Blake’s Swansbq.blakearchive.org/pdfs/15.4.gleckner.pdf · an especial favorite of Apollo's...

A R T I C L E

Blake’sSwans

RobertF.Gleckner

Blake/AnIllustratedQuarterly,Volume15,Issue4,Spring1982,pp.164-169

164

BLAKE'S SWANS

ROBERT F. GLECKNER

The swan is as rare a b i rd in Blake's works as he said London p r i n t shops were in his youth^- though the i r appearances, in tex t

and design, span almost his en t i re working career from There Is No Natural Religion through Jerusalem. C r i t i c a l in terpreta t ions of them have been sparse and, even i f one cannot expect consensus, they are unusually var ied: the Female W i l l , char iot of i nsp i ra t i on , a pen, the r i ve r Severn, arsenic, the soul , des i re, the body (or Generation), Blake himself as poet-painter .

2 By far the most elaborate of

these in terpreta t ions is Erdman's commentary in The Illuminated Blake on plate 11 of Jerusalem, which is the only one to r e a l l y t r y to come to gr ips with that puzzling design by seeing i t as a sublime al legory of Blake's marriage of copper-plate etching (of text and design) and the p r in t ing and color ing of that design on paper. Since the Jerusalem p late is especial ly complex, l e t me leave i t aside for a moment to deal wi th some "simDler" swans.

According to the Blake concordance there are only two swans in his w r i t i ngs , neither apparently remarkable enough to e l i c i t any comment except from Kathleen Raine who, in glossing the "br ight swan" of Visions of the Daughters of Albion (plate 3 ) , i den t i f i es the whole scene as P lo t i n ian , the swan as "Plato 's emblem of the sou l , " here dipping " i t s wing in the 'red ear th ' of the natural body, which is the ever-f lowing r i ve r of generated l i f e . "

3

Although i t is ce r ta in ly possible that Blake was aware of th is Neoplatonic in te rp re ta t ion of the Phaedo, Raine's gloss on the Visions passage (3:18-19; E 46) commits precisely the same error that so f rus t ra tes Oothoon in Theotormon's react ion to her rape and "defi lement" by Bromion. Her invoking of the swan here is not to corroborate such s imp l i s t i c body-soul dichotomizing but to counteract i t . The swan is but one of three para l le l images, the others

being f r u i t and lamb. As the worm feeds on the sweetest f r u i t , she argues, so is the "new wash'd lamb t i ng ' d with the v i l l age smoke" and "the br ight swan / By the red ear th" of the r i ve r of l i f e ( that i s , by the red clay of Esau-Edom in Genesis 25:25-30). But unl ike these, she says, "How can I be de f i l d when I r e f l ec t thy image pure?" Adopting Theotormon's mistaken o r i en ta t i on , she turns i t against i t s e l f : unl ike the swan " I bathe my wings. / And I am white and pure"—Blake's grammatical construct ion here denying a cause and e f fec t re la t ionsh ip . She is su l l i ed to Theotormon's morally jaundiced eye but to hers, bathing in "our immortal r i v e r " leaves no residue of "generat ion's" slow s ta in . The seed of Oothoon's conception, perhaps even the seed of Blake's ent i re conception in the Visions, is in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "As the c a t t e r p i l l e r chooses the f a i r e s t leaves to lay her eggs on, so the pr iest lays his curse on the f a i r e s t j o ys " ; but "The soul of sweet de l i gh t , can never be d e f i l ' d " - - b y v i l l age smoke, red ear th , or hypocr i t ica l moral and re l ig ious judgement.

4

Oothoon's swan, then, is not the Platonic soul but rather an image of her eternal imaginative i n d i v i d u a l i t y , her fundamental and divine ("pure") humanness in i t s "eternal joy " (8 :8 ) . In Raine's footnote to her Plot in ian i n te rp re ta t i on , however, she superimposes upon i t an a l lus ion to Plato that does lead us in a d i rec t ion pert inent to v i r t u a l l y a l l of Blake's swan images, even as i t leads us fur ther and fur ther away from Visions of the Daughters of Albion: "The soul of Orpheus," she reminds us, "enters the body of a swan, in the myth in the tenth book of the Republic (620A); but th i s is usually understood in a symbolic sense, the swan being the emblem of the poet . "

5 While the Orpheus-

swan connection in the Republic i s c lear , there is

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no evidence so far as I know that that connection evolved into an iconoqraphical (or even mytholoqical) t r a d i t i o n . Nevertheless, the fac t that Orpheus was an especial favor i te of Apol lo 's (some said even his son) val idates the swan association in that the bird was sacred to him. As Robert J . Clements points out , the most popular symbol of the poet in the Renaissance was the swan, i t s consistent l inkaqe to Apollo accordinq i t prophetic powers.

6 Blake's

int imate knowledqe of Renaissance emblem l i t e r a t u r e is now qenerally accepted,

7 and Cesare Ripa

{iconologia, 1593), Geoffrey Whitney {Choice of Emblemes, 1586), and A l c i a t i {Emblemata, 1551; i t went throuqh over 150 edi t ions before 1621 and Clements ca l ls i t "the bib le of emblem books" [p . 785])—as well as any number of the i r i m i t a t o r s -a l l i den t i f y the swan with Apol lo, the poet, poesy, prophecy.

