeled corded round and the right Bible Chained
round. Above the rose we see an arch of small angels,
probably flying, as Dante describes them, to the light above
and then down again.

548

Figure 95. The Queen of Heaven in Glory, pen and ink and
watercolor over pencil and black chalk (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1920 [10233]).

Understandably, commentators have followed Roe in seeing

this illustration as fully critical of Dantes theology. The
image of a chained Bible strikes us immediately, for example,
as a sign that these people have rejected true religion. I will
offer an interpretation here that makes the picture less
oppositional; I think that many of the signs Roe reads as
critical may be looked at as corrections rather than criticism.
In keeping with my overall reading of the series, I think that
Blake has made adjustments to the scene Dante describes in
order to bring it into full agreement with his own theology. If
I am correct, this picture is an almost mischievous game of

549

paradox and forgiveness, or the coincidence of opposites, and

redemption.
Though we cannot accuse Blake of mariolatry, his view of the
Virgin is generally positive. In his Vision of the Last
Judgment he says that in his painting he has placed Mary
among those who are not of the dead but of those found
Alive at the Last Judgment. She appear[s] to be innocently
gay and thoughtless because she was ignorant of crime in
the midst of a corrupted Age (E 559). In Jerusalem she
speaks wisely of forgiveness. When her husband Joseph
accuses her of harlotry, she does not deny it, but replies,
if I were pure, never could I taste the sweets
Of the Forgive[ne]ss of Sins! [E 211]
And on a page in his notebook, Blake wrote:
Was Jesus born of a Virgin pure
with narrow soul and looks demure?
If He intended to take on sin
The Mother should an harlot been,
Just such a one as Magdalen,
With seven devils in her pen [E 877].
Damon tells us:
Mary is one of the Transgressors, and therefore the
appropriate mother of the greatest Transgressor of
all, who also forgave an adulteress. Her female
ancestry included some of the worst women in the
Old Testament. Here Blake adapted, or
reinvented, a Jewish heresy of the seventeenth
550

century: that the Messiah, to penetrate to the very

heart of evil, must have the worst possible
ancestry.109
Putting her here at the center of the rose of Heaven, then,
becomes a bit of Blakean paradox, which is also at the heart
of Christianity: in Heaven, the last shall be first. Even the
objects she holds in the picture are not necessarily
condemning. Roe is correct that a mirror is normally a sign of
vanity, and the scepter a sign of worldly power, but this is
Blakes Heaven, where all is redeemed, and the judgments we
made in the world below no longer hold. Could the mirror be
a sign of self-knowledge, and the scepter be one of those
weapons that cause harm in the world, but when employed in
the mental fight of Eternity burns with righteousness?
Such a paradoxical view also redeems the presence of Homer
and Aristotles works in Heaven. These two traditionally form
a pair of contraries, if we remember that Neoplatonists
considered Homers works to be full of secret Platonic
wisdom. Plato as the great idealist and Aristotle as materialist
therefore comprise one of the great contraries of philosophy,
and, as we have seen, contraries that seem opposed in our
world are shown in Heaven to coincide perfectly. In
Jerusalem, when Christ redeems the world and Albion
recovers unity, a similar meeting of enemies occurs.
The innumerable Chariots of the Almighty appeard
in Heaven
And Bacon & Newton & Locke, & Milton &
Shakspear & Chaucer [E 257]

551

The three British thinkers whom Blake held responsible for

the Fall appear here alongside his three poetic heroes,
separated from them by a mere comma. If even Bacon and
Newton and Locke may be redeemed, Homer and Aristotle
seem like a shoe-in.
What, then, of the shocking image of the chained Bible in the
illustration of the rose? Is this not a clear sign that inspiration
is a closed book? It depends in part on what part of the Bible
is shut. If this is the Law of Moses, which Blake sees as a
Satanic deception, then in Heaven it ought to be chained,
because such Urizenic commandments have no place there. In
Heaven, all is freedom and forgiveness. The angel that guards
the chained Bible then is a merciful angel, protecting us from
the reopening of a Urizenic age.
Though the Bible, for Blake, is undoubtedly the great code of
art, and the writings of the prophets are the greatest examples
of wisdom, appearances of the Bible as a physical book in his
visual work are not generally positive. In the first of the
illustrations for the Book of Job, for example, Job worships
with a huge Bible-like book open on his lap. Before he (and
we) undergo Jobs trials and get a clearer view of true
religion, using the Bible in that way seems to be the proper,
obedient method of worship. When Job has experienced
direct vision of God, however, and his eyes are opened to
correct prayer, he is seen standing up, playing the harp, and
there are no books in sight. In Blakes address to the
Christians in Jerusalem, he makes clear the message that Job
has learned:
I know of no other
Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty
552

both of body
& mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination
[E 231].
Dante tells us that neither God nor the angels need books. In
fact, they dont need memory, because all truth is eternally
visible to them. Human souls who have reached Eternity,
therefore, having fulfilled the message of the Gospel, would
no longer need to consult the book; they would be living it by
exercising the divine arts of imagination in their most
powerful forms.
The First Book of Urizen contains an image we may use as a
contrasting example to the closed books in the rose of Heaven
(fig. 96). In that early illuminated book, Urizen is shown
holding his Book of the Law wide open in front of him,
presenting us with the laws of nature and of the false God that
we are to obey in our fallen condition. The writing on the
pages of the book is not legible; it is painted as a mish-mash
of spots and blurs. We do not achieve the freedom of Heaven
until this book is shut and chained.

