Kushal Haran

5/2/2018

Professor Mitchell

Blake’s Infinity War

My project interrogates the intersecting questions of aesthetics, dialectics, and reality.

Namely, working from Blake’s Oeuvre (including Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of

Innocence and Experience, Milton, and “Auguries of Innocence”), my final paper will seek to

address how one can interpret some of Blake’s work as a deconstruction of the divide between

mortal perception and transcendent spirituality. Finally, I will illustrate that in this

deconstruction, Blake’s work affirms the structure of subjective reality as a constant struggle

towards infinity, particularly illuminated in the both ekphrastic and musical form of his art. That

is to say, the musical and visual components of Blake provide a translucent glimpse at the

structure of this infinity that lies outside the “doors of perception.”

Ideally, my paper will not get into the nitty gritty of poststructural theory and will instead

just be informed by it. However, one of the key discussions that will that permeate the majority

of the paper will be that of Derrida’s refutation of the metaphysics of presence. Derrida explains

that the paradigm of ontological analysis is caught up in “returning 'strategically', ‘ideally’, to an

origin... thought to be … self-identical, present, in order then to think in terms of derivation...

And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others, it is the metaphysical exigency"

(Derrida, Limited Inc. 236). Essentially, the predominating mode of interrogating how things

work is always concerned with a present answer, something that ties up the system “ideally” and

provides a clear picture of how something works at the moment. For example, a ball falls down

because the earth’s gravitational force acts upon it and pulls it down as soon as nothing keeps it
up. There is no reference to its past or its future, the status of the ball is defined by the forces

acting on it at the moment. This form of analysis often requires dualisms and binaries to describe

the status of systems. Indeed, in our example, the question is just “is there an external or present

force acting on the ball?” For Derrida, and as we shall illustrate for Blake, this does not access

forms of meaning that are not necessarily “present” and as such cannot attack all types of

questions. In fact, it relies on rigid dichotomies that make certain understandings inaccessible.

Derrida wants to reveal that every “so-called ‘present’, or ‘now’ point, is always already

compromised by a trace, or a residue of a previous and future experience, that precludes us ever

being in a self-contained 'now' moment” (Derrida, Of Grammatology, 186).

This gets to the very heart of my paper. For Derrida, experience and “being” cannot be

expressed as in a “self-contained” “present.” Instead it must be articulated through a “trace” that

reveals the answer as both from the past and on the horizon, in the future. This is where

Derrida’s deconstruction plays such a fundamental role. Deconstruction is playing with,

inverting, and pushing a binary to its limit of possibility to reveal a glimpse at a concept’s

meaning as not present but as a trace. This is exactly what Blake is doing with the duality

between sense-perception and spirituality. As such, this paper affirms that Blake’s work can be

read as a deconstruction between perception and transcendence, his music/art being the trace of

subjective reality that remains.

This argument is something I will obviously take up more rigorously in my final paper,

but nevertheless, I shall engage with it a little bit here. Essentially, Blake’s approach to

subjective reality is at least partially revealed in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell when the

speaker is shown visions of hell and returns the favor, so to speak, to the angel. Namely, the

speaker notes to the angel that:

 “All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away I found

myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harpist. But now we have seen my

eternal lot, shall I show you yours?’ He laughed at my proposal; but I, by force,

suddenly caught him in my arms and flew westerly through the night” (Blake 19).

Before analyzing this passage, it should be noted that the conventional religious

understanding of perception was that Truth was found in the eternal, infinite God, which

requires some erasure of the materiality of mortal reality. In light of this observation,

Blake is noting that tenuousness of such a portrayal of reality as all that “we saw was

owing to” the “metaphysics” of the angel, the angel metonymic of this “infinite.” This

transcendent infinity is even noted by the angel’s revealed vision of the “eternal lot.”