The only other instance of a swan in Blake's wr i t inqs seems to arque fur ther for his awareness of th i s t r a d i t i o n , even i f not for a speci f ic textual or emblem source. In The Four Zoas Urizen, f a l l en and "shut up in the deep dens of Urthona," s p i l l s out his "Woes" in a lament for the los t Eden:

My fountains once the haunt of Swans now breed the scaly to r to ise

The houses of my harpers are become a haunt of crows

The qardens of wisdom are become a f i e l d of horr id qraves

And on the bones I drop my tears & water them in vain (Night V, E 336)

The fact that Urizen is associated in the remainder of th is Night with Apollo and the char iot of the sun s o l i d i f i e s the a l l u s i o n , Blake of course transforming both the Apollo and Orpheus myths (which he knew probably from Ovid) in to the f a l l of a l l A r t . Though the fa l l en prophet's tonque (or the voice of wisdom) remains eloquent,

in vain the voice Of Urizen in vain the Eloquent tonque. A Rock

a Cloud a Mountain Were now not Vocal as in Climes of happy

Eterni ty Where the lamb rep l ies to the in fant voice &

the l i on to the man of years Giving them sweet ins t ruct ions Where the Cloud

the River & the Field Talk with the husbandman & shepherd. . . .

{Four Zoas, Night V I , E 341)

More impressive evidence of Blake's knowledge of the swan of emblem l i t e r a t u r e , however, is in the most regal of a l l his graphic swans, that adorning the t i t lepage of his i l l u s t r a t i o n s to Gray's poems. The caption is "The Pindarick Genius recievinq his Lyre," the l a t t e r descending from the sky to the youthful poet who is r id ing the swan wi th so loose a re in that he v i r t u a l l y gives i t i t s head. Blake, of course, may be merely echoing here Pindar's common character izat ion as the "Theban Swan,"

8 fo r

he has indicated elsewhere that he was reasonably f am i l i a r , i f not wi th Pindar's poetry d i r e c t l y , wi th his reputat ion and the legends and stor ies about him.

In An Island in the Moon, fo r example, Suction asks at one point " i f Pindar was not a better Poet than Ghiotto was a Painter" (E 444), but the question i s never answered in the ensuinq squabble over whether Plutarch, who quotes Pindar but says l i t t l e about him, was prejudiced aqainst I t a l i ans . There is l i t t l e evidence in the context that Blake knew much more about Plutarch than that he wrote " l i ves " --though i t ' s in terest ing at least to r e c a l l , in connection wi th the poet-prophet idea, the comic discussion in Chapter 3 of An Island of "Phebus," who was, among other things according to Obtuse Angle, the "God of . . . Paint ing, Perspective . . . Phraseology . . . Mythology . . . in short every a r t & science adorn'd him as beads round his neck." He also "understood Enqravinq"—though in the course of the insane conversation he u l t imate ly is confused with Pharoah.

9 Blake's only other mention of Pindar

by name is in an insc r ip t ion on one of his pencil drawinqs: "Corinna the Rival of Pindar Corinna the Graecian Poetess."

10 The a l lus ion here is to the

story that Pindar in his youth was defeated in a poetical contest by Corinna, who then advised him to use more mytholoqy in his poems; when he did so she ungraciously c r i t i c i z e d his using i t too profusely. The suggestiveness of th i s Pindar- lyre-swan-genius association (occurring as i t does about 1797 when Flaxman commissioned the Gray series fo r a g i f t to his w i f e )

1 1 is strengthened by the ear l i e r

appearance in America of a comparable swan (plate 11), l i ke the Gray swan being ridden wi th g e n t l e -though not qui te so gent le—re in . Erdman describes th i s one as hastening "from Albion's f i r e s . . . to safer homes in land" {IB, 149), though such act ion seems hardly to demonstrate prophetic power or f o r t i t u d e . ( I f indeed the swan-rider i s f lee ing "the B r i t i sh bombardment of coastal towns" as Erdman claims, we might wonder why he heads East instead of West, as the f lee ing fami ly in plate 3 does.) Yet Erdman does iden t i f y the r ider as an Ore-Los "image," as Samuel Adams (that i s , "Boston's Angel" who speaks the prophetic words of plate 11), Tom Paine, and "the poet himself in disguise . . . l i k e Horace." While his addi t ional idea of th i s being a "pen swan" may not be as far - fe tched as i t sounds on the surface, Erdman's Horatian reference is most unfortunate. Horace did prophesy his poetic immortal i ty in the context of fee l ing himself turning into a swan (surely echoing Socrates), but i t is hard to imagine any poet who would serve less well as a prophetic model, or indeed any kind of poetic model, for Blake. The fac t i s , of course, that Horace is a l lud ing to the very t r a d i t i o n Blake himself i s making use o f . Erdman i s r i g h t : the r ider is the poet, prophet, Blake—riding Eastward toward the advancing "dragon form" of "Albion's wrathful Prince" {America 3:14-15).

