Drawing - ’Art Instruction’ by Darwin Leon

THE POETIC GENIUS AND ENTHUSIASM OF WILLIAM BLAKE
BY
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS

All the categories in the world, whether they number seven or seventy thousand, would be dead issues without the inspiration of the Poetic Genius.  And with that inspiration the possibilities are unlimited, for no conceivable taxonomical scheme can name all the future arrangements of evolution, at least not as long as Life presses forward against the inert things we define along the way.

The Poetic Genius, possessed at once by the past, present, and future, has direct access to the transcendent cause of creation, wherefore he is endowed by his God with the gift of prophecy. God is the ineffable Subject of subjects, as far as he is concerned, the Being of beings merely alluded to by innumerable predicates, innumerable because all predicates belong to God, and to God nothing is inconceivable. He means by God everyone’s Freedom, for Heaven's sake. He means creative Love. And what is Love? Love is your Life.

All that and more is what the Poetic Genius means by God, and that is why he urges all to put aside the virtual suicide of the death religions to truly live as a True Man. And by this expression, Man, he also means Woman, for Ma is the root of Man. Her access to the ground of prophecy is most intimate.

Who is the Poetic Genius? He is the First Man possessed by his God. Therefore he is the first Enthusiast, the Adam of Enthusiasm, a creator made in the image of the Creator. He is the Free Spirit incarnate within whom the Life of Man proceeds. Since "Man" is from "Ma", or she-who- measures-out, Man is "He-who-thinks", hence the Poetic Genius is the very impetus of the life of the mind, the founder of all the arts and sciences of culture and civilization.

There is no true enthusiasm or god-possession absent Poetry. Without Poetry, we are left with the feigned enthusiasm of publicity and advertising designed to stimulate the production and consumption of mortifying objects. Or we have the religious and political hypocrisy and sophistry of power mongering. In a word, what we have without Poetry is blasphemy!

William Blake, for example, espoused the freedom of every man. He was a popular enthusiast: "Every Honest Man is a Prophet," he averred. He ardently supported the French Revolution. He fostered an abiding hatred for Biblical literalism. As far as he was concerned, the authoritarian interpretations of the Bible were "abominations," priestly corruptions of poetic tales. He explained this on Plate 11 of his 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell':

"The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous sense 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 enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects thus began Priesthood, Choosing forms from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forget that All deities reside in the human breast."

Blake observed that false religions condemn desire. His sentiments were contrary to those of rational monotheism he went so far as to say that Moses' one god on Sinai was an encounter with "forms of dark delusion." He also took up, in his artistic fashion, the dark delusions of Northern mythology. On the bright side, he observed that the Sun stands free of received authority: it needs no darkness to distinguish it. Nevertheless, he was unenthusiastic about the Enlightenment and the worship of its Sun, called Reason, for Reason sets more limits to desire than the traditional religions.

As much stock as Blake placed in desire, his deity is completely abstract or mystical. Desire is the motive that results in sense experience, not the sense experience itself. And the Poetic Genius enjoys a mystical experience beyond sense experience.

In 'There is No Natural Religion', Blake argues that, since science is only concerned with the evidence of the senses, it is limited by a fixed ratio to the sensible world, therefore:

"If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic and Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, and still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again." And, "He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is."

He reiterated that principle in 'All Religions are One, The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness.'

"As none traveling over known lands can find out the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more, therefore a Universal Poetic Genius exists." Moreover, he declared that “the poetic genius is the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius."

Blake, however, would not establish an elite cult of poetic geniuses, a poetic priesthood who believe that they and they alone have access to God. Every man has poetic genius available to him according to his lights and especially according to his honesty, his ability to become true to his Poetic Genius.

Blake was appalled by the authoritarian abuse of religion and its scriptures in his day, yet that did not dissuade him from his belief that the holy testaments were the work of inspired poets, and that such inspiration is available to every Honest Man:

"The religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different reception of the Poetic Genius which is everywhere called the Spirit of Prophecy." And, "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) so all Religions and all similar have one source. The true Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius."

In fine, within each man is the true Man, and he is the Poetic Genius, the source of all true religion, the religion of Life and Love and Liberty.

Now our sentiments may differ from Blake's. Nonetheless, many of us will agree that he was an enthusiastic poet, and that to abolish poetry from enthusiastic endeavors is not only blasphemous, but is a threat to the happiness and very existence of the human race. The race might survive for awhile as an ant-like army encased in its technological armor, yet, sooner or later, the terrain would shift, leaving humankind in a lurch it could not withstand without the virtues of poetry.

-XYX-

Honolulu 2000