Be Thou My Vision

Unique amongst the Romantic poets studied in this course, William Blake possessed the requisite talents that allowed him to not only have direct and absolute control every aspect from conception to initial sale but also enabled him to experiment with incorporating all sorts of media into The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. With the development of the infernal method of producing finely crafted etchings, upon which his prophetic illuminated works depend, he burned away the restrictions that confined other poets to merely printed words. Blake pushed the realms of expression and transmission to the highest technical level possible and sometimes beyond.

Blake truly tries to assault as many of the senses as possible in order to break open the gates of the five senses and drive his audience into the infinitude beyond. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell bursts with figures and electrically vibrant colors into which the words are intricately and inseparably entwined. The fine paper, embossed with the outlines of the copper etchings, with watercolor washes, and layers of gold and many-colored paint, provides a tangible presence held in loving hands. Blake has even been known to on occasion sing his prophetic writings to music of his own composition. Thus, unlike the other poets, Blake, because of his multitalented brilliance, presents a unique problem to attempts to remap him. Illustrate his words? He has already done that, and very skillfully so. Read them aloud? It is difficult to believe that, given his propensity to speak exactly his mind, he has not already performed his own renditions, which would make future attempts but poor echoes.

Yet, how can one capture and remap Blake's energy and spirit without breaking further through into even newer vistas of expression? It is not possible. The media left unexplored to us by Blake, then, are taste, smell, motion, truly tactile virtual reality, and various levels of induced altered awareness, such as hypnotism, that have been and still remain subjects of interest in many various circles. We have attained a degree of technological sophistication to open most, if not all, of the new realms to the creative process, and knowing Blake's refusal to settle for conventional methods of expression, he might have been just visionary and dedicated enough to attempt them. Because of lack of money and technical knowledge, however, I will have to settle for a small fraction of those exciting possibilities in this project.

The focus of the project is to express the restless and constantly warring energy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The project will seek to highlight the infernal, irresistible fulmination of the prolific that is carried throughout the work and set it in direct contrast to the imprisonment and always-partial revelation that equally pervades it. As Blake says, the devourer, the audience, receives but "the excess of his (the prolific's) delight" (plate 16), but it is only that - the excess, the cast off overflow of a much greater body of creative energy to which the audience is made perpetually aware but never given a look at. Thus Blake's audience "sees all things thro' narrow chinks"(plate 14) and is allowed to sense an infinitude beyond but are kept from fully partaking in it. This project will endeavor to reflect the spirit of that dichotomy by engaging in failed attempts to break through into the infinite using imperfect video snapshots, voices that constantly override and cancel out each other, and scenes imposing upon each other. The object will be to create a sense of frustrated transmission that at the same time is mingled with an elusive promise of profound and cogent possibilities beyond the clutter and interference in which they are buried. The "doors of perception"(plate 14) will not be cleansed, but the audience shall peak through the keyhole.