As a t t rac t i ve as a l l t h i s may be, one may s t i l l wonder about the swan's being b r id led , however gen t l y .

1 2 I f indeed i t s r ider here is Ore- l i ke , as

his or ig ins in the f i e r y f igure of plate 10 suggest, what we have in the t o ta l icon is poesy or prophecy being pressed by i t s r ider in to the v io lent act ion of bloody ba t t le and the f i n a l loosing of plagues, " f ie rce disease and l u s t " (16:21) on England, a holocaust t o t a l l y out of keeping wi th Apol lo, Orpheus, the "Pindarick Genius," poetry, and prophecy as Blake understood them. I t i s instead

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prophecy perverted to war-song, one of the things he saw happening in Gray as w e l l . Is th is why the r ider looks back, doubletaking his own v io len t image as well as the los t Eden of A t lan t i s on the previous plate? And is th is why, as i t seems to me, the swan strains at the rein? The contrast ing view is seen in the serpent f igure at the bottom of the page, which Erdman properly sees as smi l ingly a t ten t ive to i t s r i d e r s , so l imply reined as to be free (note the limp arm of the rein-holder as d i s t i n c t from the sharply tensed wr is t of the swan-r i d e r ) ,

1 3 i t s t a i l sp i r a l l i ng o f f in to i n f i n i t y -

e te rn i t y , i t s r iders " in long drawn arches s i t t i n g " feel ing "the nerves of youth renew" (15:24-25). These r i de r s , we should note, reverse (and hence annih i la te) time through the true prophecy of the serpent, Blake moving us from the youthful r e i n -holder back to ch i l d back to in fant back to the prophetic co i l s of the snake's t a i l , repeating almost exactly the cur l icue soaring upward from the "P" of "Prophecy" on plate 3,

1 U growing " v i t a l l y upward in

endless communication that expands into words and poetry" (IB, 143). Erdman himself seems to sense something of the falseness of the Ore-prophecy and the dawning of Los- l ike v is ion in his commentary on the "Preludium": "The poem beginning on Plate 3 presents a po ten t ia l l y cyc l ic revolut ion of r i se and f a l l , rebe l l ion and enslavement, threatening a perpetual du l l round" ;

1 5 and also in his in te rp re ta -

t ion of the "F in is " design at the foot of plate 16, corroborating my reading of the serpent-swan opposit ion on plate 11: "Coi l ing among thorny but blossoming red roses, his head another rosebud, he d i rects his tongue in the proper prophetic posi t ion

The Illuminated Blake indexes a number of other etched swans in the ear ly works--up through The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (though I f i nd none in "The Ecchoing Green" or on plate 8 of The Marriage as indexed), none of them incont rover t ib le except those in There Is No Natural Religion and "The L i t t l e Boy l o s t . " While i t i s possible that in the former (plate 8a) the boy approaches the swan because i t "might be r idden" (IB, 29), the text suggests i t as the v i s i b l e expression of the increasingly unl imited desires of the reaching c h i l d . I f "More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul" and "less than A l l cannot sa t i s fy man" (No Natural Religion, 7b), the ch i ld as he stands is no better o f f than the reachers of No Natural Religion, 7b; but as the numerically comparable plate 7a v i v i d l y suggests, that " A l l " i s the imagination that produces "the s p i r i t u a l music r i s i ng from the pipe of the musician" {IB, 29). In plate 8a, then, the swan will r i se and f l y f ree ly (not, I th ink , reined) as the Renaissance's Poesia or Blakean prophecy in precisely the same way as the mind-forged-manacled man of No Natural Religion 8b r ises from the morass in plate 9b. I t i s qui te possible, of course, that such a " ret rospect ive" readinq of t h i s ea r l i es t of a l l Blake's swans, from the perspective of America and the Gray i l l u s t r a -t i ons , i s an over-reading, but the nature of the prophetic t r a c t s , alonq wi th the ea r l i e r a l lus ions to "Phebus" and Pindar in An Island in the Moon at least al low the p o s s i b i l i t y . In t h i s l i g h t Erdman must be correct about "The L i t t l e Boy l os t " plate in sayinq that the swan there, also f l oa t i ng behind (or in ) the "y" of "Boy" in the t i t l e , is a " f i t t e r

object for boy with outstretched arms [p rec ise ly , one might add, in the same s t r i d ing posi t ion as the No Natural Religion boy--though he moves toward the swan and i s , important ly, unclad] to pursue . . . " [IB, 54). And "The L i t t l e Boy l os t " i s , of course, also a poem about erroneous perception. In both cases, then, i t seems proper to i den t i f y the swans, not with desire i t s e l f , but rather with the prophetic, v is ionary, imaginative perception and a r t that i s the product of desire, and the ch i ld as the inc ip ien t poet who w i l l not r ide the swan but , l i k e Orpheus or Pindar, become i t .

