Milton by William Blake

First published: 1804-1808

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

William Blake composed this brief epic poem to explain Christianity to a troubled England. Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton before him wrote on that theme, but Blake created a far more personal and highly original myth. As he saw it, England’s Christianity traded supernatural spirituality for scientific rationality. Blake thought scientific rationality, or what he called natural religion, would lead to commercial imperialism, dehumanizing mechanization of work, and worldwide wars. One may say that he was right. He blamed natural religion on John Milton’s Puritanism with its orthodoxy, dualism, hypocritical moral virtue, militancy, and bondage to law.

Blake wrote Milton to correct the errors of this religion, which overvalued reason, undervalued love, and lacked any concept of the Holy Spirit. In his domestic life, Milton was tormented by the sinister aspects of female will. In Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) he blamed the Fall on Adam’s adoration of Eve and depicted their love as dangerous and lustful. Milton’s Messiah reminded Blake of Job’s Satan, and Blake thought Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Milton saw man after the Fall struggling under law in fear of punishment until the Last Judgment. Blake’s epic follows that cycle of fall, struggle, redemption, and apocalypse. For Blake, the Fall was caused by an usurpation of reason by emotion, and redemption liberates man from laws of moral virtue.

Blake’s epic is almost without a plot. Milton finds himself unhappy in heaven. A bard’s song moves him to return to earth, where he is reincarnated in Blake. Through mighty struggles with symbolical characters, he purges himself of intellectual error and unites with his female counterpart, Ololon.

Action is spare in this epic because its meanings are revealed not in events but in various unfolding perspectives of characters on those events as Blake presents them throughout the poem. The readers’ experience is unlike anything else in literature. Blake puts readers through mental contortions designed to reveal new modes of perception. They must enter Blake’s mythical cosmos with the characters interpreting revelations as they happen.

The epic action is actually a single flash of inspiration, and the narrative relates events that are virtually simultaneous. Perspectives shift without warning. Characters are not only personalities but also places, states of mind, systems of thought, and historical epochs. They multiply and divide, travel through time as well as space, and merge with one another to make points about ideas they symbolize. Milton can be discussing philosophy in Beulah at the same time he is falling to earth, struggling with Urizen by the river, and entering Blake. The poet’s objective is to take readers’ minds completely out of the ordinary, beyond the confines of familiar time and space, in order to comprehend humankind’s past and future as a single mental form, eternally human and divine. Milton is a poem about how a poet envisions eternal truth with the fourfold power of imagination.

Some background in Blake’s cosmic mythology is helpful. Before the fall, Albion (fourfold man) was united with his bride Jerusalem (heaven), and the Four Zoas (aspects of man) presided over their respective realms. The realms are Tharmas (body), Urizen (reason), Luvah (emotion), and Urthona (imagination). When Luvah encroaches on Urizen, however, all fall and split asunder. Luvah is divorced from Vala (nature) and turns into Orc (revolt). Urizen casts off his Emanation, Ahania (pleasure). Tharmas becomes Enion (lust), and Urthona divides into Los (time) and Enitharmon (space). All howl in discord, each claiming to be God. They exist within Albion’s bosom and throughout the cosmic vastness beyond the Mundane Shell that encloses earth, where Los labors in Golgonooza, giving form to uncreated things. His four-dimensional gates open onto Eden, Beulah, Generation, and Ulro, places like Milton’s heaven, Eden, earth, and hell.

Interestingly, Blake’s myth foresees modern psychology, for he portrays fallen man with a split personality: a masculine, reasoning, ravenous, selfish Spectre, and a feminine Emanation, an elusive shadow representing all the Spectre desires. Originally man had fourfold vision, sensory powers that were infinitely expansive and lucid. The fall drops him through successive states of error until he reaches the merciful limits of contraction (Adam) and opacity (Satan). So, symbolically, Milton falls through Luvah, Urizen, and the Mundane Shell, into Albion’s bosom, all the way to the limits of contraction (Adam) and opacity for his final confrontation with Satan.

For six thousand years, fallen man tries to regain the fourfold vision, through seven epochs, each called an Eye of God. First comes Lucifer, whose error is egotism. Then comes three phases of infernal justice: Molech (execution), Elohim (judgment), and Shaddai (accusation). Next comes Pahad, a reign of terror after justice fails, followed by two attempts at order: Jehovah (law) and Jesus (forgiveness). Blake further subdivides history into twenty-seven churches (systems of religious thought) in three groups: from Adam to Lamech, from Noah to Terah, and from Abraham to Luther. Blake sees Milton as the eighth Eye or twenty-eighth church, a new concept of religion without hierarchy, orthodoxy, and other Satanic perversions of faith. Thus, Blake’s epic announces a new phase of Christianity liberated from dogma and law.

The personages and machinery of Blake’s myth are revealed to characters in the poem through visions that are also witnessed and overheard by readers. Book 1 opens with a bard’s song that tells a parable of Satan’s fall and the creation of the three classes of men in a story about Los’s sons. There is Palamabron, an honest farmer and prophet; Rintrah, an angry prophet; and Satan, the miller, a mild-mannered, respectable prince of this world. They swap places for a day, with catastrophic results. Trying to drive the harrow in pity’s path, Satan drives the horses and servants mad. Meanwhile Palamabron revels in wine, song, and dance with workers in the Satanic mills. Satan blames Palamabron, who demands a trial before the Eternals. Rintrah testifies for Palamabron, saying Satan did wrong because “pity divides the soul/ And man unmans.” The Eternals refuse to impute guilt to pity, and their judgment falls on Rintrah for his wrath. Enraged, Satan accuses Palamabron of malice and ingratitude. Exiled to Ulro, Satan declares himself God and is worshipped in churches. His daughter Leutha tries but fails to reverse Satan’s condemnation by taking the blame on herself. The Eternals rule that Satan must endure among the Elect, unredeemed, until someone dies for him. They create two other classes of men: the Reprobate, like Rintrah, who transgress the law but keeps the faith; and the Redeemed, like Palamabron, who labor productively despite being tormented by the Elect.