553

Figure 96. From The Book of Urizen, relief etching with

hand coloring, leaf size: 26 18 cm (Lessing J. Rosenwald
Collection, Library of Congress; 2013 William Blake
Archive; used by permission).
554

It would be very interesting to know what Blake intended

when he drew the other book in the picture of the rose of
Heaven, opposite the Bible. This book is also tied shut. There
is no evidence in the drawing to confirm its identity, but
Dante does mention another book earlier in the Paradise that
we can be sure Blake would like to see closed for good.
Earlier in the Paradise, in canto 19, at the sphere of Jupiter,
the souls of the good kings of history have joined to form the
shape of a giant eagle and are discussing with the pilgrim
Gods perfect justice. As is so often the case in Dantes
theology, the answers to the hard questions boil down to the
idea that God can know but the pilgrim cannot. The eagle has
finished singing a song that either because of its language or
its contentthe narrator doesnt sayis incomprehensible to
the pilgrim. It then explains that Gods justice is likewise
impossible for lesser beings to know.
As are my notes
To thee, who understandst them not; such is
The eternal judgment unto mortal ken
[Paradise, 19; Cary, 380].
The eagle sternly reminds us that only God knows what the
final results of divine judgment will be; nonChristians of
other lands may, on the last day, see that certain rulers of
Christendom have been dealt with more harshly than pagans.
What shall the Persians say unto your kings,
When they shall see that volume, in the which
All their dispraise is written, spread to view?
555

There amidst Alberts works shall that be read,

Which will give speedy motion to the pen,
When Prague shall mourn her desolated realm
[Paradise, 19; Cary, 380].
The volume that records the unjust actions of the various
rulers is undoubtedly the one mentioned in Revelation 20:12.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and
the books were opened, which is the book of life: and the
dead were judged out of those things which were written in
the books, according to their works.
This is a volume that Blake sees no place for in Eternity. No
judgment of souls can occur based on Urizenic law, which is
an error. No judgment can be made on the works of souls in
their former states, which they have passed through. The
Bible is inscribed in the hearts of the souls in Eternity, and its
printed version may be shut; the Book of Judgment was a
mistake to begin with, and should never be reopened.
The fact that Dante doesnt mention the presence of any
books in Heaven might lead us to believe that Blake has
added these volumes to his illustrations as critical symbols.
We have seen before, however, that Blake is happy to draw
literally the images that Dante wrote as metaphor. Or we
could say that, as visual poet, Blake sees no difficulty in
translating a verbal symbol directly into a visual one. With
this in mind, we can see that the bound volumes are this
works final representation of Blakes great goal: to rejoin
into one the myriad pages that in the fallen world, due to our
narrowed vision, seem scattered. This is the pilgrims highest
vision of Heaven:

556

O grace, unenvying of Thy boon! that gavest

Boldness to fix so earnestly my ken
On the everlasting splendour, that I lookd,
While sight was unconsumed, and, in that depth,
Saw in one volume claspd of love, whateer
The universe unfolds; all properties
Of substance and of accident, beheld,
Compounded, yet one individual light
The whole
[Paradise, 33; Cary 441].
When Gods grace gives the pilgrim the power to see Heaven
completely, as Blake knows we can, all is revealed. The
books are the universe itself, its essence and all of its
contingencies, regathered, compiled, and corded by love. The
Bible, as source of inspiration, in our world is obscured by
Greek rationalism and Urizenic fear. Its power is weakened
by dilution in modern times because its sources are hidden
and its messages removed from visionary power. In Heaven,
however, it is visible in its unity. It is chained by love so that
we no longer attempt to understand it through dividing its
parts. It provides one individual light that illuminates
everything there is, including Heaven itself.
We do not know the order in which Blake made the pictures
in the series, whether he drew them one by one following the
progression of the text or jumped to different portions as the
spirit moved him. If we think of this drawing of the Rose of
Heaven, though, as the last page in his last project, completed
while he knew he was at deaths door, we may see it as a
triumphant Christian worka selfless act of grace, in which
contraries really are redeemed, the scattered pages of the

557

universe are regathered, and all is forgiven.

558

Conclusion

The dominant theologian and philosopher of the thirteenth

century in Europe was Thomas Aquinas. Dante, writing a
generation after that saint, found little to disagree with in his
theology. Yet nothing in our world remains eternally
unchanged, and theology after Thomas continued to develop,
often in ways that the Thomists and the Catholic Church
found unacceptable. Nicholas of Cusa, though a staunch
Catholic all his life, provided the seeds for a revolution in our
ways of thinking about God that took root and grew among
Protestants, and resonated with thinkers in the more esoteric
traditions of the Perennial Philosophy, of alchemy and
Neoplatonic heresies. The antinomian tendencies in Europe,
which sprang up periodically to challenge social orthodoxy,
also gained intellectual justification from these new ideas.
One of the movements that resulted was a small but enduring
group of dissenters in England, who gained confidence in the
time of Cromwell and never quite faded away. From their
number emerged an influential circle of one, the poet and
artist William Blake.
There are any number of differences between Blakes
theology and that of Thomas Aquinas or Dante. The main one
we have examined here is the concept of absolute immanence,
a denial that God is in any way transcendent of humans, or
that God will be eternally unknowable in any of his aspects.
Dantes belief in transcendence, which is still an orthodox

559

part of Catholic dogma, required certain poetic limitations:

when faced with his vision of the highest Heaven, he was
required to fall back on the expression of inexpressibility, and
say that what he experienced was unsayable. Blake, as we
have seen, sees vision in a more active role. For him, that
which we have seen clearly, we have created. There can be
nothing that can be experienced but not expressed, because
the means of expression are the means through which we
create the worldperception is imagination, which is
language, which is art.
Blake could be supremely, even insanely self-confident. He
corrected the writings not only of the most successful artists
of his own day, but also of Moses and Homer and Milton. Yet
he did not deny the greatness of his artistic forebears or refuse
to collaborate with them. His poem Milton is an epic
conversation in Eternity between the two poets, and if some
genius of our own time could write an epic called Blake, to
correct his corrections, we can imagine him smiling down
from Eternity, eager to engage his new peer.
The illustrations for the Comedy are likewise a respectful
engagement, full of loving corrections, the development of
opportunities missed in the original poem, and the fulfillment
of those parts where Dante, through his more restricted view
of God, fell short. Like Dante, Blake invites us to participate
with him in the journey he makes. Unlike Dante, he believes
that he can show us everything; he can make the text
incarnate, in the visual medium, in a way that Dante could
not.
If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his
Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot
560

of his Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into

Noahs Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a
Friend & Companion of one of these Images of
wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal
things as he must know then would he arise from his
Grave then would he meet the Lord in the Air &
then he would be happy [E 560].

