Brahma in the West

David Weir

Description

Examining William Blake's poetry in relation to the mythographic tradition of the eighteenth century and emphasizing the British discovery of Hindu literature, David Weir argues that Blake's mythic system springs from the same rich historical context that produced the Oriental Renaissance. That context includes republican politics and dissenting theology—two interrelated developments that help elucidate many of the obscurities of Blake's poetry and explain much of its intellectual energy. Weir shows how Blake's poetic career underwent a profound development as a result of his exposure to Hindu mythology. By combining mythographic insight with republican politics and Protestant dissent, Blake devised a poetic system that opposed the powers of Church and King.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Politics

2. Mythography

3. Theology

Postscript

Appendix A. Mythographic Material from Joseph Priestley

Appendix B. Synopsis of The Four Zoas

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Reino Unido
• Ireland
• United Kingdom
• Romanticism
• Stephen Ireland
• Great Britain
• Gothic
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791486405
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

B R A H M A
I N T H E W E S TEngraving of Brahma from William Jones’s
On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and IndiaB R A H M A
I N T H E W E S T
William Blake
and the Oriental Renaissance
David Weir
State University of New York Press`
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2003 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
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without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Cover photo: Engraving of the accusers of Socrates, plate 93, William Blake,
Jerusalem, the emanation of the giant Albion, copy D, London, 1804.
Typ 6500 49F, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Library,
Harvard College Library.
For information, address State University of New York Press,
90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207
Production by Diane Ganeles
Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weir, David, 1947 Apr. 20–
Brahma in the West : William Blake and the Oriental renaissance / David Weir.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5817-2 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5818-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Blake, William, 1757–1827—Knowledge—Mythology. 2. Blake, William,
1757–1827—Knowledge—India. 3. Blake, William, 1757–1827. Four Zoas. 4. Blake,
William, 1757–1827—Religion. 5. Brahma (Hindu deity)—In literature. 6. English
poetry—Indic influences. 7. Orientalism in literature. 8. Hinduism in literature. 9.
Mythology, Hindu. I. Title.
PR4148.M83 W45 2003
821'.7—dc21
2002030965
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1What is the Life of Man but Art & Science?
—Jerusalem, plate 77
In memory of
David Geoffrey Weir
(1973–1991)Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Politics 19
Chapter 2. Mythography 45
Chapter 3. Theology 87
Postscript 125
Appendix A. Mythographic Material from Joseph Priestley 129
Appendix B. Synopsis of The Four Zoas 133
Notes 143
Selected Bibliography 159
Index 165
viiFigures
Frontispiece. Engraving of Brahma from William Jones’s On ii
the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India
FIGURE 1. Engraving of the Mundane Egg from Thomas 62
Maurice’s The History of Hindostan
FIGURE 2. Engraving of the Mundane Egg from Milton, plate 33 64
FIGURE 3. Engraving of “Beulah” from Jerusalem, plate 53 76
FIGURE 4. Drawing of a Pedma-Devi from Edward Moor’s 77
The Hindu Pantheon
FIGURE 5. Drawing of Mahishasur and Durga from Edward 80
Moor’s The Hindu Pantheon
FIGURE 6. Engraving of the accusers of Socrates from Jerusalem, 81
plate 93
FIGURE 7. Engraving of a spectre from Jerusalem, plate 78 82
FIGURE 8. Drawing of Garuda from Edward Moor’s The Hindu 82
Pantheon
FIGURE 9. Engraving of Ganesa from Edward Moor’s The Hindu 84
Pantheon
FIGURE 10. Engraving by William Bell Scott after a lost drawing 85
by Blake
ixAcknowledgments
We who dwell on Earth can do nothing without Others they are to
us as Muses were in Antient Days. Of these whose Love and Labour
have helped to guide my own unsteady Hand in making this unworthy
Work are those immense intelligences of Astor Place. There sweet
Science & gentle Art advance together and of those Spirits Brian Booth and
Boshra Al-Saadi are honoured most for bringing light to dark Designs.
Then comes Nancy of that Northern Zone where opens Ellegate into
Great Presses of Albany expanding through Eternity. In the Mills of
Balthazar labour too great Mosso and Maher, Brothers of the Vine
serving Eno continually. And to Camille in Beulah soft and mild I can never
be too thankful O What Wonders are the Children of Men.
