The Book of Urizen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Book of Urizen is one of the major prophetic books of the English poet William Blake, illustrated by Blake's own plates. It was originally published as The First Book of Urizen in 1794. Later editions dropped the word "first".
The book takes its name from the character Urizen in Blake's mythology, who represents alienated reason as the source of oppression. The book describes Urizen as the "primeaval priest", and describes how he became separated from the other Eternals to create his own alienated and enslaving realm of religious dogma. Los and Enitharmon create a space within Urizen's fallen universe to give birth to their son Orc, the spirit of revolution and freedom.
Urizen's first four sons are Thiriel, Utha, Grodna and Fuzon (respectively elemental Air, Water, Earth, Fire, according to Chapter VIII). The last of these plays a major role in The Book of Ahania, published the following year.
[edit] External links
 |
This poetry-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
THE BOOK OF URIZEN - A LECTURE Originally given by Dr Pamela Van Schaik at the Centre for Religion and Literature, University of Glasgow – accompanied by slides from The Book of Urizen
The interpretation of Blake in this lecture is based on my Ma and Ph. D theses: "Contrary Images in the Poetry of William Blake" by Pamela Dembo (my maiden name) and "Blake's Vision of the Fall and Redemption of Man: A Reading based on the Contrary Images of Innocence and Experience" by Pamela van Schaik
This illustrated talk of Blake's "The Book of Urizen" is to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the poem in 1795. The Book of Urizen was illustrated by Blake himself. In this, he began to explore themes developed more fully in later poems such as, for example the Nature of the Divinity who could have created a world of such beauty - yet one, in which pain and suffering exist. That is a world in which the worm devours the rose, the tiger the lamb and -it seems - that cruelty and injustice prevail - as if a malign, rather than benign, God were the Creator.
Blake's answer to the age old question of how a good God could have created so flawed and deadly a world is unorthodox. It closely parallels the notion that a fallen demiurge or being was responsible for creation - which was posited by mystical Jewish and Christian thinkers such as the Kabbalists and Gnostics. In the "Preludium" to The Book of Urizen, Blake states that his theme will be to explore how such a fallen demiurge, whom he calls Urizen, came to assume power in place of the all - benevolent God who originally presided over the Gardens of Love in the visionary paradises of Eternity.
In Eternity, all beings once existed in the Holy fires of God's Love and Imagination where they created spiritual realms of infinite beauty, in which the most sublime visions became manifest and in which they freely mingled their essences in fiery ardours of love, delighted in attaining wisdom and knowledge and in giving artistic expression to their love and delight in being members of God's holy family. Blake's vision of Eternity is of a paradise within a paradise, in which the Immortal children of God animate every particle of existence with humanity. They shine forth from flowers, rivers, herbs, fish and indeed, from all that exists. Here all beings exist in Innocence, Blake's term for the soul in which all beings are one in "spirit with Christ" the "Vine of Eternity", and with his Emanation, or "Bride", Jerusalem.
In Innocence, every Immortal's "sacred Thirst" was quenched by drinking the "Wine of Eternal Life" pressed in the Wine-press of Christ and served at the "Golden Feast" of Jesus and Jerusalem. As indicated in the plate illustrating the Preludium to The Book of Urizen, Blake intimates that this poem will treat -"of the primeval Priest's assum'd power... When Eternals spurn'd back his religion and gave him a place in the North, Obscure, shadowy, void, solitary. The "primeval Priest" referred to here is Urizen, Albion's Prince of Light and Intellect, who in irinocence was radiantly beautiful.
However, Urizen, falling into a "night" or "sleep" of the soul closes himself off in solitude from the manifold joys of Paradise, becomes so engrossed in his own Selfhood, that he can no longer perceive the lovely visions of Eternity. Growing increasingly deformed by contemplating the darkest recesses of his own soul, Urizen ultimately becomes the fallen demiurge who affronts all the Eternals of Eden by attempting to be holier and more self-righteous than God himself. As we shall see, mistaking the loves of Eternity, in which all beings merge their spiritual essences in fiery ardours of love, for sin, Urizen tries to impose moral laws on the energies, loves and imaginative visions of all the immortal beings in Eden. In The Book of Urizen, Blake unfolds in dark visions of torment, how Urizen first came to pit his darkness, and the narrowness of his vision against God's vision of Innocence. Thus, Urizen is presented as the first of a long procession of Priests, purporting to interpret God's Will, but so totally distorting it, that he sets in motion the entire process of contraction leading to the Creation of the world.
Blake evokes Urizen as a terrifyingly, dark source of opposition to the harmony and light of God - a shadow of horror .... unknown, unprolific, Selfclos'd, all-repelling - a Demon whose horrible broodings are so antithetical to the loving vision of unity in Eden, that his very presence creates a soul shuddering vacuum and a ninefold darkness through which furious winds of perturbation howl.
At the epicentre of his cosmic tornado, Urizen revolves, "a self-contemplating shadow" tormented by visions which spring from examining his own mind and its distortions of reality and truth. Blake conceives of this dark, brooding power as revolving in internal conflict for aeons on end- for "Age on ages"- during which Urizen appears to all the Immortals of Eternity as a petrific, abominable chaos - in their midst which all avoid for fear of being drawn into the storms where Urizen ranges "ten thousands of thunders ... in a gloomy array" and creates a dread world of combustion, blast, vapour and cloud.
Blake's illustration of Urizen- the once beautiful Prince of light who illumined Albion's soul- as an unkempt, long and white bearded being oppressed by the weight of his own thoughts - as if by dark storm-clouds- or a great weight of stone, is clearly a parody of the true God who embodies all that the human soul aspires towards as its ultimate good.