561

Chapter Notes

Preface
1. William Blake: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William
Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor, 1988), 777.
All quotes from Blakes work are from this edition. Further
references will be given as E followed by the page number.
Blakes original spelling and punctuation are maintained
throughout. <Angle brackets> indicate Blakes changes to the
text.
2. Jacob Boehme, Von gttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i,
quoted in G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of
Philosophy; Part Three: Modern Philosophy, Section 1.B,
Jacob Boehme, trans. E.S. Haldane, http://www.marxists.org/
reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpboehme.htm.
3. Albert S. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953).
4. For example, Milton Klonsky, Blakes Dante (New York:
Harmony, 1980).
5. Rodney M. Baine, Blakes Dante in a Different Light,
Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society
105 (1987): 11336; David Fuller, Blake and Dante, Art
History 11 (1988): 34973.
562

Part I
1. Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 17721804
(New York: Pantheon, 1999).
2. Valeria Tinkler-Villani, Visions of Dante in English Poetry
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), 12572.
3. Albert S. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 32.
4. Quoted in Arthur Symons, William Blake (New York: E.P.
Dutton, 1907), 258.
5. Roe, Blakes Illustrations, 16471.
6. Morton Paley, The Traveller in the Evening (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 115.
7. William Butler Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New
York: Collier, 1961), 128.
8. For example: the key-bones & the chest dividing in pain /
Disclose a hideous orifice; thence issuing the Giant-brood /
Arise as the smoke of the furnace, shaking the rocks from sea
to sea. / And there they combine into Three Forms, named
Bacon & Newton & Locke (E 224).
9. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and
Correspondence, vol. 2, ed. Thomas Sadler (London:
Macmillan, 1869), 309.

563

10. Bette Charlene Werner, Blakes Vision of the Poetry of

Milton (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1986), 17.
11. Dennis M. Read, The Rival Canterbury Pilgrims of
Blake and Cromek: Herculean Figures in the Carpet, Modern
Philology 86, no. 2 (November 1988): 17190.
12. Gerda S. Norvig, Dark Figures in the Desired Country:
Blakes Illustrations to The Pilgrims Progress (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993).
13. Bo Lindberg, William Blakes Illustrations to the Book of
Job (Abo: Abo akademi, 1973); Kathleen Raine, The Human
Face of God (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).
14. This date may indicate the year the work was begun, not
its completion. For a detailed discussion of the dates of
Miltons printing, see William Blake, Milton a Poem, ed.
Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 3541.
15. Blake, Milton a Poem, 16.
16. Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, January 20, 2010,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/#4.3.
17. William Stukeley, Stonehenge, a Temple Restord
(London: Printed for W. Innys and R. Manby, 1740), quoted
in Robert N. Essick, Blake and the Language of Adam (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 200.

564

18. S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (Boulder:

Shambhala, 1965), 108.
19. Amanda Gilroy, ed., Romantic Geographies: Discourses
of Travel, 17751844 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000), 204.
20. Ibid., 220.
21. Archibald G.B. Russell, The Engravings of William Blake
(Houghton Mifflin, 1912), 191.
22. Essick, Blake and the Language of Adam, 78.
23. Blake, Milton a Poem, 231.
24. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 167.
25. Ibid., 419.
26. G.E. Bentley, Blake Records (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004), 31617.
27. Blake, Milton a Poem, 16.
28. Roe, Blakes Illustrations, 17.
29. David Fuller, Blake and Dante, Art History 11 (1988):
34973.
30. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 416.
31. Roe, Blakes Illustrations, 37.

565

32. Ibid., 48.

33. Ibid., 38.
34. Ibid., 378.
35. Fuller, Blake and Dante, 353.
36. In addition to Lindberg and Raine, see S. Foster Damon,
Blakes Job (New York: Dutton, 1969), and Joseph Hartley
Wicksteed, Blakes Vision of the Book of Job (New York:
Haskell House, 1971).
37. Lindberg, William Blakes Illustrations to the Book of
Job, 194.
38. S.K. Heninger, The Cosmographical Glass: Renaissance
Diagrams of the Universe (San Marino: Huntington Library
Press, 1977), 28.
39. Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic
Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 105.
Part II
1. Morris Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1992), 3.
2. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, 2nd American ed. (Philadelphia: Abraham
Small, 1816), 8:76.

566

3. Dictionary of Art Historians, Jonathan Richardson,

http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/richardsonj.htm.
4. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 272.
5. Morton Paley, The Traveller in the Evening (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 101.
6. Ibid., 102.
7. Antonella Braida, Dante and the Romantics (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 14.
8. Ibid., 15.
9. Werner Paul Friederich, Dantes Fame Abroad, 13501850
(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950), 22728.
10. David Bindman, Stephen Hebron, and Michael ONeill,
Dante Rediscovered (Grasmere: Wordsworth Trust, 2007), 7.
11. Richard Holmes, Coleridge; Darker Reflections (London:
HarperCollins, 1998), 458.
12. Ibid., 468.
13. Braida, Dante and the Romantics, 131.
14. Bindman, Hebron, and ONeill, Dante Rediscovered, 14.
15. Braida, Dante and the Romantics, 100.
16. Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 105.

567

17. Ibid., 106.

18. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a
sculpture in its collection of Ugolino and his sons by
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (18271875). The marble group
shows Ugolino gnawing his fingers, and his soon-to-be-eaten
children at his feet. In the most hilarious feat of curatorship I
have ever seen, this sculpture was for a time placed at the
entrance to the Mets snack bar, whose long weekend lines
must have inspired museum-goers to sympathize with
Ugolino.
19. Geoffrey Keynes, ed., Blake: Complete Writings with
Variant Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966),
quoted in Morton Paley, Energy and the Imagination
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 87.
20. Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 107.
21. Braida, Dante and the Romantics, 15.
22. Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 109.
23. Ibid., 107.
24. Kenneth Clark, The Drawings by Sandro Botticelli for
Dantes Divine Comedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1976),
7.
25. Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 111.
26. Ibid., 111.

