Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/79

Rh was insuperable. The popular terms would not fit his ideas, and the attempt to employ them in a new sense with paren- thetical scraps of explanation has caused such obscurity that anyone who does not know Blake well enough to see what he intends to convey in spite of his method of conveying it, will not see anything here but paradox.

The " contraries " now used may be sorted under their mythical equivalents as given in the later books, in tabular form, thus : — ■ Jehovah (after Christ's Death). The Divine Unity. (before) Urizen in the South. Christ. Los, or Imagination, The Heaven formed from what was Golgonooza, or Art. stolen from the Abyss. The Devil. Ore. These are not exact equivalents, but sufficiently nearly so for the tracing of Blake's ideas from one form of expression to another. The ideas themselves changed under the action of the expression as time went on.

The First Memorable Fancy.

" Hell " is used throughout for the double meaning which always belongs to fire, — passion and enthusiasm, the creeping- Ore that organized a serpent body, and the fiery Ore that set free the Americans. Buildings mean systems, and garments bodies of the figures who go to make up the systems. The opening might read : —

"When in the heat of enthusiasm and enjoying its delights, which to the merely obedient and reasonable seem to be torment and insanity, thinking that proverbs would show the higher wisdom better than myths or designs, I collected some." The idea that the enjoyments of genius appear to be torment to those who do not share them, is worked out in the conversation between Urizen and Ore in the first pages of Night VII. of " Vala."

The rock on the abyss of the five senses appears in all the VOL. II. o