Joys impregnate.

Sorrows bring forth

(BLAKE, Proverbs of Hell)
It is interesting that this line falls amid a tirade of definitions in Proverbs
of Hell that sees William Blake playing with the cyclical nature of
opposites that constantly unbalance and rebalance each other; the cistern
contains, the fountain overflows, the fox provides for himself, but God
provides for the lion. The famous illustration that Blake drew in 1795 of
Isaac Newton pouring over a compass has a similar message. The torso of
the body is crushed together while all four limbs and the direction of the
head point towards his one finger, holding and guiding a compass.
Newtons gaze is directed at the compass itself and seems to ignore the
guiding influence of his own finger, while for the viewer it is the central
point of the image. Along with contemporaries John Keats and William
Wordsworth, Blake made no secret of his dislike of Newton and the cult of
Newtonianism that pervaded the eighteenth century enlightenment and
encouraged the doctrines of rationalism that he believed to be so limiting
to creativity: in the Song of Los, Urizen wept at his creation of the world
when he gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke. However, this image,
and the inconsistency with which he treats Newton and Newtons
inheritance elsewhere in his poetry, suggests that for Blake Newton
embodied the problems in a culture that tried to move away from an
emotional consideration of the body; the image suggests that Blake
wanted to believe that Newton relied upon intangible human instincts, but
denied that he did so. Critics such as Jennifer Jesse argue that Blake is not
anti-rational in his religious thought, but seeks to reconstruct a positive
role for reason. He achieves this partly through his refiguration of the
mythical Newton.
Blake directly challenges Newton and the tradition that Newton began
using measurements and divisions to find solutions to universal problems.
Marjorie Nicholsons description of this pattern is apt: she writes that
Blake delighted in nothing more than in his ability to forge verbal
thunderbolts to hurl against Bacon, Locke, and Newton1. It is interesting
that these thunderbolts often come in the shape of single words. The
figures that Newton argued against most vigorously in his rather fanciful
history of Cabbalism were the Papists, Cabbalists, Platonists and Gnostics,
who had a single false doctrine in common, which they infused into
Christian theology2. This was the theory of emanation, according to which
there were lesser spiritual beings derived from God which were of His
substance, but were not an act of creation of His divine will. They
supposed them to be male or female but real Beings or substances, and
to generate by emission of substance as animals generate or as heathens
supposed their gods to generate and thence accounted them
1 Marjorie H. Nicholson, Newton Demands the Muse, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1966), p.168

2 Frank Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p.68

consubstantial 3. This was fundamentally at odds with Newtons rigorous

monotheism: he states in one of his theological manuscripts that God is
not as man, not are his thought like ours. He is simple and not
compound.4 It is perhaps a stab at this single mindedness that in his
creation of the four Zoas Urizen, Los, Luvah and Tharmus, Blake calls the
female counterparts that issue from them emanations. That Enitharmon,
the emanation of Los then joins back together with him to make a child
seems to show twist the knife by showing that the problem will inevitably
continue. Mock on, Mock on Voltaire Rousseau also uses Newtons name
to direct a complaint against the fruitless and cyclical use of scientific
theories; when You throw the sand against the wind / And the wind blows
it back again. The next stanza tellingly extends this metaphor without
conclusion, adding specification and objects of comparison rather than
finding a solution, when every sand becomes a Gem, and they blind the
mocking Eye. The third stanza develops only by adding on the labels of
The Atoms of Democritus / And Newtons Particles of light as the sands
upon the Red sea shore. Newtons name sits comfortably as the solution,
but is so in name alone.
In a more subtle way, Blake twists idea of weight and measurement to
challenge the Newtonian language of the time that demanded empirical
figuring of the body. In a letter to Thomas Butts on 11th October 1801
Blake writes with telling defensiveness that Bacon & Newton would
prescribe ways of making the world heavier to me. He throws around
terms of weight and measure in such an obvious and clumpy way seems
to reflect the ways in which contemporaries themselves would use them
blindly. When first mapping out the world, Urizen times on times he
divided, & measurd / space by space, where neither can relativise the
other, and remains in his ninefold darkness, where the number is literally
enfolded in what it is trying to measure. Likewise the confusion of terms
when Urizen next tries to measure show how little the process matters,
since the results are meaningless to the poem: he formd a line & a
plummer / to divide the abyss beneath. / he formd a dividing rule: / he
formed scales to weigh; he formed massy weights etc. When wandering,
however, visions haunt Urizen of portions of life: similitudes / of a foot, or
a hand, or a head, or an eye, in contrast to the binding measurements of
rivets and brass and the stony book that have steadied him until this
point. Stuart Peterfreudn notes that Blake was aware of the origins of
volumetric measurement, that the first units of capacity probably related
to the human body; the handful, or the contents of both hands cupped.
This would vary according to the size of the hands and the individual doing
the measuring: it is this natural scope for relativity that the desire to
measure had destroyed. Even Los suffers when he lookd back with
anxious desire to see Urizen bound in the stony sleep, and sees the
space undivided by existence which struck horror into his soul. Such an
3 Yahuda MS. 15. 7, fol. 108v
4 Yahuda MS 15. 3, fols. 53v, 54r