568

27. Ibid., 111.

28. Unless otherwise noted, information on Blakes
relationship with Linnell and the practicalities of
commissioning the Dante series is from James King, William
Blake (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991), 21124.
29. A.T. Story, The Life of John Linnell (London: Richard
Bentley and Son, 1892), quoted in G.E. Bentley, The Stranger
from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2001), 421.
30. Bentley, Stranger from Paradise, 424.
31. Ibid., caption to plate 118B.
32. G.E. Bentley, Blake Records (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004), 290.
33. Bentley, Stranger from Paradise, 424.
34. Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1959), 89.
35. Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 111.
36. A.H. Palmer, Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer (London:
Seeley, 1892) quoted in Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 11.

569

Part III
1. Henry Boyd, A Translation of the Hell of Dante Alighieri,
in English Verse, with Historical Notes, and the Life of Dante
(Dublin: P. Byrne, 1785), v; italics in original.
2. S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (Boulder:
Shambhala, 1965), 176.
3. For example: Thou lovedst me well, / And hadst good
cause; for had my sojourning / Been longer on the earth, the
love I bare thee / Had put forth more than blossoms,
Paradise, 8; Cary, 32526; spoken by Charles Martel.
4. Boyd, A Translation of the Hell of Dante Alighieri, 163.
5. Ibid., 23.
6. Dante Alighieri, The Vision of Dante Alighieri, translated
by H.F. Cary (London: J.M. Dent, n.d.), 277; all other
references to this book will be given in the text.
7. Boyd, A Translation of the Hell of Dante Alighieri, 118.
8. Ibid., 132.
9. Ibid., 136.
10. Ibid., 141.
11. M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1971), 57.

570

12. Richard Blome, The Fanatick History, or an exact

Relation and Account of the Old Anabaptists and New
Quakers (London: printed for J. Sims, 1660), quoted in A.L.
Morton, The Everlasting Gospel (London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1958), 56.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline
Bowles, ed. Edward Dowden (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1881),
quoted in Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 330.
16. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 332.
17.
Antinomianism,
Catholic
Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01564b.htm.
18. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (London:
Penguin, 1976), 228.
19. Ibid., 251.
20. Ibid.
21. Abeiezer Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll, 1649,
https://archive.org/stream/fieryflyingroll00coppuoft#page/n3/
mode/2up.
22. E.P. Thompson, Witness Against the Beast (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 65.

571

23. David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire (New

York: Dover, 1991), 156.
24. G.E. Bentley, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography
of William Blake (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001),
113.
25. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 224.
26. Bentley, The Stranger from Paradise, 197.
27. Ibid., 196.
28. Ibid., 5960.
29. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 428.
30. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 334.
31. Ibid.
32. John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 12, lines 58687.
33. R.W. Church, Dante, an Essay, to Which Is Added a
Translation of De Monarchia by F.J. Church (London:
Macmillan, 1879); an announcement in this edition claims
that it is the first English translation to be made.
34. Explanations for Marcos speech are from Robert M.
Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Purgatorio (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 26973.

572

35. Ibid., 270; according to Martinez and Durling, in defining

the function of civil authority to be the moral education of the
population, Dante voices his agreement with the central
European tradition of political thought, going back to Plato
and Aristotle and represented in medieval Europe by John of
Salisbury, Aquinas, and many others.
36. Regarding a similar statement in the Monarchia, Martinez
and Durling write: This passage is of first importance, of
course, and in terms of orthodox Church doctrine it is
erroneous and smacks of Averroism, the Monarchia was
on the Catholic Churchs Index of Forbidden Books until the
twentieth century; ibid., 273.

37. Dante, Monarchia III.iv.9: [T]he two ruling powers

[empire and papacy] exist as the directors of men toward
certain ends, as will be shown further on; but had man
remained in the state of innocence in which God made him,
he would have required no such direction. These ruling
powers are therefore remedies against the infirmity of sin
[infirmitatem
peccati].
http://oll.libertyfund.org/
index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2196&layou
38. Kevin Brownlee, Dante and the Classical Poets, in The
Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Hoff
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 100; I am
indebted to Brownlee throughout this section on Dantes
relationship to the classical poets.
39. Aeneid, ii, 32.
40. Robert Hollander, Virgil, in The Dante Encyclopedia,
ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), 862.
573

41. Ibid., 863.

42. Boyd, A Translation of the Hell of Dante Alighieri, 193.
43. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1947), 116.
44. Ibid., 341.
45. Ibid., 346.
46. Paley, Traveller in the Evening, 113: The reference to
Churchill (173164) is to The Prophecy of Famine. A Scots
Pastoral Inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq., lines 936:
Thou, Nature, art my goddessto thy law
Myself I dedicatehence, slavish awe,
Which bends to fashion, and obeys the rules
Imposed at first, and since observed by fools!
The opening words are of course more familiar to usand no
doubt to Blakefrom King Lear, where Edmund begins his
first speech Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law / My
services are bound. Edmund then goes on to reveal his plan
to displace his older brother in an intrigue that will result in
the blinding and ultimate death of his own father. Such, to
Blakes mind, was the result of Nature-worship. Churchill
was poor Churchill because (perhaps unconsciously) he
naively appropriated Edmunds line without realizing the
consequences of such an attitude.

