Comments on: Urizen

By: tim burt

tim burt — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:06:14 +0000

The developing infant, upon birth, is symbiotic with the mother (or possibly, its caretakers). There is no “I,” neither is there a means to understand an internal and external division: no “mind” as opposed to “world,” only a collapse of the singular and the infinite.
The rise of distinctions is the rise of difference; the rise of difference is the rise of gender, of repression, of abjection, and subsequently the rise of a “traumatized” identity.
This occurs, according to Lacan, through the “Name of the Father.” Through language’s patriarchal structure, the infant is “cleft from the side of eternity.” What was expansive becomes fragmented: the male must repress his “femininity.” This is the start of a continual psychic pain.
Urizen is a tormented being. His pain derives from the self-imposed division from Eternity. His separation of the world into distinct objects, his setting up of law and order, is an illusion, for he does not eliminate that which contradicts his vision. Rather, he represses it, only to manifest in the suffering characteristic in the entire Urizenic world. His project is impossible, but its presentation is one of reality and totality.
The overlap between psychoanalytic development and The Book of Urizen is extensive, and many of the correlations were fleshed out in class (or were supposed to be, anyway). The question is, what is the significance? Both psychoanalytic thinking and Blake’s art allow us to conceive new political possibilities.
To understand the entirety of both a political system and its subsequent networks of symbols and meaning (for example, the “Net of Religion”), to understand the system itself, as not “natural” but constructed, developed… is to understand how to challenge it; even envision overthrowing it. That is revolutionary.
Similarly, to understand gender, patriarchy, and the nature of identity, as constructed, and not natural, is to create the possibility of challenging it.
Revolutionary energy becomes “change you can’t believe in,” because we understand our beliefs to be constructed, illusory, and in service of power.
Thus we need a willingness to see the world from the Devil’s point of view, to brutally throw ourselves into the sublime expanse of the unknown, of the Eternal, to achieve the total escape of the present’s oppression.

By: ibnl1441

ibnl1441 — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:00:13 +0000

Ian Brecher
ENGL479W
Professor Fraistat
30 October 2008

A Personal Reflection on Blake, Jackson and “Urizen”

All of this William Blake discourse has sent me into a whirlwind of thought. His work truly represents the importance of resisting the tyrannical and unjust aspects of one’s environment, by expanding the imagination to create new realities.

In thinking how Blake’s art is relevant today, I am obligated to reference Shelly Jackson’s work; as she may be our generation’s Blake. Similar to Blake’s Illuminated Books, Jackson’s Patchwork Girl manipulates literature’s traditional medium. Like Blake, she forces the reader to dive deeper and deeper into the tangled and fragmented text until he or she has gone too far to return to the surface; and must learn to breathe under water. While their work forces the reader to change in ways that may seem uncomfortable at first, it truly expands the mind in wonderful ways.
In the case of Blake’s First Book of Urizen, I constantly try to relate our society today, to the world Urizen creates. Blake writes:

Laws of peace, of love, of unity,
Of pity, compassion, forgiveness.
Let each choose one habitation,
His ancient infinite mansion.
One command, one joy, one desire,
One curse, one weight, one measure,
One King, one God, one Law

When I juxtapose the text in this stanza to the illustration of Urizen crying in shackles, I cannot help but think about America today; specifically surrounding the war on terror. Both America and the Arab world are representations of Urizen, as both cultures have their own set of laws and values, with which they wish to influence the other. The conflict between America and the Arab world will only continue to escalate, unless each culture begins to lessen its sedentary position in hopes of finding ways to exist harmoniously. Like most war, the cause for conflict exists in stagnant positions, and narrow minded mentalities. Like Urizen, the different cultures shackle themselves in oneness, thus resulting in the absence of harmony, creativity and imagination.

Since this topic is so significant in today’s society, I would love to employ Blake and Jackson’s expansive imaginative devices, in order to one day create some literary medium that could describe this cultural dilemma. In today’s troubled world, we are in desperate need of some device that could provoke change and revolution amongst global cultures.

By: klape

klape — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:43:59 +0000

One thing that strikes me each time I read Blake’s The Book of Urizen is how strongly the language is enmeshed with biological, physiological, and medical descriptions. In Urizen, there is a fall into creation of the world that is joined by a rise of the late 18th century emerging science of biology. Blake seems to be using bloody and bodily terminology to further his critique of religion we first witnessed in MHH. In Blake’s creation myth, the bodily form emerges out of the seven Ages of the “changes of Urizen” in Chapter IV:
In the first age, the Spine “writh’d in torment” and bones and nerves are formed. In the second age, the heart and the circulatory system are formed by the “red / Round globe, hot burning” that sinks “deep, / Deep down into the Abyss, / Panting, Conglobing, Trembling, Shooting out ten thousand branches / Around his solid bones.” In the third age, the brain connects to the heart and then forms the eyes, implying that sight is a sense deeply connected to both of these organic faculties. The creation of the eyes in the third age brings the “pangs of hope” in the fourth age, which also produces the ears out of “heavy pain, striving, struggling.” But the ears are petrified, hardened as they extend beyond the body and are not enclosed and protected as are the eyes, implying that the sense of sound is associated with that same throbbing pain that produced it. Scent comes alive through sickness and the formation of the nostrils and the nose in the fifth age, and the sixth age witnesses the creation of the ribs, the stomach, the throat, and the tongue and the sense of taste designed perhaps to satisfy the “craving Hungry Cavern.” Finally, in the seventh age, there is a violent throwing of his arms and legs across the abyss, and the creation of the body is complete.
Each age that produces “a state of dismal woe” also produces a (human) body part. The seven ages can be compared to the seven days of creation in the Judeo-Christian creation; while it takes God seven days to create the earth, including man and woman, Blake devotes “ages” to the creation of Urizen’s human form, and does do with more than just “dust.”
I’m still trying to work through the deeper implications of this, if there be any, and I welcome any thoughts on the topic of Blake’s “scientific” descriptions throughout Urizen.