1 7

I pass over Jerusalem 71 here as a clear a n t i -swan image, bat-winged and not only f i rm l y planted (apparently on the ground) but even grovel l ing r id i cu lous ly and "fatuously kissing or nibbl ing at the toes" of the Leda-l iks Vala (JB, 350). I f she puts on his knowledge with his power (both of which seem calculatedly absent in Blake's s a t i r i c p o r t r a i t of the spectrous swan), both w i l l eventuate in the m?ze of e r ro r , prophecy become labyr in th ine mystery, emanating from the Vala- l ike f i gu re ' s head. But we cannot pass over the most troublesome of a l l Blake's swans, the one in Jerusalem 11.

Most recent ly David Bindman, obviously unhappy with the Erdman reading I shal l turn to in a moment, advanced two other in terpre ta t ions of plate 11 (Ovid's King Cygnus legend and the swan as the River Severn), only to argue persuasively against bo th .

1 8

I am less sceptical about Erdman's elaborate al legory of the swan as both singing and etching the plate with i t s beak, complemented by the swimming-flying f igure at the bottom of the plate producing " i n f i n i t e i l l um ina t i on " : "Like the serpent of Hell [ i n plate 15 of The Marriage], the serpent-necked swan projects l i nea t i on . Like the eagle, the feather- f inned skimmer adorns the surface with l i v i n g colors (needing the spectral f i ns while the colors are wet, the feathers fo r r i s i ng from i l l u s t r a t i o n to I l l um ina t i on ) . "

1 9 Given the text of the p la te ,

there seems to me l i t t l e doubt that Erdman is on the r igh t t rack , however much one may balk at his wrapping up a l l of the p la te 's minute par t icu lars so t i d i l y . Even so, I s t i l l have some problems with his reading. While the design, as he notes, is one of only ten wh i te - l ine etchings in Jerusalem, the tex t is in Blake's usual r e l i e f etching, the contrary processes married. I t doesn't r ea l l y matter, then, which process the swan is engaged i n . What is to the point are i t s bubbles (ac id ) , eating in to the p la te , and swimminq-flyinq through i t , corroding apparent surfaces away to reveal the i n f i n i t e that was h id . Part of the " i n f i n i t e " i s the tex t i t s e l f , which we note is under water, that i s , w i th in the plate on which the swan-prophet-graver s i t s . The rest of the i n f i n i t e is the tex t humanized, s t i l l streaming the acid ic bubbles on w r i s t s , neck, and hair (or head-dress).

20 At the same t ime, although

Blake repeats in th i s lower design the l ines of the water above to remind us that the swimmer i s w i th in the p la te , not merely "on" i t , the f igure is also c lear ly f l y i n g , arms outstretched in a fami l i a r Blakean gesture of a i r y freedom. In a sense, then, th is is the swan, now f u l l y humanized and in f u l l f l i g h t , no longer merely f l oa t i ng (or planted) in the materials of the a r t i f i c e but assuming to ta l mythographic status as poet-prophet-ar t is t as well

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as poem-prophecy-art. The ent i re plate is thus the Erin of the t ex t , not merely the swimmer-flyer as Erdman suggests: "And the Spaces of Erin reach'd from the starry heighth, to the s tar ry depth," the spaces that are the enabling agency for the process that w i l l eventuate in the immediately fo l lowing plates ( 12 f f ) . I t i s , to borrow Angus Fletcher 's terms, the prophetic moment, space and time (Los's "pulsations of t ime, & extensions of space" during and in which he performs his "sublime Labours"- -^ 11:2 and 10:65). That the moment does not las t the text t e l l s us, as well as the parody of th i s v is ionary creat ive a c t i v i t y that i s imaged in the margin of plate 12—for "Around Golgonooza l i es the land of death e te rna l ; a Land / Of pain and misery and despair and ever brooding melancholy" (13:30-31). But the moment's augury is too powerful to be denied: the embrace of plate 99 w i l l come.

Even i f we accept the view of plate 11 that I have advanced, or some compromise between i t and Erdman's, the sexes of both swan and swimmer-flyer, as well as the Indian appearance of the l a t t e r s t i l l nag (on the Indian see my note 20). The safest answer i s the one Erdman gives: "In the i r present appearance both f igures are androgynous, possibly nearer Etern i ty than Beulah, possibly nearer Ulro" ( IB, 291). Possibly. Damon sees both as female, the swan "the Female W i l l , " the lower f igure " Insp i ra t ion (an Emanation)," and Yeats suggests "Leda-Swan" f o r the one, "Vala, or America, as Oothoon, taking 'her impetuous course' o'er Theo-tormon's re ign" for the o the r .

2 1 I f indeed Jerusalem

71 reca l ls the Zeus-Leda myth, as i t ce r ta in ly seems t o , can we a r b i t r a r i l y ignore that myth on plate 11 and invoke Horace and King Cygnus instead? I th ink not. I have already indicated that Horace is a most un l i ke ly and inapropos a l l u s i o n , and none of the three Cygnus stor ies to ld by Ovid has the remotest connection wi th anything on th i s p la te- -not to mention, as Bindman reminds us, that Cygnus was " indubi tably male."

2 2 I f a simple spectre-emanation

cont rar ie ty were a l l that Blake wanted, he surely would have made that c learer . What, then, does the Ledean swan have to do wi th the Orphic swan?