574

47. Many of the words are not legible in reproductions,

though the general groupings can be made out. In what
follows I am using the reading of words given by Erdman in
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, but I have
changed the order in which I read the sentences. Erdman
gives the text in this order: Every thing in Dantes Comedia
shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World
the Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy
Ghost as Poor Churchill said Nature thou art my Goddess
[Reading after insertions:] & the Goddess Nature
<Memory> <is his Inspirer> & not <Imagination> the Holy
Ghost. Round Purgatory is Paradise & round Paradise is
Vacuum or Limbo. so that Homer is the Center of All I mean
the Poetry of the Heathen Stolen & Perverted from the Bible
not by Chance but by design by the Kings of Persia and their
Generals The Greek Heroes & lastly by The Romans
Swedenborg does the same in saying that in this World is the
Ultimate of Heaven This is the most damnable Falshood of
Satan & his Antichrist[.] I feel sure that the sentence about
Swedenborg, which Erdman places at the end, should come
immediately after Nature thou art my Goddess. When
Blake wrote that Swedenborg does the same, he intended
the same to refer to what Churchill does, not what the
Romans did.
48. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and
Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), A 120.
49. Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination (New York:
Routledge, 1988), 117.
50. Ibid., 124.
575

51. Ibid., 75.

52. John Smith, Select Discourses (London: F. Flesher, 1660),
quoted in Morton Paley, Energy and the Imagination
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 236.
53. Ibid.
54. Hans Lassen Martensen, Jacob Boehme: His Life and
Teaching, or Studies in Theosophy (Whitefish: Kessinger,
2004; reprint of 1885 edition), 65.
55. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 304.
56. Kathleen Lundeen, Knight of the Living Dead: William
Blake and the Problem of Ontology (Selinsgrove:
Susquehanna University Press, 2000), 22.
57. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 375.
58. John Joseph Stoudt, Jacob Boehme: His Life and Thought
(New York: Seabury, 1968), 229.
59. G.F.W. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.
Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 67.
60. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend, The Collected
Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4: The Friend,
ed. B.E. Rooke (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969),
quoted in Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 183.

576

61. William Eaves, William Blakes Theory of Art (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1982), 32.
62. Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, 1923,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/
hcc05.htm.
63. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and
Correspondence, vol. 2, ed. Thomas Sadler (London:
Macmillan, 1869), 30708.
64. Ibid., 306.

65. Henry Crabb Robinson, letter to Wordsworth,

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/
William_Blake_%28Symons%29/
Extracts_from_the_Diary,_Letters,_and_Reminiscences_of_Henry_Crabb_
66. Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art (Chicago: A.C.
McClurg, 1891), 65.
67. Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dantes Comedy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 175.
68. Bruno Nardi, Dante profeta, Dante e la cultura
medievale, 2d ed. rev. (1941; reprint, Bari: Laterza, 1949),
336416.
69. Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992), 58.

577

70. Dante Alighieri, The Convivio, trans. Richard Lansing,

1998,
http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/books/convivi/
convivio3.html#15.
71. Augustine, Confessions, trans. F.J. Sheed (London: Sheed
and Ward, 1999), 170.
72. Gerrard Winstanley, The New Law of Righteousnes
[sic], in The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. George H.
Sabine (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), quoted in
Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 53.
73. Its unclear whether Cusanus was directly educated in
these practices or not. Cassirer claims he was first taught by
the Brothers of the Common Life, a Devotio Moderna group,
but Duclow has questioned this. See Donald F. Duclow, Life
and Works, in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa, ed. Christopher
M. Bellitto et al. (New York: Paulist, 2004), 2558.
74. Margaret Miles, The Word Made Flesh (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005), 203.
75. Morimichi Watanabe, An Appreciation, in Introducing
Nicholas of Cusa, ed. Bellitto et al., 15.
76. Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in
Renaissance Italy (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000; reprint of
1963 edition), 18.
77. Ibid., 21.
78. Ibid., 36.

578

79. Bellitto, Introducing Nicholas of Cusa, 222.

80. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 37.
81. Nicholas of Cusa, in Catholic Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11060b.htm.
82.
Immanence,
in
Catholic
Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07682a.htm.
83.
Pantheism,
in
Catholic
Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447b.htm.
84. Kevin Fischer, Converse in the Spirit (Madison: Farleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2004), 33.
85. Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic
Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 38.
86. Jacob Boehme, De Electione Gratiae and Quaestiones
Theosophicae, 2.13, trans. John Rolleston Earle (London:
Constable, 1930), quoted in Fischer, Converse in the Spirit,
85.
87. Jacob Boehme, Mysterium Magnum, [L] 1.2; trans. John
Sparrow (London: 1654), reprint, C.J. Barker, ed. (London:
John M. Watkins, 1965), quoted in Fischer, Converse in the
Spirit, 86.
88. Fischer, Converse in the Spirit, 86.
89. Jacob Boehme, The High and Deep Searching out of the
Threefold Life of Man through or according to the Three

579

Principles, 6.45, trans. John Sparrow (London: 1650), reprint,

C.J. Barker, ed. (London: John M. Watkins, 1909), quoted in
Fischer, Converse in the Spirit, 86.
90. G.F.W. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
part B, Jacob Boehme, http://www.class.uidaho.edu/
mickelsen/texts/Hegel%20-%20Hist%20Phil/boehme.htm.
91. Jacob Boehme, The Forty Questions of the Soul and the
Clavis, trans. John Sparrow (London: 1647), reprint: C.J.
Barker and D.S. Hehner, eds. (London: John M. Watkins,
1911), quoted in Fischer, Converse in the Spirit, 73.
92. Jacob Boehme, The Epistles of Jacob Behmen, 5.14; trans.
John Ellistone (London: M. Simmons, 1649), quoted in
Fischer, Converse in the Spirit, 74.
93. Jacob Boehme, Aurora oder Morgenrte im Aufgang,
1612, quoted in G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, part B, Jacob Boehme. https://www.marxists.org/
reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpboehme.htm#fn32
94. G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia Logic, paragraph 24, trans.
T.F. Geraets (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1991), quoted in Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition,
85.
95. Wayne M. Martin, In Defense of Bad Infinity, Bulletin
of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 55/56 (2007): 16887.
96. David Punter, Blake, Hegel and Dialectic (Amsterdam:
Editions Rodopi, 1982), 79.