attitude, Blake seems to believe, takes away the impregnating power of

joy that cannot be quantified and leaves only sorrow, an emotion relative
to quantifiable circumstances, to produce results.
However, Newton and Newtons theories were useful in Blakes poetry for
its mythological status. In the aftermath of Lockes The Reasonableness of
Christianity (1694), the authority of reason became derived largely from
the new conception of nature as one cosmic machine that functions
according to universal, unalterable laws. If reason was simply the inward
reflection of those laws, given to humanity by God in creation, humanity is
natively endowed with the ability to discover God's laws. Blakes attitude
towards this atmosphere was not, however, as violent as some of his
contemporaries. Benjamin Haydon reports in his diary for December 28th,
1917 that Wordsworth abused me for putting Newtons head into my
picture; fellow, said he, who believed nothing unless it was as clear as
the three sides of a triangle. and then he and Keats agreed that he had
destroyed all poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to its prismatic colours.
They then all drank a toast to Newtons health and confusion to
mathematicks. Blake may have objected to the limits which mathematical
conception places on the human mind, but he still used and enjoyed the
scope of Newtonian language for the benefits that it provides to artistic
creation in a mind, such as his own, that could use the theories with
appropriate distance and scepticism. In a poem to his friend Thomas Butts,
Blake makes it clear that he is writing, to my friend butts I write and
considering, the nature of light, my first vision of the light. He uses
terminology from Newtons Opticks such as emitting, beams and
particles, perhaps because it was better known to laymen, since it was
written in English and dealt with processes of nature much more
comprehensible, to show his full awareness that this theory is still at the
mercy of his imagination. Indeed, the lines in which I each particle
gazed, / astonishd, amazd; / for each was a man / human-form'd seems
to be a direct reference to the Blakes own imaginary emanations.
Likewise, To Venetian Artists begins with a derogatory acknowledgment of
Newtons theories, that God is colouring Newton does shew, as if this is
nothing special, before moving on to the little fable that will make us
merry in which outline, theres no outline, theres no such thing, since
all is colouring without shadow or substance. The language deteriorates
with snap! Snap! and a how do ye do before concluding that a mingling
and unconcern with boundaries between measured senses is the only way
to enjoy the fables of life; those who taste colouring love it more and
more. This becomes deeply ironic when we consider this misappropriation
of a name in relation to Newtons own famous disgust at the Platonists,
who bestowed esoteric meanings upon plain scriptural names for Christ
that were readily understood, such as lamb of god, son of man, Son of
God5. In his theological manuscripts he exclaims in high dudgeon, what
all this has to do with Platonism or Metaphysicks I do not understand
5 Frank Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p.69

the scriptures were given to teach men not metaphysicks but morals6.
Newton of reason was not an uncommon association to make, and points
out the metaphysical complications under which Newtons name had
suffered in the hands of the public, which seized so enthusiastically on the
works as to publish manuals such as Newton for Ladies.
Describing joy and sorrow as he does in the title quote shows Blakes
desire to link language back again to the simplistic bodily terms, so as not
to be confined by it. In There is no Natural Religion, the last section of the
treatise entitled application warns that he who sees the infinite in all
things sees god. He who sees the ratio only sees himself only. Peterfreudn
acknowledges that Blake discredits the authority of the Newtonian model
of matter, motion, and force, which explains phenomena as the result of
force impinging on a body that either is a corpuscle (i.e. Little body) or is
composed of such corpuscles, yet is taken in by the seductive power of
its half truths. It is Urizens pain that shows us when these truths become
overwhelming and weighty; the words oppress in circles without hope of
reasonable escape; he burst the girdle in twain, / but still another girdle.
oppressed his bosom, in sobbings / again he burst it. Again / another girdle
succeeds / the girdle was formd by day; the night was burst in twain. The
escape from this circular logic is an awareness of the body that will
somehow transcend the particular. However, in the Newtonian system,
when confined to a little body that is itself composed of little bodies (i.e.
Corpuscules) the individual is severely limited in any aspirations toward
unmediated knowledge or transcendence7. What characterises Urizens
suffering is its continuance: with repeated phrases like ages on ages rolld
over them and a sequence ages passing on a second age passed on / and
a state of dismal woe, there seems to be no end the eternal or infinite
tortures. There are also a staggering number of imperfect verbs in the
poem; Urizen is beating still on his rivets of iron / pouring sodor of iron;
dividing the horrible night, or hiding in surgeing / sulphurous fluid and
his actions seem to be under the aegis of these continuous words
combining/ he dug mountains & hills in vast strength. Orc is also resigned
to the same fate and the circle of suffering continues among Urizens
eternal creations. Yet this circle of sorrow generates creative
imagination because it situates the reader in a constant present, and uses
the words of measure and weight poetically, to add emphasis to the
weight of sorrow on Urizens shoulders.
Definition 3 under the OED entry for impregnates cites many later
eighteenth century uses of the word as meaning To fill (a substance or
portion of matter) with some active principle, element, or ingredient,
diffused through it or mixed intimately with it; to imbue, saturate. One set
of brackets, (Most commonly in pass.), is particularly interesting. It is an
6 Yahuda MS. 15. 7, fol 190r
7 Stuart Peterfreudn, William Blake in a Newtonian World, (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1998), p.39-41