Let us go back to Cygnus for a moment. There is an in terest ing connection between the Leda-Swan story and Cygnus in that both have reference to the Trojan War. In Book XII of the Metamorphoses Ach i l l es , in the height of the ba t t le fo r Troy, seeks out Cygnus, who unknown to Ach i l l es , has been made invulnerable to spear and sword by his father Neptune. Achi l les f i n a l l y corners him, however, pressing him against a rock, then throws him down and, kneeling on his r i b s , strangles Cygnus with the thongs of his own helmet. I t i s at that moment that Neptune transforms Cygnus into a swan. As I indicated e a r l i e r , i t seems r id icu lous to associate Jerusalem 11 wi th t h i s bloody s tory , but the co l locat ion of Leda (who, we should r e c a l l , became Nemesis a f te r her rape), Zeus-swan, the Trojan War, Ach i l l es , and Cygnus-swan is d i f f i c u l t to ignore e n t i r e l y . However c i rcu i tous a route th i s i s into Blake's conception on plate 11 of Jerusalem, that plate does immediately precede the bui ld ing of Golgonooza (as opposed to the destruct ion of Troy), the " r ea l i z i ng " of t rue prophecy as opposed to the bloody rea l i za t ion of "a l l human h is tory f lowing

from" the fa lse prophecy inherent in Leda's rape.2 3

Although the union of Zeus and Leda would seem to be especial ly apropos in l i g h t of Blake's woman-swan, then, i t s a p p l i c a b i l i t y , i f any, must l i e in his transformation of Bromion-like tyranny and i t s consequent vengeful destructiveness into the productive union of divine and human as the a r t i s t -bui lder . Blake was not unacquainted wi th Homer, as we know. His ant ipathy to the "Classics . . . that Desolate Europe wi th Wars" erupts angr i l y in the 1820 etching "On Homer's Poetry & On V i r q i l " :

Sacred Truth has pronounced that Greece & Rome as Babylon & Egypt: so far from being parents of Arts & Sciences as they pretend: were destroyers of a l l A r t . Homer V i r g i l & Ovid confirm th i s opinion. . . .

Rome & Greece swept Art into the i r maw & destroyd i t . . . . Grecian is Mathematic Form Gothic is L iv ing Form. . . .

2 l4

Such l i v i n g form is what the swan of Jerusalem 11 creates, the product of a "redeemed" Leda-Swan / Los-Enitharmon being not war but the corrosive s p i r i t that burns away the apparent surfaces of h is tory to reveal the i n f i n i t e "Nature of Eternal Things . . . A l l Springing from the Divine Humanity" (A Vision of the Last Judgment, E 551); for

A l l things acted on Earth are seen in the br ight Sculptures of

Los's Halls & every Age renews i t s powers from these Works

With every pathet ic story possible to happen from Hate or

Wayward Love & every sorrow & d is t ress is carved here

Every A f f i n i t y of Parents Marriages & Friend-i ships are here

In a l l t he i r various combinations wrought with wondrous Art

A l l that can happen to Man in his pilgrimage of seventy years

Such i s the Divine Writ ten Law of Horeb & Sina i :

And such the Holy Gospel of Mount Ol ivet & Calvary [Jerusalem 16:61-69)

With no mention of Leda anywhere in Blake's works, however, we may s t i l l rest discontented with th i s sort of Blakean transformation of the "c lass ics" and the "detestable Gods of Priam" {Milton 14:15)— though i t i s worth reca l l i ng here that in such i n f l u e n t i a l emblem books as Ripa's Ioonologia and Christophorus Giarda's Icones symbolicae, Poesy (or Poesia) is almost always a female f i gu re , holding a ly re in one hand and a plectrum in the other, wi th a white swan at tendant .

2 5

One f i na l suggestion about Blake's swans, one that may have some bearing, p a r t i c u l a r l y , on Jerusalem 11: Spenser's Ruines of Time—which I have already suggested Blake knew w e l l

2 6 and which

includes a l lus ions to " f a i r Ledaes warl ick twinnes" (1.386), Orpheus and Eurydice (11.391-92), and the immortal i ty of a r t , which laments the ru in of "Verlame," and which i s an elegy on the death of Sidney—concludes wi th six verbal emblems, the f i r s t two of which may have some re la t ionsh ip to Jerusalem 11. The f i r s t of these is Sidney as a swan f l oa t i ng

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down the Thames and sweetly singinq "the prophecie / Of his owne death in doleful 1 Eleg ie, " a f te r which

With l o f t i e f l i g h t aboue the earth he bounded, And out of s ight to highest heauen mounted: Where now he i s become an heauenly signe.

(11.599-602)

S imi la r ly constel lated is the Orphean harp of the second emblem:

Whilest thus I looked, loe adowne the Lee, I sawe an Harpe stroong a l l with s i l ve r twyne, And made of golde and cos t l i e yuor ie , Swimming, that whilome seemed to haue been The harpe, on which Dan Orpheus was seene Wylde beasts and for rests a f te r him to lead, But was th'Harpe of Philisides now dead.

