William Blake and the Slaves of Urizen

I have never read such total bollocks about the poet William Blake as in this Guardian article here ;

http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/features/0,,2218251,00.html

The writer is supposed to teach students about Blake, but the man knows nothing about Blake or his philosophy.

Here are a few obvious mistakes in this pathetic article ;

1) Blake's politics were not just a matter of wishful thinking, as so many radical schemes are today. Across the Atlantic one great anti-colonial revolution had held out the promise of liberty, and to the poet's delight another had broken out in the streets of Paris. Together they promised to bring an end to the rule of state and church - "the Beast and the Whore", as Blake knew them. Most of our own writers, however, seem to know little of politics beyond the value of individual liberties.


Blake was well aware that the French Revolution and American Revolution would descend into another Urizenic trap - as they did so. Blake celebrated revolution personified as Orc, not the politics of the revolution.It was the spirit of rebellion that attracted Blake, not the sad littlre grey men of the revolution like Danton, Robespierre and the rest of the rats of the French Revolution.


2) Desire for him was an infinite delight, and his whole project was to rescue it from the repressive regime of priests and kings.

No - it was energy that was eternal delight for Blake, not desire. Desire is the dam, energy the flood. The idea that Kings could control desire is absurd, as for the preists Blake despised them for their obedience to the Bible and its laws that he saw as inhibiting the free flows of the energies that formed the human being - in the case of religion he saw it as the enemy of spirituality. Spirituality liberates, religions incarcerate.

3) Political states keep power by convincing us of our limitations.

Surely that should be thoecracies - but hey, that would include Islam and we cant have a lefty teacher ever seeming to attack the inhibitive influence of Islam can we.

4) The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, and those who restrain their desires do so because their desires are feeble enough to be restrained.

Actually this phrase about the road of excess comes from the Proverbs of Hell," from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) and its meaning is the EXACT opposite as promulgated by Eagleton. The phrase about the road of excess is a warning about the dangers of experience polluting the spirit - it was a warning not an exhortation. To state it was an exhortation is to completely subvert its meaning. Blake was interested in innocence and spirit, not experience and excess.

5) "To generalise is to be an Idiot," Blake writes. And again: "The whole business of Man is the arts, and all things in common." The middle-class Anglicans who sing his great hymn Jerusalem are unwittingly celebrating a communist future.

Hoist by his own petard here when he quotes Blake saying those who generalise are idiots - to say Blake was a Communist is about as idiotic as one can get, seeing as Communism did not even exist in Blakes time. As for the ideology of communism then Blake would have seen it as nothing more than another Urizenic trap - another web of lies to trap man , that replaced religion with materialism. For Blake despised materialism - to say he would have been a communist is pure bullshit. The future Blake wanted was a spiritualised Albion - a land where extremes existed side by side, not a monlolithic communist dictatorship that excluded everyone who dared disagree with communism.

6) Brothels, Blake wrote, are built with bricks of religion. Today, hardly a single Christian politician believes with Blake that any form of Christian faith that is not an affront to the state is worthless.

Really - George Bush is a Christian Fundamentalist that regards the State as a tool of a divine international plan, and this deeply affronts the non-fundamentalist Americans who are nationalists and christians but not Messianists and who regard the State as a mechanism for the regulation internally of the nation - not as a tool for visionary imperialism. More nonsense Eagleton.

7) London had lapsed into Babylon; but it remained true that "everything that lives is holy", and it might still prove possible to transform the city into the New Jerusalem.


HA HA HA HA - The idea that Babylon can be Jerusalem is so pathetic one doesnt know if he is taking the piss or not.

The idea that the carbuncle on the planet that is London can ever be Jerusalem, the spiritual light of the planet, is hilarious. The New Jerusalem can only be built by transforming London from the filth encrusted, third world rat hole it is now into a place where where the Islamists are no longer present, where the Yardie, Triad, Albanian, drug and gun gangs are gone , where the sex slavers are removed, where the drug importers are removed , where the aliens are removed.

If Blake saw London and Britain now he would despise it as the epitome of URIZENIC darkness and depravity - the complete anti-thesis of Albion.

Eagleton , you are simply another slave of Urizen using the name of Blake to promote your own poisonous vision.