User talk:Lithoderm/Blake's Illustrations of Milton

Concept of Milton
"He said he had committed an error in his Paradise Lost, which he he wanted me to correct, in a poem or picture; but I declined I said I had my own duties to perform -It is a presumptuous question ...He wished me to expose the falsehood of his doctrine, taught in Paradise Lost-that Sexual intercourse arouse out of the Fall -Now that cannot be, for no good can spring out of Evil" (Blake, as recorded by Henry Crab Robinson, reproduced in Blake Records, ed. G.E. Bentley, Jr., 1969, pp. 543-4. Quoted by Dunbar, p.1, who disputes the accuracy of Robinson's account)


 * "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough
 * to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place &
 * governs the unwilling.
 * And being restraind it by degrees becomes passive till it is
 * only the shadow of desire.
 * The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the Governor
 * or Reason is call'd Messiah.
 * And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the
 * heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan and his children are
 * call'd Sin & Death
 * But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
 * For this history has been adopted by both parties
 * It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out. but the


 * Devils account is, that the Messiah fell. & formed a heaven
 * of what he stole from the Abyss
 * This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to
 * send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build
 * on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he, who dwells
 * in flaming fire.
 * Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
 * But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
 * five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
 * Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
 * Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he
 * was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it"

-from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, pls. 5-6 (Erdman p. 35)

Analysis
"They [the illustrations] represent Blake's rethinking of Milton's themes, in which the insights he sees as true are isolated, while the ideas he regards as confinements or distortions are rejected... The process is particularly apparent in cases where he illustrates the same poem more than once." (Werner 17)