unsurprising conclusion to come to when considering the poet who

inspired a generation of romantic poets, but Blakes use of impregnates
here seems to imply the diffusion of an idea throughout the body in a
natural, godlike, and therefore incommensurable way. It is clearly a point
of pride for Blake that he can report to his friend Thomas Butts how the
Los poems were written from immediate Dictation without
Premeditation. The result was a Sublime Allegory of which Blake was the
Secretary for Authors in Eternity8. Perhaps this was even in part due to
the abdominal maladies Blake had suffered in Felpham, as mentioned in
the same letters, which gives such force to the painful worm in
Enitharmons bosom that was with dolorous hissings & poisons / round
Enithermons lions folding, and demonstrates how acutely aware of his
own body at the time of composition. Blake writes in The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell that without contraries there is no progression, and it is
clear that his progression here towards a cyclical but generative
exchange of joy and sorrow is brought about by an appreciation of both
sides of the argument for reason: the subtitle of his Songs of Innocence
and Experience is tellingly, Shewing the two contrary states of the human
soul. Showing both sides of Newtons person and persona that have
translated across the century is necessary to understanding the true
exchange between the mind and the senses as it is clearly a human desire
to quantify and measure the world.

Bibliography
Primary sources
Blake, William, William Blake, ed. Michael Mason, (Oxford: OUP, 1988)
Secondary sources
Essick, Robert N., Blake, William (17571827), Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Oct
2005
Jesse, Jennifer G., The Binding of Urizen: The Role of Reason in William
Blakes Religious Thought, (Chicago, IL: Univeristy of Chicago Press,
1997)
Manuel, Frank, The Religion of Isaac Newton, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1974)
Nicholson, Marjorie H., Newton Demands the Muse, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1966)
8 Letters, 25 April and 6 July 1803, cited in Robert N. Essick, Blake, William (1757
1827), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004); online
edn, Oct 2005

Peterfreudn, Stuart, William Blake in a Newtonian World, (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1998)
Vickery, John B. Myth and Literature; Contemporary Theory and Practice,
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966)
Weibe, Paul M., Myth as genre in British Romantic Poetry, (New York, Peter
Lang inc., 1999)

blake dictionary alphabetical list of key concepts and lists from Blakes
works
department here so historicist
circles all over plates. Lots of O exclamations compass, mapping the
circle. Lots about the abyss
circle eternity and hollow shape
numerology
contraries i.e. 2s also the number four
songs of innocence and experience the human abstrate
mercy pity peace and love
four limbs
one arm to north, another to south. Conflation of bodily with abstract
urizen as a retelling of creation myth Urizen as the pitiable god but with
the beard
premise of blakean contraries should rever and perpetuate struggle
between things. Neeed opposite to create creative tensions. Urizen
emotionally and creativelty shut off literally shut eyes

urizen as agent of act of creation is messing up the order of thegs.

Rendering things fixed and materials - negative act because responsible
for shutting dors of huma perception
divine for blake isnt in abstract realm the collective state of human
imagination before divided up into empirically focused
urizen looks quite similar to the bard
starry king phrase (the starry robes) comes up in Thomas Grays poems
when pblake does illustration sof Grays bards he illustrates with the starry
robes
HEGEL
Urizen the starry king
Obstruction to liberty and freedom and rebellious spirit
Read texts as contraries to the plates