At length out of the Riuer i t was reard And borne aboue the cloudes to be

d i u i n ' d . . . . 2 7

Even i f the swan here i s indubitably as male as Cygnus (was Blake conf lat ing the indubi tably female swans of the Prothalamion with t h i s one?), the context of The Ruines of Time is marvellously apt— f o r , as we know, "The Ruins of Time bui lds Mansions in Etern i ty " (E 678), precisely what swan-flyer-swimmer, Los-Enitharmon, Sidney-swan, Orpheus-harp, and Blake a l l demonstrate in the i r own respective ways. In his youth Blake, imi ta t ing Spenser, cal led upon these detestable gods of Priam--Apollo, Mercury, Jove, and Pallas Athena--but i t did not take him long to recognize that pantheon's dead-endedness and to take f l i g h t , in his own transmutation of part of that pantheon, as a swan.

1 The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman

(Garden C i ty : Doubleday, 1965), p. 679, hereafter c i ted in tex t and notes as E plus the page number.

2 Successively S. Foster Damon, William Blake: His Philosophy

and Symbols (New York: Peter Smith, 1947; o r i g . ed. 1924), p. 469; David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (Oxford: Phaidon, 1977), p. 182; Erdman, The Illuminated Blake (Garden C i ty : Anchor/ Doubleday, 1974), p. 149, hereafter c i t ed i n tex t and notes as

IB plus the page number; Bindman, l oc . c i t . ; W. H. Stevenson, e d . , The Poems of William Blake (London and New York: Longman/W. W. Norton, 1972), p. 646n.; Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition (Pr inceton: Princeton Univers i ty Press, 1968), I , 177; Erdman, IB, 54; Joseph Wicksteed, William Blake's Jerusalem (Trianon Press, n . d . ) , p. 217; Erdman, IB, 54, 290. There are others as w e l l . I n te res t i ng l y Damon does not index the swan in A Blake Dictionary (Providence: Brown Univers i ty Press, 1965).

3 Blake and Tradition, I , 177. In the Phaedo Socrates, t a l k ing

to Simmias of immor ta l i t y , mentions swans as sacred to Apollo and as having the g i f t of prophecy, but he does not s p e c i f i c a l l y i d e n t i f y the swan w i th the sou l .

14 Ore re i t e ra tes Blake's po in t , even more power fu l ly , in America,

plate 8:

That stony law I stamp to dust : and scat ter r e l i g i o n abroad To the four winds as a torn book, & none shal l gather the

leaves;

But they shal l ro t on desart sands, 4 consume in bottomless deeps;

To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to t he i r foun ta ins ,

And to renew the f i e r y j o y , and burst the stony roof . That pale re l i g i ous le tchery , seeking V i r g i n i t y , May f i n d i t in a h a r l o t , and i n coarse-clad honesty

The u n d e f i l ' d tho ' rav ish 'd in her cradle n ight and morn: For every thing that l i ves i s holy, l i f e de l igh ts in l i f e ; Because the soul of sweet de l igh t can never be d e f i l ' d .

(5-14)

5 Blake and Tradition, I , 410-11. While, as almost a l l c r i t i c s

note, Plato i s c l ea r l y the source of Shel ley 's "Enchanted Boat" l y r i c , w i th i t s swan, in Prometheus Unbound, the app l i ca t ion of h is imagery to Blake i s j u s t i f i a b l e only i f one i s i n d i f f e r e n t to Blake's unal terable opposi t ion to the ideas that inform Pla to 's conception. Besides, Raine ignores P la to 's explanation of Orpheus's metamorphosis: h is soul "chose" the swan because of hatred for womankind (since women had k i l l e d and dismembered him) and because therefore he did not wish to be conceived and born of woman. Cf. Wither 's emblem of Ganymede as t r ide J u p i t e r ' s eagle as the soul mounting to heaven (A Collection of Emblems 1635, ed. John Horden [Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1968], p. 156). Pi loo Nanavutty in "Blake and Emblem L i t e r a t u r e , " Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes, 15 (1952), p. 260, i d e n t i f i e s America 11 w i th t h i s myth.

6 "Iconoqraphy on the Nature and Insp i ra t ion of Poetry in

Renaissance Emblem L i t e r a t u r e , " PMLA, 70 (1955), 784. Clements notes that Cicero, i n the Tusculanae Disputationes, says that swans were g i f t e d wi th powers of d i v i n a t i o n . The informat ion in the rest of t h i s paragraph is from Clements. See also J . Rendel Har r i s , "Apol lo 's Swans," Bulletin of the John Rulands Libraru, 9 (1925), 372-416.

7 See, e . g . , Nanavutty's essay c i ted above, pp. 258-61; Mary Lynn

Johnson, "Emblem and Symbol in Blake," Huntington Library Quarterly, 37 (1974), 151-70; and Judi th Wardle, " 'For Hatching r i p e ' : Blake and the Educational Uses of Emblem and I l l u s t r a t e d L i t e r a t u r e , " Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 81 (1978), 324-48, esp. her "Appendix."