580

97. Jean Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, trans. J.

ONeill (New York: Basic Books, 1969), quoted in Punter,
Blake, Hegel and Dialectic, 79.
98. Jacob Boehme, Mysterium Magnum, 2.6; trans. John
Sparrow (London: 1654), reprint, C.J. Barker, ed. (London:
John M. Watkins, 1965), quoted in Magee, Hegel and the
Hermetic Tradition, 44.
99. Jacob Boehme, Aurora, 10.98; trans. John Sparrow
(London: 1656), reprint, C.J. Barker and D.S. Hehner, eds.
(London: John M. Watkins, 1960), quoted in Fischer,
Converse in the Spirit, 64.
100. Fischer, Converse in the Spirit, 26.
101. Ibid., 35.
102. Ibid., 38.
103. Crabb Robinson, Diary,
Correspondence, vol. 2, 305.

Reminiscences,

and

104. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans.

George Eliot (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2008), 29.
105. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 428.
106. Dante Alighieri, The Banquet of Dante Alighieri: Il
Convivio, trans. Elizabeth Price Sayer (London: George
Routledge and Sons, 1887), 122; Convivio 3.7.5.

581

107. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, vol. 1:

Text, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975), 81.
108. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 341.
109. Dante Alghieri, The Paradiso, trans. John Ciardi (New
York: Signet, 1970), 221.
110. Moevs, Metaphysics of Dantes Comedy, 170.
111. Ibid., 87.
112.
Immanence,
in
Catholic
Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07682a.htm.
113. W.J.T. Mitchell, Blakes Composite Art (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978), 129.
114. Punter, Blake, Hegel and Dialectic, 116.
115. Frye, Fearful Symmetry, 189.
116. Durling and Martinez, Purgatorio, 287.
117. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a q. 60 a. 1 ad 3,
quoted in Durling and Martinez, Purgatorio, 287.
118. Durling and Martinez, Purgatorio, 281.
119. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), 44.

582

120. Ibid., 106.

121. Dante Alighieri, Convivio 4.17.7.
122. The Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed. Bruce M.
Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993), 277.
123. In the King James Version, Sheol is translated in these
psalms as hell and the grave.
Psalm 16:9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my
glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. 10
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt
thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
Psalm 30:2 O LORD my God, I cried unto thee,
and thou hast healed me. 3 O LORD, thou hast
brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept
me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
124. Teodolinda Barolini, Hell, in The Dante Encyclopedia,
472.
125.
Hell,
in
Catholic
Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07207a.htm.
126. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 128.
127. Ibid., 5.
128. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 151.

583

129. Ibid., 152.

130. Timothy Dalrymple, Adam and Eve: Human Being and
Nothingness, in Kierkegaard and the Bible, vol. 1, ed. Lee C.
Barrett and Jon Stewart (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate,
2010), 9.
131. Juan Luis Vives, On Education, trans. Foster Watson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), quoted in
Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 295.
132. Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, 129.
133. Ibid., 45.
134. Stoudt, Jacob Boehme, 303.
135. Jacob Boehme, Von der Gnadenwahl, Works, 4:232. ed.
William Law (London: M. Richardson, 1764), quoted in
Punter, Blake, Hegel and Dialectic, 80.
136. Stoudt, Jacob Boehme, 23132.
137. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 261.
138. Ibid., 2089.
139. Ibid., 96.
140. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, 79, trans. John
McFarland Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1911), quoted
in Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 121.

584

141. Bo Lindberg, William Blakes Illustrations to the Book

of Job (Abo: Abo akademi, 1973); Kathleen Raine, The
Human Face of God (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982);
Damon, Blakes Job.
142. Lindberg, William Blakes Illustrations to the Book of
Job, 123.
143. Morton Paley, Energy and the Imagination (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1970), 35.
144. James Gollnick, Love and the Soul: Psychological
Interpretations of the Eros and Psyche Myth (Waterloo,
Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1992), 15.
145. Raymond J. Clark, Catabasis: Vergil and the Wisdom
Tradition (Amsterdam: B.R. Grner, 1978), 15.
146. Richard Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the
Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill,
1998), 2526.
147. Ibid., 944.
148. William Franke, Dantes Hell as Poetic Revelation of
Prophetic Truth, Philosophy and Literature 33 (2009):
25266.
149. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 35.
150. George Mills Harper, The Neoplatonism of William
Blake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

585

1961), 228; see also Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and

Bacchic Mysteries (Bibliolife, n.d.).
151. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 31.
152. Robert N. Essick, Blake and the Language of Adam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 12526.
153. Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition, vol. 1 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968), 99.
154. Ibid., 100.
155. William Blake, The Early Illuminated Books, with notes
by Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 79.
156. Frye, Fearful Symmetry, 238.
157. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (London: Penguin,
1978), 469.
158. Ibid.
159. Ibid., 470.
160. Ibid.
161. Heraclitus, fragments 7476, 72, 68, quoted in John
Burnet, ed. and trans., Early Greek Philosophy (London:
Adam and Charles Black, 1908), 151152.
162. Spenser, Faerie Queene, 471.

586

163. Ibid., 472.

164. Raine, Blake and Tradition, vol. 1, 75; Christopher
Heppner, Reading Blakes Designs (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 239.
165. Heppner, Reading Blakes Designs, 245.
166. R.T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1972),
55.
167. Stoudt, Jacob Boehme, 80.
168. Harper, The Neoplatonism of William Blake, 55.
169. Ibid., 30.
170. Proclus, Commentaries on the Timaeus of Plato, vol. 1,
trans. Thomas Taylor (London: A.J. Valpy), 12.
171. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Thirteenth
Book of the Odyssey, trans. Thomas Taylor (London: John M.
Watkins, 1917), 3839. Further quotations of Porphyry are
from this edition.
172. Heppner, Reading Blakes Designs, 250.
173. Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of
the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981).

587

174. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Thirteenth

Book of the Odyssey trans. Thomas Taylor (London: John M.
Watkins, 1917), 34.
175. Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries
(Bibliolife, n.d.), 42.
Part IV
1. M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1971), 295; Schellings term Ichheit means literally
I-hood, but it is usually translated into English as
Selfhood, as in the works of Rudolf Steiner. See, for
example, Rudolf Steiner, The Occult Movement in the
Nineteenth Century and Its Relation to Modern Culture
(London: Rudolf Steiner, 1973).
2. Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries
(Bibliolife, n.d.), 135.
3. Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dantes Comedy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 39.
4. Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 154.
5. Morton Paley, The Traveller in the Evening (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 119.
6. Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 56.
7. Morton Paley, Energy and the Imagination (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1970), 77.

