Authority and Vision: William Blake’s Use of the Gospels

ANDREW KAUFMAN Authority and Vision: William Blake's Use of the Gospels The purpose of this paper will be to clarify the treatment of authority and figures of authority throughout Blake's work by examining it within the context of his reading of the New Testament, and, in particular, of the Gospels. Depending on their attitude towards his work, critics celebrate or lament its imposing originality, but often lose sight of the fact that nothing of genius is ever concocted by an individual out of a vacuum, and that Blake not only insists that the Bible is 'The Great Code of Art: but echoes, comments upon, alludes to, parodies, or quotes SCripture in practically every passage he ever wrote. It has now been over forty years since Northrop Frye, relying heavily upon Blake's use of the Bible, magisterially demonstrated the consistency of the logic underlying Blake's treatment of metaphor and narrative, along with the essential coherence of Blake's poetic thought. In doing so Frye made clear the connection between the radical messianism that Blake derived from his reading of the Bible, and his faith in the redemptive capacities of art and vision. Given the extent to which virtually all of Blake's subsequent critics acknowledge their debt to Fearful Symmetry, it is difficult to explain why the explosion of Blake criticism that has continued since this book includes relatively few important works devoted to Blake's use of the Bible.' One area that remains largely unexplored, and which becomes substantially clarified when examined within the context of Blake's reading of the New Testament, and, in particular, of the Gospels, involves the treatment of authority and authority figures throughout his work. Included here is the pervasive conflict between spiritual and temporal fonns of authority upon which so much of his poetry is structured, together with the relationship, in turn, of these antithetical forms of authority to different modes of perception. As we will discover, Blake's writings come into surprisingly sharper focus once we see how much they are devoted to recasting the traditional Biblical opposition between soul and body, or between truth and error, into the antitheses of visionary and temporal authority, and of imaginative and corporeal understanding, or symbolic and literal perception. While Frye demonstrates that the structure of Blake's symbolism and metaphors is derived largely from the Bible, we will see that Blake's identification of metaphorical thought with redemptive vision, which UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3. SPRING 1988 390 ANDREW KAUFMAN implicitly informs his entire endeavour, derives from a reading ofthe New Testament that turns out to be as coherent as it is radical. In particular, much that seems cryptic in his treatment of authority and vision becomes surprisingly consistent when we examine the context provided by the comments upon the Gospels that are scattered throughout his writings, and particularly by 'The Everlasting Gospel,' a poem of over 260 lines that amounts to a sustained commentary on these books, The word 'authority' combines two sets of meanings which the Gospels treat as antitheses, The primary definition of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is 'Power to enforce obedience,' but a secondary meaning is 'Power to inspire belief' or a figure 'whose opinion on or upon a subject is entitled to be accepted,' Both definitions can denote either a particular type of power or an individual or institution with which it is identified, But the first describes temporal power or the capacity of enforcement, while the second refers to truth, or the power to inspire belief that exists independently of any means of enforcement. When governments or parents are commonly spoken of as 'authorities,' it is their power to enforce obedience that is primarily referred to; when the 'authority' of Scripture is cited, the word conveys the idea that Scripture represents a form of ultimate truth that ought to inspire belief. Christ's distinction between 'the things which are Caesar's' and 'the things that are God's'2 delineates the Christian distinction between temporal power and ultimate truth, The conflict between these forms of authority is dramatized throughout the Gospels and the medieval mystery plays, particularly in the...