Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5/2/2018
Professor Mitchell
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
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
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
This gets to the very heart of my paper. For Derrida, experience and “being” cannot be
reveals the answer as both from the past and on the horizon, in the future. This is where
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
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
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
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
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
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.