Permission to reproduce plates 53, 78, and 93 (Typ 6500 49F)
from copy D of Jerusalem, the emanation of the giant Albion,
Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Library; and to reproduce an untitled drawing by William Bell Scott
after a lost drawing by William Blake, William Blake: Etchings from
His Works (London: Chatto and Windus, 1878), Print Collection,
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, is
gratefully acknowledged.
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Abbreviations
AR Analytical Review, or History of Literature, Domestic and
Foreign, on an Enlarged Plan. Edited and published by Joseph
Johnson. 28 vols. London, 1788–98.
BG The Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon. Trans.
Charles Wilkins (1785; rpt. Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles &
Reprints, 1959).
E David V. Erdman, ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of William
Blake, newly revised edition (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1982). All
references to Blake’s writings in poetry or prose are to this edition.
Texts other than those indicated below, such as Blake’s letters and
marginalia, are referenced by E. Specific works by Blake are
referenced in Erdman using the following abbreviations:
BT The Book of Thel
SI Songs of Innocence
SE Songs of Experience
MHH The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
AP America a Prophecy
EP Europe a Prophecy
SL The Song of Los
U The Book of Urizen
M Milton a Poem in 2 Books
J Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion
FZ The Four Zoas
Specific passages in Blake’s engraved works are referenced by plate
and line number (e.g., BT 1.6), or by plate number and the word
Prose for prose passages in the engraved works (e.g., MHH
21.Prose). The manuscript poem The Four Zoas is referenced by
chapter number (i.e., “Night” number) followed by manuscript
page number followed by line number (e.g., FZ 1.4.3–4).
xiiiIntroduction
The belief that William Blake was an untutored naif is by now a
naïve notion. In truth, the poet read widely and tutored himself in an
eclectic but impressive range of knowledge, from Plato to Locke,
Swedenborg to Newton, Paracelsus to Paine. Arbitrary pairings such as
these suggest an opposition of mystical tradition and enlightenment
thought, with Plato’s idealism, for example, ascendant over Locke’s
empiricism. But Blake did not think as we do, and our categories cannot
contain his. If Blake was a Platonist, his idealism was a highly sensuous
sort not to be found in Plato. The sensuous nature of Blake’s idealism
and his insistence on the “Minute Particulars” (J 91.21) of existence
might seem to make Locke somehow allowable, but, in fact, the
philosopher is consistently demonized by the poet for his denial of
innate ideas. At the same time, however, Blake’s republican politics
surely owes something to Locke’s doctrine of natural rights.
Whether he knew it or not, Blake participated in the liberal
ideology of Locke by way of Paine, whose vigorous advocacy of individual
liberty evidently permitted the poet to overlook the deism in Paine that he
so despised in Newton. Indeed, Newton’s mechanistic conception of
nature was, for Blake, vastly inferior to the code of correspondences that
allowed Swedenborg to make everything natural a pathway to a spiritual
world. When that code was codified into a prescribed set of beliefs,
however, then Swedenborg became no different from Newton—the
authoritarian head of a cult, albeit spiritual rather than rational. For this reason
Blake preferred the cosmology of Paracelsus to that of Newton. This
brings us back to the poet’s paradoxical acceptance of Tom Paine, who
might have been rejected on the same basis as Newton was, because the
political pamphleteer no less than the natural philosopher was a member
of the deistic “cult” of reason. For Blake, reason in defense of liberty was
no vice, but it was as an explanation of nature. Hence the arbitrary
pairing of Paracelsus and Paine is not so arbitrary after all: both mystical
cosmology and rational politics gave imagination room to operate.
The point here is not so much to stress Blake’s indebtedness to
particular figures but rather to suggest the curious compatibility of
contradictory traditions in Blake’s poetry. The compatibility results, in most
12 Brahma in the West
cases, from the poet’s sense that representatives from various traditions
might share a similar ideology, a common consciousness. In political
terms, this ideology falls within the leftist spectrum of republicanism
and libertarianism; in religious terms, it occupies the band between
Dissent and antinomianism. As E. P. Thompson and others have shown,
these political and religious traditions were tightly interwoven in Great
Britain from the Civil War onward, especially among the tradesman
1class to w