However, the speaker finds himself “on a bank by moonlight hearing a harpist”, an

tranquil scene especially in light of the horrifying infinite abyss in hell that he was shown

just moments before. The passage, in relation to the events preceding it, calls into

question the canonical description of reality as situated in the now, based on pure

perception. The passage convolutes the passage of time and even its relationship to space

and experience as the scene shifts from hell to the bank in a moment, a discontinuous one

at that. Moreover, Blake begins to reverse the traditional binary of transcendence and

mortality as the speaker claims the ability to show the angel his “eternal lot.” The

absurdity of this is even noted as the angel laughs but the speaker “by force, suddenly

caught him” and took him to his reality. The violent nature of this reversal is

encapsulated in the use of “force” and “suddenly.” Furthermore, that the speaker

possesses the capability to render the “eternal lot” for the transcendent being
problematizes the predominating narrative that human reality is defined in opposition to

spiritual reality.

In my final paper, I will go more in depth into how exactly Blake destabilizes this

opposition and how this play with the binary then illustrates that subjective reality must

be articulated in some other respect. The next consideration of mine is then what the

precise articulation of subjective reality is within Blake’s work. He alludes to what this is

in the infamous quote about doors of perception: “If the doors of perception were

cleansed every thing 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.” (Blake 75) It should be noted

that this “cavern” that describes man is the same one that is discussed earlier in the book

and is described as based in the five senses, at least according to the footnote. That is to

say, the way “man has closed himself” is that he has subsumed reality under sensorial

experience (a la Locke) and not attributed any value of the “Infinite” in being. This

infinity is what Blake claims is subjective reality. However, the use of “doors” is very

notable here because it implies that perception still provides a type of gateway to reality.

Given the discussion above, it is clear the Blake is affirming some interregnum between

the two to give some vague form to the Infinity that is reality.

This Infinity is then the next thing I would like to discuss in my paper. That is to

say, I will interrogate what Infinity is for Blake, especially as distinct from the

“indefinite.” Again, there will be a more substantive discussion of infinity to Blake in my

final paper, but the starting point for analyzing Blake’s conception of Infinity is found in

his “Auguries of Innocence” as he starts: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/ And a

Heaven in a Wild Flower/ Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an
hour” (Blake 403). Firstly, Blake reifies that reality is articulated in infinity as seeing the

“World” and “Heaven” are posited as results of grasping “infinity” and “eternity.”

Moreover, he is yet again collapsing the distinction between the spiritual and the

empirical as the “world” is within “a Grain of Sand”, paralleling how “Heaven” is “in a

Wild Flower.” Secondly, Blake is recasting the traditional understanding of “infinity” as

it is something to hold in the “palm of your hand.” Furthermore, the eternal aspect of this

infinity can be encapsulated “in an hour.” Therefore, the infinity is not something too

great and large, but something inherently indivisible and infinitesimal. The infinity of

reality is found in the constantly reduced substance of experience, not in a substance that

lies outside and beyond experience.

Lastly, I will posit that Blake’s deconstruction then leaves a trace of this infinity

in his visuals and songs. That is to say, Blake gives a vague form to this infinity, and

expresses subjective reality. For Blake, this infinity is not outside of human reality, and

as such cannot be the pole by which mortal being is defined against. Rather, this

subjective reality is found in the promise of an unveiled infinity on the horizon. Blake

describes this eternity and infinity as the moment of art’s creation/inspiration: “For in this

Period the Poet’s Work is Done: and all the Great/ Events of Time start forth & are

conceivd in such a Period/ Within a Moment: A Pulsation of the Artery” (Blake 183). In

the infinitesimal and thus infinite reality of time (the “pulsation of the artery”) is the

“Poet’s Work’s” transpiration. Hence, we find that Blake’s expression of mortal being-

towards-infinity is his visual and melodic art. Here I will delve into the exact ways in

which the musicality of “To Tirzah” and its associated image express the fruits of the

deconstruction of spirituality and mortality best. I will draw attention to the asignifying
and a-representing nature of the form of music and the indivisibility of the moment of the

image’s scale.
 Works Cited

Blake, William, et al. Blake's Poetry and Designs. W.W. Norton, 2008.

Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Print.