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I found this week so interesting!! I have not loved any text like I did The Marriage of Heaven and Hell since I read George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. I think Blake is so brilliant in expressing his radical ideas and in making fun of social follies in the meantime. I can only imagine how blasphemous and heretical the piece seemed in Blake’s time when even in the 21st century when we jave developed so much and have apparently opened up our minds to healthy discussion, some parts of this book can still make us cringe. One example that really shocked me and I’m sure would’ve shocked Blake’s readers back then was the line,
“Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”
I was like “Whoa! Wait a minute, B!!” when I read this. That’s going a bit far but I guess that is part of his style, caricature. He is stressing the fact that we should follow the infernal energies and not restrain ourselves because
“Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained;”
I found this pretty hilarious because it is so unusual. Apparently will power is a strength. Well that’s what we have been led to believe and that’s what the church has upheld for centuries. Now Blake comes along and claims that it is because the desires are not strone enough implying a detriment of character of those who do not just go for what they want. Pretty cool in a way. But I have to be a wet sponge now and say that we diod something like this in Christian ethics when we looked at the philosophical theories which have influenced Christian ethics. I found it interesting that Kantianism that encourages seeking pleasure and that everybody should do what makes them happy. The problem with this was that one person’s happiness may impinge on the happiness of another. I have to also stop an mention another philosophy that has sprung up because we also did it in Christian ethics when we did Kantianism but also because it relates to Blake’s beliefs in The Marriage. It is, if I remember correctly, Aristotelianism which promotes treating everybody as an “end” and “never as a means to an end”. I think this is a very beautiful philosophy and is very Blakean in that it recognises the Divinity of Man, of which Blake was such a strong believer, being the humanitarian that he was. "All deities", he says, "reside in the human breast" as can be seen on the plate above.
These are some of my favourite lines form this text:
PRISONS ARE BUILT WITH STONES OF LAW, BROTHELS WITH BRICKS OF RELIGION. This is a very strong belief of Blake’s. He was so ANTI-RULES and moral codes. He believed this just made people want to rebel all the more and made them feel guilty for things they shouldn’t. If religion didn’t have so many rules about monogamy and prudence, abstinence etc. people would not need to sneak away to brothels!!!!
I also love when Blake talks about the caterpillar choosing the best leaves upon which to lay its legs so the priest chooses the finest to poison with his pestilent rules and bondage.
IF OTHERS HAD NOT BEEN FOOLISH WE SHOULD BE SO. This is so true. Don’t mock someone who’s foolish because if they didn’t make the mistake you may have. We don’t only learn from our mistakes but we learn from those of others.
I could go on and on but I’ll stop there… I really enjoyed this and this is my favourite Blakean piece only because he packs so many universal ideas into so few words. FANTASTIC IT IS!!!!!