8 Gray h imsel f , however, whose steady oraise of Pindar and his

own w r i t i n g of "Pindar ics" Blake obviously knew w e l l , describes Pindar as the "Theban Eagle . . . / Sa i l ing w i th supreme dominion / Thro' the azure deep of a i r " ("The Progress of Poesy," 1. 115--sub t i t l ed "P indar ic" w i th an epigraph from Pindar) . Gray's note to the passage simply says that "Pindar compares himself to that b i r d . " The swan ep i thet belongs to the fami ly of Mantuan Swan and Swan of Avon, though i t was Cowley who attached the swan to Pindar (noted by Roger Lonsdale, The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith [London: Longman, 1969], p. 176). That attachment i s echoed by Denham in his "On Mr. Abraham Cowley." Irene Tayler , in Blake's Illustrations to the Poems of Gray (Pr inceton: Princeton Univers i ty Press, 1971), i d e n t i f i e s the swan of Blake's t i t l epage to Gray as "Apo l lo 's b i r d " (p. 22).

9 E 442-43. Ear l i e r Blake invokes Apollo w i th his "rays of

l i g h t " and " t r u t h ' s beams" in his Poetical Sketches poem, "An Im i ta t ion of Spencer."

10 See Pencil Drawings of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes

(London, 1927), p. 45. The Corinna episode was among the most commonly r e t a i l e d of Pindar anecdotes.

11 Mary K. Woodworth, Notes & Queries, 215 (n .s . 17) (1970), 312-

13.

12 In commenting on Blake's water-color drawinq of "F iery

Pegasus," however, Robert Essick says that t h i s "emblem of i n s p i r a t i o n . . . must be organized by a more rest ra ined v i s i o n . The re ins w i l l become the bound and outward circumference of c reat ive energy without destroying i t " ("Preludium: Meditations on a Fiery Pegasus," in Blake in His Time, ed. Essick and Donald Pearce [Bloomington and London: Indiana Univers i ty Press, 1978], pp. 9-10). I'm not so sure of t ha t . Prince Hal 's vau l t ing in to the saddle, " turn ing and winding" Pegasus, and "w i t ch [ i ng ] the world w i th noble horsemanship"--the passage from Henry TV, Part I that Blake is i l l us t ra t ing - -seems hardly an appropriate paradigm of the prophetic poet; more l i k e Pooe's Essay on Criticism. Is t h i s why Blake does not have the f l y i n g poet-prophet (?) b r i d le Pegasus a t a l l but has him f l y wi th (or as) Pegasus?

13 One might compare t h i s l imp re in w i th the even limper one of

the strange phal lus-cloud-borne f i gu re atop p la te 1 of visions of the Daughters of Albion (IB, 129), where the re in i s at tached, appropr ia te ly , to the "V" of "V is ions , " the other v e r t i c a l of the "V" terminat ing in a serpentine nrophetic trumpet.

l>* In the cancelled var ian t of t h i s p la te (13, 392) that cur l i cue

i s absent.

169

15 IB, 139. The br id led swan, l i k e Essick's p o t e n t i a l l y (or

necessar i ly) b r id led Pegasus, has i t s counterpart in the Gray t i t l e p a g e , which may, then, be a s a t i r i c rather than compl i-mentary p o r t r a i t . In f a c t , the poet of the t i t l e -page may be seen as an ideal ized p o r t r a i t o f Blake himself (the Gray of p late 2 i s a t least reminiscent of Gray's p r o f i l e , and in any case i s most un l ike the face of the "Genius"). Tayler , in Blake's Illustrations to . . . Gray, takes no note of the d i f ferences but does c e r t i f y p la te 2 as " s t r i k i n g l y s im i la r to Gray's as i t had appeared in the Basire engraving done whi le Blake was Basi re 's apprent ice, and also to Blake's l a te r pencil sketch, 'The poet, Gray'" (p. 22) . My suggestion i s len t credence by the f i n a l p la te of the ser ies , "Gray himsel f , guided by his v is ionary i l l u s t r a t o r , " as Tayler puts i t (p. 146). Here Gray and Blake look a l i k e .

1 6 IB, 155. In Ovid as elsewhere Venus's char io t i s drawn by

winged swans {Metamorphoses, X) , makinq an associat ion of serpent, rose, and swan in Blake a t least t a n t a l i z i n g . In Edward A. Armstrong's The Folklore of Birds (New York: Dover, 1970; o r i g . ed. 1958), there i s an engraving (a f t e r an un iden t i f i ed Roman work) of Apollo in a swan-drawn char io t (p. 51) and one of a vase or wine- jar design of Adonis and Aphrodite r i d i ng in a char io t drawn by two swans (p. 45) . For other less- than-sanguine readings of America see Robert E. Simmons, "Urizen: The Symmetry of Fear"; Michael J . To l ley , "Europe: ' t o those ychain 'd in s l e e p ' " ; and Erdman's longer version of h is IB commentary, "America: New Expanses"--al l in Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic, ed. Erdman and John E. Grant (Pr inceton: Princeton Univers i ty Press, 1970). The l a t es t "pess imis t ic " reading of America i s Minna Doskow's "Wil l iam Blake's America: The Story of a Revolution Betrayed," Blake Studies, 8 (1979), 167-186.