In illustrating Urizen, Blake also portrays him as so fettered by the reasonings of his own darkened soul and shut off from God that he perceives "Sin" in all the lovely expansive beings of Eternity. They, threatened by his stern moral laws, flee in terror from the lovely gardens of love in Eternity.
Urizen continues to sit, "fix'd obdurate Brooding" writing laws on his stone tablets to eradicate what he deems as sin, from Eternity. Though clouds of snow roll over him and "floods pour" while "winds as black as the sea" cut him in gashes, Urizen persists in his folly saying "Here, alone I, in books form'd of metals, Have written the secrets of wisdom, The secrets of dark contemplation, By fightings and conflicts dire With terrible monsters Sinbred Which the bosoms of all inhabit, Seven deadly Sins of the Soul".
Here, Blake clearly is satirising the Fallen Prince of Light who once filled Albion's spirited realms with beautiful visions. Blake makes it clear that he regards the Creator of this lovely, yet cruel world, to be a pitiful, misguided victim of his own dark visions of what constitutes Sin. "Lo! I unfold my darkness, and on "This rock place with strong hand the Book "Of eternal brass, written in my solitude.."
Urizen, with foolish pride, announces to all the Immortals in Eternity, that he regards as sin the unquenchable burnings of love in God's holy fires. Convinced that he can create a better world than God himself - one in which the fire of God, and the incessant flux and transience of existence will be replaced by a "solid without fluctuation", Urizen tries to suborn the Eternals into accepting his own fallen vision. They, however, are seized by "rage, fury" and "intense indignation" and the "Strong among them forcibly separate Urizen's dark visions from those of Eternity. Blake visualises Urizen fleeing from the wrath of the Eternals as follows: .
.... all was darkness In the flames of Eternal fury.
In fierce anguish and quenchless flames
To the desarts and rocks (Urizen) ran raging
To hide; but he could not:,,,,
He dug mountains and hills in vast strength,
He piled them in incessant labour,
In howlings and pangs and fierce madness,
Long periods in burning fires labouring.
Till hoary, and age-broke, and aged
In despair and the shadows of death.... .... a roof vast, petrific around
On all sides he fram'd like a womb,
Where thousands of rivers in veins
Of blood pour down the mountains to cool.
To all the Sons of Eternity, "standing on the shore of the infinite ocean",
Urizen's vast fallen world now appears like a "dark globe" in the void below the realms of light in Eternity.
In Eternity, Urizen, Albion's Prince of Light and Intellect, worked in close harmony with Los, Albion's Prince of Imagination, in creating visions. Urizen's separation from Eternity wrenches Los away from Albion, leaving a "fathomless void" at his feet. Los is "smitten with astonishment" and "Frighten'd at ... the surging, sulphureous Perturbed Immortal, Urizen whom he sees as "mad raging in Whirlwinds and pitch and nitre" in the dark...below Eternity.
Los, therefore fires his furnaces of Imagination and in them forges chains to fetter Urizen in the hope of preventing further deformations in his fallen brother. In an effort to curb and contain the changes afflicting Urizen, Los groaning and cursing also forms "nets" which he casts over Urizen.
Thus, Urizen, the once radiantly beautiful Prince of Light in Innocence is reduced to the hoary, weeping, enchained figure of darkness, whose inner gardens of love are converted to deserts and whose once "prolific delight" becomes more and more obscur'd" . Perceiving all the loves and graces of Eternity as sinful, Urizen accuses Jerusalem, the Bride of Jesus, of being a harlot, because she is loved and welcomed into the hearts of all Eternity.
Urizen despises Jerusalem and insists that all of Albion's children do likewise. In so doing, however, he unwittingly rejects and overturns the central principles on which Innocence is founded. He causes himself and all of Albion's children to cease to participate in the holy unions with Jerusalem, so becoming one with her and through her, one with Christ that is the unity of all be'ings with God assured. He and all of Albion's children can now no longer participate in the holy unions with Jerusalem by means of which they were made one with Christ and the true God of Eternity. By casting Jerusalem out and withdrawing from the Light and love of God, Urizen becomes the antithesis of all that he was in Eternity - as much a victim, as victimizer, of his Children. "Rent from Eternity" with his mind "locked up in chains", Urizen is described as follows:
Restless turn'd the Immortal inchain'd,
Heaving dolorous, anguish'd unbearable;
Till a roof, shaggy wild, inclos'd In an orb his fountain of thought.
In "The Book of Urizen, Blake goes on to depict in great detail the further torments of Urizen and to show how he falls ever more deeply into a stony stupor of the soul, ultimately creating the universe and governing all of his and Albion's children with stern and self-righteous moral severity.
When Urizen sets out to explore the horrific world created in the dark abyss of space and time by his own distorted visions, his soul is "sicken'd" by what he sees. Blake describes this as follows:
...Urizen curs'd
Both sons and daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep
His iron laws one moment ...... he saw that life liv'd upon death:
The ox in the slaughter house moans, The dog at the wintry door: And he wept and he called it Pity, And his tears flowed down on the winds.
As we have seen in the Book of Urizen, Blake presents a parody of the Biblical version of creation in an attempt to understand how a Good God could have created a fallen world i n which all things prey on each other and man i s subject to disease, political tyranny, famine and all manners of earthly disasters. His remedy for the horrors of this world is to trust once again in Jerusalem, the bride of God , so that we can once-again clearly behold the lovely visions of Innocence in Eternity.
