The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — A Memorable Fancy 5
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — A Memorable Fancy 5
William Blake
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how
they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them, and whether
they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so
be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answered: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical
perception: but my senses discovered the infinite in everything; and as
I was then persuaded, and remained confirmed, that the voice of honest
indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but
wrote."
Then I asked: "Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?"
He replied: "All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination
this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a
firm persuasion of anything."
Then Ezekiel said: "The philosophy of the East taught the first
principles of human perception; some nations held one principle for
the origin, and some another. We of Israel taught that the Poetic
Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle, and all the others
merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests and
Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all Gods would
at last be proved to originate in ours, and to be the tributaries of
the Poetic Genius. It was this that our great poet King David desired
so fervently, and invokes so pathetically, saying by this he conquers
enemies and governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God that we cursed
in His name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that
they had rebelled. From these opinions the vulgar came to think that
all nations would at last be subject to the Jews.
"This," said he, "like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for all
nations believe the Jews' code, and worship the Jews' God; and what
greater subjection can be?"
I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction.
After dinner I asked Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he
said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He
answered: "The same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian."
I then asked Ezekiel why he ate dung, and lay so long on his right
and left side. He answered: "The desire of raising other men into a
perception of the infinite. This the North American tribes practise.
And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience, only for the
sake of present ease or gratification?"
* * * * *
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the
end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his
guard at [the] tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will
be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite
and corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is
to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by
corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent
surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man
as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow
chinks of his cavern.
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Complete poem text from the cited public-domain source edition.
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