By: afurbush

afurbush — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:24:18 +0000

Please keep in mind that this is strictly how I read William Blake’s The First Book of Urizen. Also, I have limited experience in Blake outside of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Obviously, this may not be the only way to interpret this text.

William Blake was obviously well versed in Milton’s 1667 poem Paradise Lost, and in his famed work, The First Book of Urizen, Blake attempts to form a Devil’s creation story. Blake had given up his idea of The Bible of Hell and instead continued to recreate his alternative creation story. In this story “Urizen” (your reason) is the creator of all. Blake’s “reason” is the same that is present in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in how it represents all that is not good. Reason is Blake’s Devil. Thus the creation of any world by such a devil has no choice but to be dark and void. Urizen is much like Milton’s Satan, and the world created is much like Milton’s Hell. Structurally it is set up similarly, which “chaos” surrounding it; chaos which Urizen must traverse much in the same way Satan traversed Milton’s chaos to find the world of the living. There is both biblical and personal imagery in Urizen, specifically in the following stanzas.

7. Lo! I unfold my darkness: and on
This rock, place with strong hand the Book
Of eternal brass, written in my solitude.
8. Laws of peace, of love, of unity:
Of pity, compassion, forgiveness.
Let each chuse one habitation:
His ancient infinite mansion:
One command, one joy, one desire,
One curse, one weight, one measure
One King, one God, one Law.
(Book 3, stanzas 7 &8)

This is the voice of Urizen, the creator of all. The book of brass relates directly to Blake’s beliefs that his works will outlast the traditional book. That his brass is more permanent than the written word is by itself. It seems prominent here that Urizen is much like Moses, descending from the mountains with the Ten Commandments, though engraved on stone. And that is exactly what is written in the book of brass, the laws for all the inhabitants of the new world; laws for the “eternals.”

1. The voice ended, they saw his pale visage
Emerge from the darkness; his hand
On the rock of eternity unclasping
The Book of brass. Rage siez’d the strong
(Book 4, stanza 1)

“Rage seized the strong” is the beginning of the end of Urizen. This is the fall of reason; a fall which “Los” weeps for. Los embodies the creative imagination of the world and watches in grief as Urizen suffers. This, again, is where Blake shows how important reason and imagination are.
Blake plays with conventional notions of the creation story. He inserts himself into the story just as Milton did in Paradise Lost but, instead of muses, Blake invokes the eternals; the witnesses to creation. Blake inverts the creation story, he makes new mythology from numerous sources. But the end result is much the same as any creation story, the origins of man, woman, and all of nature. His imagination is endless though he still shows respect for the need of reason. It is this concept of the unity of both reason and imaginations that is so pertinent in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

By: dretay

dretay — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:15:52 +0000

Urizen as an Instrument of Rebellion
One thing that really interested me with regard to “Urizen” is the way in which Blake used it as a tool to effect social change. As discussed in class Urizen was penned after the French Revolution of 1793. In the aftermath of that revolution other countries such as England sought to violently repress all radicalism so that their government did not suffer a similar fate. As such individuals that continued their agenda of radicalism were forced to flee to other countries, as was the case with Thomas Paine, or risk being brought to trial and deported. Thus Blake was unable to directly criticize government or advocate social change. Rather Blake creates a new view of the world that insists on the existence of an original force of evil, called Urizen. Thus in lieu of a step-by-step guide to revolution, Blake simply offers a different viewpoint and leaves interpretation in the hands of the readers.
I think one area of Urizen that clearly illustrates Blake’s strategy is the fact that no one is sure how proceed through the book. There are seven known copies of “The First Book of Urizen,” and as Mr. Byrne noted in class, there are ten plates of full-page illustrations whose order differs in each copy. However the books maintain a certain amount of similarity: the title page, preludium, and most of the textual plates follow a sequential order. Thus at a basic level Blake’s Urizen seems to reject one interpretation or angle of formal analysis. To analyze or draw meaning from Urizen requires a fundamental acknowledgement of inconsistency or alternative interpretation. In this way Blake is able to convey his views on the lack of a definitive right and wrong without overtly advocating revolution.