Milton realizes that the bard’s song is about himself. “I in my Selfhood am that Satan,” he declares, vowing to descend through a vortex into Ulro, where he can annihilate his Spectre and reunite with his Emanation. Like a falling star, Milton travels to earth and is reincarnated in the poet Blake, entering through his left foot. The fallen Zoas dread Milton’s approach. Urizen does battle with him, turning the ground beneath his feet to marble and pouring icy water on his brain. Milton molds red clay around Urizen’s feet to give him new flesh and a human form. Rahab sends her daughters to entice Milton with lust, but he pays no heed and strives onward to Golgonooza.

As Albion stirs in his sleep, Blake starts, noticing something strange on his left foot in the form of a sandal. Though not yet realizing that Milton has come to him, Blake straps on the sandal to stride through Eternity. Los appears and helps him with his sandals, becoming one man with Blake too. At Golgonooza the poet-prophet meets Rintrah and Palamabron, who ask whether Milton comes to let Satan loose, unchain Orc, and raise up Mystery, the Virgin Harlot Mother of War. They see revolution in America and the Covering Cherub advancing from the East. The Covering Cherub represents false dogmas of religion consolidated in the warring churches of Paul, Constantine, Charlemagne, and Luther. Los urges his sons not to flee in fear, for he knows Milton’s arrival signals the Last Judgment. Book 1 ends with a glorious account of the redemptive labors of Los in Golgonooza, where material nature and the mental abstractions of Ulro are transformed by imaginative vision and given particularly human forms.

Book 2 opens in Beulah, a dreamy place of respite from the fury of poetic inspiration in Eden. All Beulah laments, for Ololon vows to follow Milton into Ulro. Milton’s immortal part converses with the angels, explaining the doctrine of States. According to this doctrine, individual identities never change, but they pass through States that do. Satan, reason, and memory are States to be annihilated; and Milton is about to become a State called Annihilation, where the living go to defeat Death.

Then everything suddenly culminates in a moment of inspiration. Ololon arrives at Blake’s garden, and so does Milton. Standing on the sea not far away, Satan thunders. Blake enters Satan’s bosom to behold its formless desolation. Milton condemns Satan and his priests for, with their laws and terrors, making men fear death. Satan replies that he is judge of all, God himself in holiness (not mercy). With that, the garden path erupts in flame and the Starry Seven blow trumpets to awaken Albion and the Four Zoas from their slumber of six thousand years. Satan withdraws and Rahab appears, bearing the name of Moral Virtue and revealing herself to be Religion hid in War.

Ololon and Milton discuss times past. They reach the realization that they are contraries who can be reconciled once their inhibiting selfhoods are expunged. Ololon thereupon sheds her formidable female will, which sinks into the sea with Milton’s spectral shadow. Purged, the two are reunited. Milton declares:

I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur  of Inspiration,To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith  in the Saviour,To cast off the rotten rags of Memory  by Inspiration,To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from  Albion’s covering,To take off his filthy garments & clothe him  with Imagination,To cast aside from Poetry all that is  not Inspiration.

Clothed in a garment dipped in blood and inscribed with words of divine revelation, Jesus appears and enters into Albion’s bosom. God unites with man. Terror-struck, Blake collapses on the path and is revived by his wife. The lark is heard on high, and all go forth to the Last Judgment.

Bibliography

Bentley, G. E., Jr. The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. New Haven, Conn.: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2001. Bentley, a veteran Blake scholar, has compiled a meticulously researched and comprehensive account of Blake’s life and work, illustrated with 170 black and white and color reproductions of Blake’s art work.

Bloom, Harold. Blake’s Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963. A comprehensive, line-by-line exposition of Blake’s prophetic poems. Bloom sensitively explains the intricate subtleties of Blake’s myth and traces its connections to biblical and other literary traditions.

Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1965. This handy glossary collects and interprets clues to Blake’s terminology, which is scattered through all of his works. There are entries for each character, work, symbol, and geographical or historical reference. Includes maps, illustrations, and diagrams of difficult concepts, such as Golgonooza.

Eaves, Morris, ed. The Cambridge Companion to William Blake. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Collection of essays that cover the entire range of Blake’s works, including “Milton and Its Contexts, 1800-1810” by Mary Lynn Johnson. The book also features a chronology, a guide to further reading, and a glossary of Blake’s terminology.

Fox, Susan. Poetic Form in Blake’s “Milton.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976. Fox patiently establishes the structural principle of parallelism beneath the seeming chaos of the poem. Explores the echoes, paired passages, cyclical patterns, and thematic symmetries.

Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947. A brilliant and influential critical analysis of Blake’s poetry and thought. Chapter 10 examines Milton.

Howard, John. Blake’s Milton: A Study in the Selfhood. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976. A psychological analysis that credits Blake for anticipating twentieth century psychological theories. Focuses on Milton’s descent as a journey within the psyche and analyzes Blake’s Spectres as models of self-paralyzing inhibition.

Williams, Nicholas M., ed. Palgrave Advances in William Blake Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Collection of essays that apply modern critical perspectives to analyze Blake’s works. Includes discussions of Blake and language, gender studies, the Bible, psychology, the communist tradition, and postmodernism.