588

8. Robert N. Essick, Blake and the Language of Adam (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 196.
9. Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 51.
10. Ibid., 51.
11. Antonella Braida, Dante and the Romantics (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 26.
12. Paley, The Traveller in the Evening, 106.
13. Rodney M. Baine, Blakes Dante in a Different Light,
Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society
105 (1987): 115.
14. As in the hand-colored print Albion Rose, sometimes also
called Glad Day, in the collection of the British Museum.
15. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 15361.
16. Francis Macdonald Cornford, Platos Cosmology: The
Timaeus of Plato (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1937),
145.
17. George Mills Harper, The Neoplatonism of William Blake
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 232.
18. Albert S. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 53.
19. Robin Hamlyn and Michael Phillips, William Blake (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), 2045; in another

589

impression of this print (reproduced in William Blake, ed.

Gert Schiff [Tokyo: National Museum of Western Art, 1990],
193), Blake has colored Lamechs hair and beard brown.
20. S. Foster Damon, Blakes Job (New York: Dutton, 1969),
32.
21. Morton Paley, review of Hazard Adams, Blakes
Margins: An Interpretive Study of the Annotations, Review
19; http://www.nbol-19.org/view_doc.php?index=81.
22. Ibid.
23. Paley, The Traveller in the Evening, 122.
24. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 13.
25. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 306.
26. Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic
Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 40.
27. Paley, Energy and the Imagination, 129.
28. Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, 41.
29. Gert Schiff, William Blake, 193.
30. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 269.
31. David Punter, Blake, Hegel and Dialectic (Amsterdam:
Editions Rodopi, 1982), 11.

590

32. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, afterword to the 1873 edition,

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm.
33. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, Aphorism 152 (New
York: Verso, 2010).
34. Ibid., Aphorism 86.
35. Henry Boyd, A Translation of the Hell of Dante Alighieri,
in English Verse, with Historical Notes, and the Life of Dante
(Dublin: P. Byrne, 1785), 218.
36. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 54.
37. William Blake, The Complete Illuminated Books (New
York: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 134.
38. Hamlyn and Phillips, William Blake, 42.
39. Dino Cervigni, Acheron, in The Dante Encyclopedia,
ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), 3.
40. William Blake, Milton a Poem, ed. Robert N. Essick and
Joseph Viscomi (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993), 150.
41. Paley, Energy and the Imagination, 242.
42. E.g., that of Baccio Baldini, reproduced in Hein-Th.
Schulze Altcappenberg, Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for
Dantes Divine Comedy (London: Royal Academy of Arts,
2001), 46.

591

43. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 61.

44. Daniel Stempel, Blake, Foucault, and the Classical
Episteme, Modern Language Association 96, no. 3 (May
1981): 388407; 400.
45. Punter, Blake, Hegel and Dialectic, 115.
46. Hesiod, Theogony, line 310.
47. Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 64.
48. Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William
Blake (London: Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, 1981).
49. Milton Klonsky, Blakes Dante (New York: Harmony,
1980); David Bindman, The Divine Comedy of William Blake
(Bibliotheque De Limage, 2000).
50. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, notes by Robert M. Durling and
Ronald L. Martinez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
111.
51. Boyd, Translation of the Hell, 277.
52. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri,
trans. John Aitkin Carlyle (New York: Modern Library,
1932), 45.
53. Durling and Martinex, Inferno, 127.
54. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 73.

592

55. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 400.

56. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 77.
57. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 184.
58. Punter, Blake, Hegel and Dialectic, 106.
59. Blake, Milton a Poem, 142.
60. Ibid.
61. Guy Raffa, Usury, in Lansing, Dante Encyclopedia,
847.
62. Durling and Martinez, Inferno, 228.
63. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 311.
64. Ibid., 115.
65. Lawrence Baldassaro, Malebolge, in Lansing, Dante
Encyclopedia, 585.
66. Durling and Martinez, Inferno, 392.
67. Dante Alighieri, The Inferno of Dante, trans. Robert
Pinsky, notes by Nicole Pinsky (New York: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 1994), 340.
68. Robert Durling, Plato, in Lansing, Dante Encyclopedia,
703.

593

69.
Plato,
Timaeus,
trans.
Benjamin
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html.

Jowett,

70. Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition, vol. 2 (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1968), 238.
71. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 365.
72. Paley, Energy and the Imagination, 79.
73. Rosemary Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Magic and
Alchemy (New York: Facts on File, 2000), 234.
74. Pinsky, Inferno, 202203.
75. John Flaxman, Flaxmans Illustrations for Dantes Divine
Comedy (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007), 53.
76. Steven Botterill, Falsifiers, in Lansing, Dante
Encyclopedia, 369.
77. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 135.
78. Hamlyn and Phillips, William Blake, 225.
79. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
(New York: Penguin, 1982), 189.
80. Ibid., 194.
81. Ibid., 195.
82. Ibid.

594

83. William James, The Correspondence of William James,

12 vols., general editor, John J. McDermott (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1995), 9:501.
84. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 196.
85. Paley, Energy and the Imagination, 143.
86. Rebecca S. Beal, Sun, in Lansing, Dante Encyclopedia,
802.
87. Paley, Energy and the Imagination, 234.
88. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 246.
89. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 145.
90. William Eaves, William Blakes Theory of Art (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1982), 27.
91. Ibid., 69.
92. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 114.
93. Dante Alighieri, The Purgatorio, trans. John Ciardi (New
York: Signet Classics, 1957), 298.
94. Durling and Martinez, Purgatorio, 623.
95. Harold Bloom, Blakes Jerusalem: The Bard of
Sensibility and the Form of Prophecy, in Harold Bloom, ed.,
The Ringer in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 6579.

