The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is one of William Blake's prophetic books, a series of texts written in imitation of biblical books of prophesy, but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books it was published as printed sheets from plates etched with both texts and illustrations. The plates were then colored by Blake and his wife Catherine. At least nine remaining copies of the work exist today.
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Background
The work was composed in London between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical ferment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution.
The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adapted by Blake from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost. As several others of his works, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was influenced also by the mysticism of Swedenborg.
Details
Unlike that of Milton or Dante, Blake's conception of Hell is not as a place of punishment, but as a source of unrepressed, somewhat Dionysian energy, opposed to the authoritarian and regulated perception of Heaven. Blake's purpose is to create what he called a "memorable fancy" in order to reveal to his readers the repressive nature of conventional morality and institutional religion, which he describes thusly:
- 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 perceive.
- And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity;
- Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd 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 pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
- Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.
In the most famous part of the book, Blake reveals the Proverbs of Hell. These display a very different kind of wisdom from the Biblical Book of Proverbs. The diabolical proverbs are provocative and paradoxical. Their purpose is to energise thought. Several of Blake's proverbs have become famous:
- "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom;
- The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction;
- One law for the lion and ox is oppression"
Blake explains that,
- "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
- Reason and energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
- From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
- Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
- from Energy."
During a visit to a "printing house in hell," Blake learns that diabolic printing is conducted with corrosives (that is by etching). This method helps to "cleanse the doors of perception." Blake promises to adopt this "infernal method" in his own works back on earth.
The book ends with a series of revolutionary prophesies and exhortations, climaxing into a fierce proclamation for the different peoples of the world to break the bonds of religious and political oppression.
Interpretation
Blake's text has been interpreted in many ways. It certainly forms part of the revolutionary culture of the period. The references to the printing house suggest the underground radical printers producing revolutionary pamphlets at the time. Ink-blackened print workers were jokingly referred to as "printing devils," and revolutionary publications were regularly denounced from the pulpits as the work of the devil.
In contrast, the book has been interpreted as an anticipation of Freudian and Jungian models of the mind, illustrating a struggle between a repressive superego and an amoral id. It has also been interpreted as an anticipation of Nietzsche's theories about the difference between slave morality and master morality.
Influence
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is probably the most influential of Blake's works. Its vision of a dynamic relationship between a stable "Heaven" and a dynamic "Hell" has fascinated theologians, aestheticians and psychologists. It has also inspired many artists and musicians, notably Ulver, who used the work as a basis for their double album Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
External links
- The Marriage of Heaven Hell (http://www.gailgastfield.com/mhh/mhh.html) (text and images of the plates)