[This is a literary analysis I wrote for British Lit, spring 2009.]
It is no coincidence William Blake and Gnosticism found their way to each other. As Gnosticism was influential in the development of early Christianity, so Blake was influential in the development of the Romantic Movement, and as Gnostic thought fell from favor in the growing, centralized Church, so the Romantics misunderstood Blake. In addition to the parallel histories, Blake’s mystic, inner approach to spirituality had more in common with Gnostic thought than traditional Christianity. A comparison of two key Gnostic texts--The Gospel of Thomas and The Book of Thomas--to Blake’s prophetic masterpiece, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, reveals this profound thematic similarity.
The Gnostic worldview remains essentially esoteric and complex. The word “Gnosticism” comes from the Greek root “gnosis,” meaning “knowledge” (Meyer xvi). However, the Gnostics cared little for materialistic knowledge of the physical world and the faith of common people; rather, the Gnostics sought, as Marvin W. Meyer wrote, “…higher knowledge, a more profound insight into the deep and secret things of God” (xvi). The Gnostics believed this true, direct knowledge comes from the “spirit within,” which is synonymous with the Divine (Meyer xvi). The Church eventually succeeded in stamping out the Gnostics and destroying many of their writings (Meyer xvii), but Gnostic thought was echoed by select minds of select generations.
Based on his writings and doings, William Blake obviously found much to love in the Gnostic literature available to him at the time. The sundry personal eccentricities of William Blake are well documented, and they have become anecdotes that require no further relating. Besides, Blake represented his stances on religious and spiritual issues most effectively in his poetry. Blake’s poetic persona is comparable to those who Marvin W. Meyer calls “radical Gnostics,” ones who “flaunted their disdain for conventional human values by disregarding the amenities of polite society and practicing a libertine way of life” (xvii). In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake tears into the Church of England and its strict approach to theology and morality. Blake substitutes this with his beliefs, upon which Gnosticism is a primary influence. Important themes in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell have counterparts in Gnostic writing: Blake’s depiction of the afterlife in the fourth “Memorable Fancy” is similar to the afterlife Jesus speaks of in The Book of Thomas, and the “Proverbs of Hell” find much common ground with Jesus’ sayings in The Gospel of Thomas.
The fourth “Memorable Fancy” depicts the fate of the damned with striking similarity to The Book of Thomas. The section begins with an angel chastising Blake for his loose living and warning Blake of his impending fate. Blake takes the angel at his word, and he slyly asks the angel to show him the torment waiting in the next life. However, the terrible, wicked creatures and reptilian beasts Blake finds there are only a projection of the angel; when the angel leaves, Blake realizes he is only on a bank beside a river, surrounded by harp music (117-118). Blake adds, “…and [the harpist’s] theme was, The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind” (118). This is not a subtle attack on the orthodox teachings of the Church; given that Blake places this “hell” under a church’s vault, he makes his drift more than apparent. Blake believed the Church disguised the greatest mystical experiences available in physical form as the greatest sins. By stripping the Church of its tools of manipulation, he stripped the Church of its power to control people with what he perceived to be false morality.
Blake gives an alternate vision of hell for the angel’s torment. First, Blake sends the angel through the sun and into the far reaches of the solar system, into a void (118-119). The sun represents the warmth, light, and truth of God, which this angel, a tool of the Church, passes through, only to end up in emptiness. The Book of Thomas contains a similar statement of illusory truth, where Jesus says, “…the fire that leads them will give an illusion of truth, and will shine on them with transitory beauty. It will make them prisoners of the delights of darkness, and capture them in sweet-smelling pleasures” (Chapter 4:6-7). Blake continues and takes the angel back to the church. He opens the Bible, and the two descend into the pages, seeing “…a number of monkeys, baboons, & all of that species chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains” (119). The Book of Thomas brings up an image of chained beasts receiving a comparable punishment: “The fire has bound these people with its chains, and tied all their limbs with the bitter bond of desire for visible things, which change, and decay, and fluctuate impulsively. Such people are always dragged downward. When they are put to death, they join all the filthy animals” (Chapter 4:10-11). Only seekers of God’s truth gain salvation in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The Book of Thomas.