595

96. Christopher Rowland, Wheels Within Wheels: William

Blake and the Ezekiels Merkabah in Text and Image
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007), 31.
97. Joan M. Ferrante, Beatrice, in Lansing, Dante
Encyclopedia, 90.
98. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 171.
99. Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition 43, 45.
100. Roe, Blakes Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, 185.
101. Ibid., 193.
102. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1947), 345.
103. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 153.
104. Blakes depiction of Dante and Beatrices reunion as a
physical re-merging of their bodies reminds us of
Aristophanes myth in the Symposium of Plato.
105. Gustave Dor, The Dor Illustrations for Dantes Divine
Comedy (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1976), 11835.
106. John Pope-Hennessy, Paradiso: The Illuminations to
Dantes Divine Comedy by Giovanni di Paolo (New York:
Thames and Hudson), 1991.
107. Northrop Frye, Words with Power (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, Jovanovich, 1990), 245.

596

108. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Paradiso, trans.

Charles Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1975), 343.
109. Damon, Blake Dictionary, 264.

597

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607

List of Names and Terms

Abrams, Meyer Howard

Adorno, Theodor
Agnello Brunelleschi
Agrippa, Cornelius
Albion (character and placename)
All Religions Are One
America
The Ancient of Days
Antaeus
antinomianism
Aristophanes
Aristotle
The Arlington Court Picture (The Sea of Time and Space)

608

Bacon, Francis
Baine, Rodney M.
Basire, James
Beatrice
Bertrand de Born
Bindman, David
Blair, Robert
Bloom, Harold
Boehme, Jacob
Bocca degli Abbati
Book of Job
The Book of Los
The Book of Thel
The Book of Urizen
Botterill, Steven
Botticelli
Boyd, Henry

609

Boydell, John
Bromion
Bruno, Giordano
Bryant, Jacob
Bunyan, John
Buoso Donati
Butlin, Martin
Butts, Thomas
Byron, George Gordon

Caiaphas
Capaneus
Cary, Henry Francis
Cassirer, Ernst
Cato of Utica
Cavalcante Cavalcanti
Cerberus

610

Charon
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Ciampolo the Barrator
Ciardi, John
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coppe, Abiezer
Cowper, William
Cromwell, Oliver

Damon, S. Foster
Dante Alighieri:
Darwin, Erasmus
David (king)
Davies, Edward
Descriptive Catalogue
Dor, Gustave
Drer, Albrecht

611

Durling, Robert M.

Ephialtes
Erdman, David
Erigena, Johannes Scottus
Essick, Robert
Europe
The Everlasting Gospel

Farinata degli Uberti

felix culpa
Feuerbach, Ludwig
Filippo Argenti
Fischer, Kevin
Flaxman, John
Fludd, Robert
For Children: The Gates of Paradise

612

For the Sexes: the Gates of Paradise

Four Zoas
The Four Zoas [Vala]
Francesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta
The French Revolution
Frye, Northrop
Fuller, David
Fuseli, Henry

Galileo Galilei
Geryon
The Ghost of a Flea
Gianni Schicchi
Gibbon, Edward
Giovanni di Paolo
Godwin, William
Goya, Francisco

613

The Grave
Gwin, King of Norway

Harper, George Mills

Hayley, William
Hazlitt, William
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Heppner, Christopher
Heraclitus
Hesiod
Hirst, Desiree
Hogarth, William
Holmes, Richard
Homer (character in The Divine Comedy)
Homer (Greek poet)
Huggins, William

614

Illustrations for the Book of Job

imagination
inexpressibility topos
infinity

James, William
Jerusalem
Johnson, Joseph
Jung, Carl

Kant, Immanuel
Keats, John
Kepler, Johann
The Keys of Calais
Kircher, Athanasius
Klonsky, Milton

615

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim
Lindberg, Bo
Linnell, John
Locke, John
Los
Lucan (character in The Divine Comedy)
Lucan (Roman poet)
Lukacs, Georg
Lundeen, Kathleen
Luther, Martin

Magee, Glenn Alexander

Manto
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Marx, Karl
merkabah

616

Michelangelo
Milton
Milton, John
Minos
Minotaur
Mitchell, W.J.T.
Moevs, Christian
Montesquieu, Baron Charles-Louis de Secondat de
Morning
Muggletonianism

Nardi, Bruno
Newton
Newton, Isaac
Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus)
Nimrod
Numenius

617

Orc
Origen
Ovid (character in The Divine Comedy)
Ovid (Roman poet)

Paine, Thomas
Paley, Morton
Paolo and Francesca
Paracelsus
Paradise Lost
Phlegyas
Pico della Mirandola
Pinsky, Nicole
Pinsky, Robert
Plato
Plotinus

618

Plutus
Porphyry
Portrait of Dante Alighieri
Priestley, Joseph
Proclus
Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite
Punter, David

Raine, Kathleen
Raphael
Reynolds, Joshua
Richardson, Jonathan
Robinson, Henry Crabb
Roe, Albert S.
Rogers, Charles
Russell, Archibald G.B.
Rusticucci, Jacopo

619

St. Ambrose
St. Augustine
St. Gregory the Great
St. John
St. Lucia
St. Peter
St. Thomas Aquinas
Satan
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich
Shakespeare, William
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Singleton, Charles
Smith, John
Smollet, Tobias
Southey, Robert
Spenser, Edmund

620

Statius
Stempel, Daniel
Stoudt, John Joseph
Stukeley, William
Swedenborg, Emmanuel

Taylor, Thomas
Tharmas
Thel
There Is No Natural Religion
Thompson, E.P.
Thorton, Robert John
Tiresias
Toynbee, Paget

Ugolino
Ulysses

621

Urizen

Vala
Vanni Fucci
Vaughan, Thomas
Virgil (character in The Divine Comedy)
Virgil (Roman poet)
the Virgin Mary
Viscomi, Joseph
Visions of the Daughters of Albion

Walpole, Edward
Walpole, Horace
Warton, Thomas
Watanabe, Morimichi
Werner, Bette Charlene
Wicksteed, Joseph

622

Wilford, Francis
Winckelmann, Johann
Wollstonecraft, Mary

Wordsworth, Dorothy
Wordsworth, William

Yeats, William Butler

623