Douglas 10

Tiffani DouglasENGL 312 Romantic LiteratureDr. Potter28 April 2010The Spirituality of Blake:Co-Dependent Conflict in The Marriage of Heaven and HellDespite the religious connotations associated with its title, William Blakes epic poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is primarily concerned with the dialectic nature of human existence. Throughout The Marriage, Blake presents a plethora of contradictory ideas that nevertheless by their very nature seem compelled to interact. These ideas culminate in Blakes rejection of Religion because it advocates one set of complementary ideals while rejecting another equally valuable set of ideals. His primary argument in The Marriage is that spiritual empowerment is the result of rejection of conventional Religion and awareness of the co-dependence between two opposing ideals that characterize the dual nature of reality.Blake introduces the idea of contraries in the beginning of the poem. One of the most famous lines in The Marriage asserts that without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence (Blake 104). These opposites represent the two dimensions of reality: the physical and the spiritual. Blakes rejection of Religion is rooted in the belief that Religion devalues physical reality and overemphasizes divinity.In his essay on the dialectical vision of Blake, David Gross expounds on the importance of acknowledging the natural world. He claims that a sense of the interconnectedness and mutual influence and determination of all aspects of human reality is the dialectical wisdom embodied by Blake in The Marriage (177). By essentially marrying these two contradictions, Blake demonstrates the tension that saturates all of creation. An awareness of that tension is the foundation of the ability to sense the true nature of reality.Throughout the poem, Blake presents Heaven and Hell not as literal spiritual locations but rather as symbols of the contradictory nature of human existence. In the beginning of The Marriage, Blake states that Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body and a Soul. That Energy. called Evil, is alone from the Body. And that Reason. Called Good. is alone from the Soul (Blake 104). Tension between energythe vitality of physical creationand the more familiar and concrete idea of reason saturate both creation in general and individuals specifically. To launch this strange and abstract idea, Blake deconstructs conventional perspectives of Christianity in the very beginning of the poem. He baffles the reader by invoking Biblical imagery: now the sneaking serpent walks / In mild humility / And the just man rages in the wilds / Where lions roam (Blake 103). Conventional religious views are abruptly reversed in these lines, and the serpent seems to be a model of Christianity, while the violent emotion of the just man repulses the reader.Peter Schock describes this confusing reversal of roles. He states that the intellectual argument in The Marriage is a defamiliarized version of the mythology surrounding Satan, a reshaping of this traditional characteristic of Romantic arttransformed myth becomes the channel for ideological transactions (Schock 441). Although in traditional theology the serpent is a symbol of Satan, here the snake comprises traditionally Christian qualities and those who the reader would normally consider pious are full of rage. Harold Bloom made an attempt to understand this reversal of traditional roles in an article entitled, Dialectic in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Bloom claims that The Marriage mocks the categorical techniques that seek to make the contraries appear as negations. The unity of the Marriage is in itself dialectical (501). Blake does not present either heaven or hell as wholly evil or good. Instead, the poems primary concern is to argue that the characteristics that each location represents in the poem are necessary to achieve the Blakean standard of spiritual awareness within the natural world. Blake rejects conventional religion because it smothers the interaction of these two contraries. He makes the controversial statement that prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of Religion (Blake 105). In The Marriage, true evil is not epitomized by hell but by unwavering adherence to the rigidity of Religion, which for Blake prevents man from accepting the dialectic conflict of the body and the soul, or passion and reason. Religion is a paradox that inadvertently disrupts the harmony of true reality.Blake warns that those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling. And being restrained it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire (104). Reason suppresses the natural human tendency to embrace the Romantic ideal of striving beyond the chains of Religion. Conventional religion emphasizes structure so much that it suppresses the passionate desires that characterize humankind.The Marriage employs another effective tactic in his assault on traditional beliefs. After the beginning of the poem introduces a succession of contradictory images, Blake asserts that from these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell (104). This reversal of traditional perceptions presents evil as something desirable and good as inert complacent. This enables Blake to position humankind in the center of a battle between reason and energy in which energy is not necessarily a bad thing, although it associated with hell in the poem.The amount of contradictions referenced in the poem is abundant, and each one is placed within the categories of good and evil. The introduction of reason as the epitome of good and energy as the manifestation of evil raises another captivating issue. The poem asserts that the body and soul of an individual are contradictory in nature and yet inextricably interdependent. Because these two aspects of the human being reflect the contradictions of good and evil, life itself is in conflict, and to deny either the soul or the body is to deny that aspect of the self that allows progression. This conflict is the catalyst of The Marriage, and it also holds the key to understanding the poems title. Bloom describes the conflict of ideas in the poem by stating that this is a dialectic without transcendence, in which heaven and hell are to be married but without becoming altogether one flesh or one family. By the marriage of contraries Blake means only that we are to cease valuing one contrary above the other in any way (502). In this sense, Blakes use of heaven and hell in the poem to represent two conflicting ideas is merely an expression of his desire to reiterate that reason and passion are as fully contradictory as heaven and hell.Later in The Marriage, Blake introduces yet another set of contradictory ideas. He terms them the Prolific and the Devourer, and the poem seems to suggest that these terms reference God and Satan respectively. Blake reiterates the interdependent nature of God and Satan:The Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer as a sea received the excess of his delights. Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men. These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies. (107)In this loose allusion to Blakes belief in the deity of humankind, the Prolific and the Devourer are in conflict, yet each is necessary for the existence of the other. The Devourer could not devour without the production of the Prolific, and the Prolific would cease to produce without the Devourer. The relationship between the two is an eternal cycle. The passage in The Marriage goes on warn against the dangers of attempting to resolve this conflict. Blake is emphatic in his certainty that whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. Religion is an endeavor to reconcile the two. Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to separate them, as in the Parable of the sheep and goats (107). In addition to introducing another set of contradictions, this Biblical reference serves to reiterate that the Prolific and the Devourer should not be reconciled, and the conflict between them should remain eternal.According to Bloom, Blake believed that to destroy enmity between Prolific and Devourer would destroy existence, such destruction being religion's attempt to inflict upon us the greatest poverty of not living in a physical world (504). Although these two deities are irreconcilable, their conflict is necessary and serves as a macrocosm of the individuals conflict between body and soul. Blake seeks transcendence within the natural world because if heaven is beyond the material, then no conflict can exist between heaven and hell.Bloom goes on in his essay to point out that Religion seeks to end the warfare of contraries because it claims to know a reality beyond existence; Blake wants the warfare to continue because he seeks a reality within existence (504). Blake presents the view that dialectical tension is between the natural and the supernatural within the material world is vital to comprehending human existence. Elsewhere in his poem, Blake demonstrates how these contradictions propel development. A considerable amount of The Marriage consists of the proverbs of hell, in which Blake presents several maxims that reflect his views concerning progression. One of these maxims states, You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough (Blake 106). This awareness is not enough, however, for another maxim further develops the need for indulging in desire: Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires (Blake 106). The presence of desirewhich religion seems determined to suffocateis the source of action, and action is the vehicle for progress. Because desire precipitates action, it should be indulged.Activity and passivity are only two of many contradictions introduced in The Marriage. Consistent with rest of the poem, rules and impulse also have an interdependent yet conflicting relationship. As with the sheep and goats allusion, Blake ties the idea of rules and impulse with Biblical teachings. He asserts controversially, I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules (Blake 109). Blake denies the traditional beliefs attributed to the Ten Commandments in his interpretation of scripture. The restriction of the Ten Commandments is yet another boundary Blake believes should be broken by impulsive actions.The Marriage goes on to specify Biblical examples of Jesus impulsive actions. Blake makes it clear that he does not reject Biblical teachings. Rather, Blake argues that even Jesus understood that reality consists of two opposites, and acknowledgement of both is necessary to follow His example. Blake asks: Did he [Jesus] not mock at the Sabbath, and so mock the Sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? (109)Using these examples, Blake makes the very valid point that rules such as the Ten Commandments leave no room for mercy, as in the instance of the adulteress. This passage stresses the truth that even Biblical rules are not universal and that there are occasions in life when one should act on impulsive feelings instead of rules that advocate a contrary action. In addition to hindering virtuous impulse, Blake warns of a deeper consequence for strict adherence to Biblical rules. In his rendition of ancient history that faintly echoes the creation story, ambiguous ancient Poets imbued every object in the physical world with Gods or Geniuses, naming them just as Adam did in the Garden of Eden (Blake 106). Just as in the Bible, however, perfection went awry:They studied the genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthoodat length they pronounced that God had orderd such things. (Blake 106)Corruption entered the world when Religionrepresented here by Priesthoodattempted to compartmentalize creation. The imposition of order and rules within creation masks the true nature of humankind, and thus men forgot that all deities reside within the human breast (Blake 106). Instead of viewing spirituality as immanent, Religion compels men to acknowledge the transcendence of the divine, which for Blake is a rejection of the true nature of reality.Blake devotes the majority of The Marriage to forming the argument that action, impulse, and energy are as necessary to an awareness of the spiritual within creation as passivity, rules, and reason. In one section of the poem, however, Blake concedes that the ideals represented by Heaven carry significance as well. He claims that Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy (104). While energy is the core of human existence, reason retains its role as the boundary. Without these values, the emotional power of passion would be uncontainable. Ideallywhen the views of Religion are rejectedenergy and reason encompass each other even as they are in conflict with each other. Bloom demonstrates this principle using the spokesmen for Heaven and Hell. He observes, the Angel teaches light without heat, the vitalistor Devilheat without light; Blake wants both, hence the marriage of contraries (Bloom 503). This marriage is not a conventional one, however, because there is no harmony between the two ideals. Rather, their very opposing nature is central to Blakes doctrine of spirituality.The ideas in The Marriage do not discard the tenets of religion, only its unyielding structure. Blake adheres to the basic tenets of the Bible while introducing an interpretation of the scripture that defends his own belief in the dual nature of physical creation. Instead of acknowledging the traditional theological view that divinity exists in the cosmos, Blake advocates immanence, claiming that humans can perceive spirituality within the world by accepting the contradictions presented in The Marriage. Gross sums up Blakes intentions succinctly, claiming that to force into our consciousness awareness of connections among realms or practices we had not seen as related is Blake's primary purpose (Gross 180). Throughout The Marriage, Blake deconstructs the conventionality of heaven and hell, rejects Religion as a model for Biblical truth, and provides readers with insight into the complex dialectic nature of reality.

Works CitedBloom, Harold. Dialectic in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. PMLA. 73.5 (1958): 501-504. JSTOR. Modern Language Association. 22 April 2010. .Gross, David. Infinite Indignation: Teaching, Dialectical Vision, and Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 48.2 College English (1986): 175-186. JSTOR. National Council of Teachers of English Stable. 22 April 2010. .Perkins, David. English Romantic Writers. Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995.Schock, Peter. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Blake's Myth of Satan and Its Cultural Matrix. 60.2. ELH (1993): 441-470. JSTOR. Johns Hopkins University Press. 22 April 2010. .