Eschewing the narrative of the memorable fancies, The “Proverbs of Hell” sometimes sound like heretical inversions of biblical proverbs, and sometimes they sound like Zen kōans. The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of mystical teachings of Christ, reads similarly, and it includes parallel sayings to those in Blake’s poem. In the “Proverbs of Hell,” Blake writes, “Brothels [are built] with bricks of religion” (l. 21), and, “Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!” (l. 59). This is purposefully repellant from a traditional standpoint, but Blake also hides a deeper spiritualism beneath these words, just as Jesus hides a deeper spiritualism in this saying from The Gospel of Thomas: “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves. If you pray, you will be condemned. If you give to charity, you will harm your spirits” (Saying 14). Beneath the surface of these proverbs, Blake and Jesus say that monkish severity does not necessarily lead to God--not when one does not fully grasp the teachings he or she professes. The proverbs say that avoiding the physical pleasures in life is as potentially harmful to the human spirit as unbridled indulgence is, and it is best to get the craving for some sense-experience out of one’s system rather than letting it go unrequited for long.
Blake uses the “Proverbs of Hell” section not only to shock, but also to look at death and impermanence from a mystical perspective, as does The Gospel of Thomas. Blake wrote, “Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead” (l. 2). Here, he acknowledges the impossibility of accomplishing any task without the work and toil of many prior men and women. However, in a world built upon death, life exists. In The Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass is worth more than the world” (Saying 56). In both texts, people must recognize death to gain wisdom. In two similar proverbs, Blake wrote, “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not believ’d” (l. 69), and, “A fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees” (l. 8). The “truth” in the former line is the same as the “tree” in the latter line, and Blake says real understanding implicates a total amendment of the way one approaches reality and the world of the senses.
The “Proverbs of Hell” section also features some puzzling, not easily explicated moments. One proverb in particular defies swift interpretation: “Let man wear the fell of the lion. woman the fleece of the sheep” (l. 30). In The Gospel of Thomas, a similar saying reads, “Blessed is the lion that the human eats, so that the lion becomes human. Cursed is the human that the lion eats, so that the lion becomes human” (Saying 7). Each saying emphasizes the importance of humanity and spirituality in overcoming animal nature. To Blake, man and woman must kill the animal within and, by wearing the skin, show dominance and superiority over their animal self. As long as man and woman ultimately have control over their instinct, no craving will endanger the spirit. Jesus’ teaching is much the same, but His saying also reveals the opposite outcome. If humans senselessly indulge in the world of the senses, they lose the attributes that make them human, and the animal that “eats” them takes their place.
The simplest proverb in Blake’s text reads, “Exuberance is Beauty” (l. 64). The straightforwardness, however, understates a vast theological statement. The Gospel of Thomas contains a parallel saying: “When you strip and are not embarrassed, and you take your clothes and throw them down under your feet like little children and trample them, then you will see the Child of the Living One and you will not be afraid” (Saying 37). Both statements speak of the indescribable joy that comes from union with God. While the church of Blake’s time might have preferred austerity when it came to religious matters, the remarkable followers of the world’s religions have principally been men and women of ecstatic happiness. To Blake, exuberance provides the easiest, shortest path to God. As Blake shows his readers through his poetry, he cared little for a strict obedience to stifling morality, instead placing emphasis on the enrapturing beauty of music, nature, and the light within his soul. Thus, the last words of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell read, “For every thing that lives is Holy.”
Blake placed the spiritual side of humanity beside the carnal, using each to facilitate the growth of the other, toward a purer, closer relationship with God. Instead of following a definite path, he followed his impulse, his passion, his light. Like the Gnostics before him, he embraced the God within and without his soul instead of a God only found behind chapel doors. If poetry is scripture, as the Romantics insisted, Blake’s poetry has the quality and the light and the wisdom of the mystics, and his poetry finds a home in the texts of the Gnostics.
Works Cited
Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 8th ed. New York City: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. Print.
Meyer, Marvin W., ed. and trans. The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels. New York City: Random House, 1984. Print.