1 7 In IB Erdman indexes a number of other possible swans in the

Songs, The Marriage, and Milton, some of these, at l eas t , suggesting a confusion in his mind (or eye) between his b i rd of paradise (the imaginat ion, of ten accompanying the bi rds of the f i v e senses) and swans. Perhaps Blake's lack of d i sc r im ina t ion , or etched d e f i n i t i o n , here i s in ten t iona l? In any case, i t i s probably safe to say that f l y i n g swans are "be t te r " than f l o a t i n g ones.

18 Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 182. Erdman mentions Cygnus

a l so , g inger l y ; see IB, 290. Yeats pred ic tab ly invokes "Leda-Swan" [The Works of William Blake, ed. Yeats and E. J . E l l i s [London: Ouar i tch, 1893], I I , 357).

19 IB, 291. Erdman's yoking of swan and eagle, a l b e i t q u a l i f i e d

by his reference to the serpent, i n t e r e s t i n g l y pa ra l l e l s Gray's "confusion" of Pindar as swan and eagle (see my note 8 ) .

2 0 I t would be n i ce , i f perhaps f oo l i sh (though his deta i led

reca l l of his own past work i s as ton ish ing) , to th ink that Blake here remembered a part of the "Phebus" passage i n An Island in the Moon: " . . . i n short every a r t & science adorn'd him [Apo l lo ] as beads around his neck" (E 442). Is i t possible that Blake knew any of the myths of swan-maidens, which apoear a l l over Europe and in I re land (not , so fa r as I know, i n England), and which invo lve , among other cha rac te r i s t i cs in common, a magical necklace as not merely a tal isman of swan-womanhood but the agency of the transformation? See Anna Louise Frey, The

Swan-Knight Legend, i n Contributions to Education Published under the Direction of George Peabody College for Teachers, No. 103 (Nashv i l le , 1931). Ripa has an in te res t ing Indian wi th head-dress and beads in his "America" emblem {Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery, ed. Edward A. Maser [New York: Dover, 1971], No. 105). In any case, Aradobo and Obtuse Angle ignorant ly confuse Phebus and Pharaoh, and i f Mrs. S ig tagat is t chides them a l l f o r "making use of the names in the B ib le" (E 443), Blake d id not hesi ta te to put the c lass ica l sun-god in the Bible and, in the t rue Chr is t ian t r a d i t i o n , Chr is t ian ize him into Jesus Chr i s t , the imaginat ion, the archetypal A r t i s t .

2 1 William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols, p. 469; E l l i s and

Yeats, I I , 357. In his admirable Blake's Composite Art (Pr inceton: Princeton Univers i ty Press, 1978), W. J . T. Mi tche l l argues a s im i la r opposi t ion between the two f i gu res , the "prophetic swan-woman versus the fashionable goldfish-woman"

(p. 200), part of a pat tern he sees throughout Jerusalem of contrast ing female images, one "the naked, sexual ly l i be ra ted guide . . . who leads humanity to the realm of imagination and forgiveness . . . and the heavi ly clothed Vala-s iby l who keeps her subjects ' minds . . . on mundane matters" (p. 199). Mi tche l l seems to have in mind Blake's go ld f i sh in his designs to Gray, and i t i s ce r t a i n l y t rue that p late 4 of "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat" includes two f igures reminiscent at least of the swimmer-flyer of Jerusalem 11 . I see less thematic and iconic connection here, though, than in Gray's l i nes on the "T-heban Eagle" Pindar in "The Progress of Poesy" where he " s a i l s " w i th "supreme dominion / Thro' the azure deep of a i r . " In any case, given the en t i re tex t and design, I cannot regard the two f igures in Jerusalem 11 as opposed to each other.

2 2 Blake as an Artist, p. 182.

2 3 Raine, I I , 306.

2k E 267. Such sentiments are found in Blake as ear ly as

King Edward the Third; see espec ia l ly i t s s i x t h scene (E 428-30). We should also reca l l his condemnation of Jupi ter as "the enemy of conjugal love . . . an i ron-hearted t y r a n t , the ru iner of ancient Greece," a "spectrous F iend," and "the ru in of my labours" ( l e t t e r to Hayley, 23 October 1804, E 702); also The Laocoon p la te and the half-dozen references in his works to the "Gods of Priam."

2 5 Clements, "Iconography . . . , " p. 782. According to A. and

B. Rees's Celtic Heritage (1961), "swan" was f requent ly used in both I r i s h and Greek l i t e r a t u r e as a metaphor fo r " g i r l " (noted in the very beaut i fu l book, The Swans, ed. Peter Scott [Boston: Houghton M i f f l i n , 1972], p. 155; see also the en t i re essay, "The Swan in Mythology and A r t " by Mary Evans and Andrew Dawnay, included in t h i s book).

2 6 "Blake's ' I Saw a Chapel A l l of G o l d , " ' Colby Library Quarter-

ly, 15 (1979), 37-47.

2 7 L I . 603-11. Ovid has the waters of Hebrus receive Orpheus'

dismembered head and l y re and, as both f l oa ted down midstream, "The l y re ut tered a p l a i n t i v e melody and the l i f e l e s s tongue made a piteous murmur" {The "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, t rans . Mary M. Innes [Bal t imore: Penguin, 1955], Book X I , p. 247).