To Tirzah
Whate'er is Born of Mortal Birth
Must be consumed with the Earth,
To rise from Generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
The Sexes sprung From Shame & Pride,
Blow;d in the morn; in evening died;
But Mercy chang'd Death into Sleep;
The Sexes rose to work & weep.
Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,
With cruelty didst mould my Heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears
Didst bind my Nostrils, Eyes & Ears,
Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay,
And me to Mortal Life betray.
The Death of Jesus set me free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
It is Raised a Spiritual Body *
* Blake's illustration to the poem is of two women supporting a male figure who appears to be in a fragile state, unconscious or dead. An elderly man prepares to pour some liquid from a jug over the male figure. The words 'it is raised a spiritual body' are written on the elderly man's clothing.
Various commentaries suggest that the poem symbolizes worldliness and the human reliance of experiencing and determining reality through the means of the body and its five senses. The poem presents a contrast between a finite and materialist world and an opposing impulse towards an infinite and spiritual realm, with the physical senses portrayed as serving to numb the perception of this spiritual realm.
Blake was highly critical of social injustice and of what he could see as being the rigidity of such institutions as the church and state. After his death, his wife Catherine sold some of his illuminated works and art. In turn, after her death, Blake's manuscripts were left to Frederick Tatham, who belonging to a religious fundamentalist group, burnt some of the papers that he deemed as being heretical or politically radical.
An example of how radical Blake's philosophy of life would have been to the church, is contained in his work 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'. In it he set out that: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. 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."
Blake continues to say that: "All Bibles or sacred codes have been the cause of the following Errors:- 1. That Man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a Soul. 2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body; and that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:- 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
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. The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel, or possessor of the command of the Heavenly Host, is call'd the Devil or Satan, and his children are call'd Sin and Death. But in the Book of Job, Milton's Messiah is called Satan. For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a Heaven of what he stole from the Abyss. This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter, or Desire, that Reason may have Ideas to build on; the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. Know that after Christ's death, he became Jehovah. But in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son a Ratio of the five senses, and the Holy-ghost Vacuum!"
Blake it seemed, had a vision of how humanity had fallen in grace through a misconception or judgment that the mind had made about the nature of Good and Evil, particularly as it related to an experience of life and of God through the physical senses and the realms of imagination and inspiration.
To quote again from his work 'the Marriage of Heaven and Hell' he writes: "The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly 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 enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realise or abstract the Mental Deities from their objects - thus began Priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that All Deities reside in the Human breast."
Blake puts forward a suggestion that divine reverence or a sense of the sacred in life is possible through an openness of experience of nature itself, which is inclusive of the human body and its senses rather than of attempting to relegate the desires of the human experience to one of sinful nature or shame.
He points out that the ancient poets did not distinguish between recognition of deity and of property of nature and that there was a sense of unity within such experience, something which appeared to be fragmented or forgotten once labels and judgments were attributed to aspects of the divine and of human nature.
One consequence of the segregation of nature being that perception became such that no longer was there an open door to the divine, but instead a closed and bolted one, one which could only be opened through a third party and after completion of a cycle or a process by which humanity had redeemed itself. Such a view of having fallen from grace would in turn give rise to concepts of transcendence and redemption, based upon an unwillingness to perceive reality in the perfection of its form that exists already.
Blake had spoken of a necessity within human existence, for there to be the presence of contraries or what we could also view as being polarities to allow for progression. If we did not choose to view a particular quality in an unfavorable light or as being unsatisfactory in some way, we might not be motivated to search within ourselves for qualities that were previously unknown to us, or that we did not believe we possessed. It is the very presence of or rather, an awareness of tension of some sort that provides us with an impulse or a current through which we can aspire to explore life and to reach our greatest potential.
What Blake seems to be addressing through his poems and his works is how the divine experience of being human has been misconstrued in such a way that instead of working in partnership with nature, humanity has attempted to suppress or to deny the totality of experience and has caused harm to one another and has suffered as a consequence. Reason and Imagination are equally necessary and important characteristics of human development and they serve to engage us ever more deeply with our humanity and of reality itself. There is no way out but through.
As Blake further points out: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."
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