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In the Songs of Experience<\/em>, William Blake contrasted the \u2018soft deceitful wiles\u2019 of enmity and jealousy (A Poison Tree<\/em>), and the \u2018mind-forg\u2019d manacles\u2019 constraining the pained voices of London\u2019s inhabitants (London<\/em>), with the Sun-flower, \u2018weary of time\u2019, following the steps of the sun through the sky and \u2018seeking after that sweet golden clime \/ where the traveller\u2019s journey is done\u2019 (My Pretty ROSE TREE \/ AH! SUN-FLOWER \/ THE LILLY<\/em>). The behaviour of Blake\u2019s sunflower conforms with a basic magical belief in natural sympathy \u2013 \u2018as above, so below\u2019 \u2013 and epitomises the Neo-Platonic yearning to escape the snares of matter and achieve freedom in the ideal.<\/p>\n In her compelling and influential reading of Blake\u2019s poem, Kathleen Raine opposed the \u2018language of cosmic analogy\u2019, the true domain of poets, to the pervading materialism of Blake\u2019s age. AH! SUN-FLOWER<\/em> is a \u2018poem on the theme of love as prayer or \u2013 to use Blake\u2019s better word \u2013 \u201caspiration\u201d\u2019, in which the \u2018sunflower aspires to the sun as all souls aspire to eternity\u2019.[1]<\/a> She suggested that Blake\u2019s apparently simple poetry in the Songs of Innocence and Experience <\/em>condensed the ancient wisdom of the mysteries in a veiled form: a theme that the poet would have been aware of through his acquaintance with the eccentric Walworth-based philosopher Thomas Taylor. According to Raine, \u2018The Little Girl Lost<\/em>and Found<\/em> [of the Songs of Experience<\/em>] are based upon the Mysteries of Eleusis; their actors are the emblematic figures on the Portland Vase, interpreted in the light of Taylor\u2019s Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries<\/em>\u2019.[2]<\/a>Evidence that Blake read Taylor\u2019s The Mystical Initiations; or, Hymns of Orpheus<\/em> (1787) can be found in annotations made to a copy of that text now in the Bodleian Library.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n Certainly, in The CLOD & the PEBBLE<\/em>, Blake contrasted two forms of love, and two differing approaches to life arising from \u2018experience\u2019: a selfless love that \u2018builds a Heaven in Hell\u2019s despair\u2019, and a selfish and possessive love that \u2018builds a Hell in Heavens despite\u2019 (Swedenborg\u2019s influence is evident here, and also Milton\u2019s).<\/p>\n Blake probably knew Thomas Taylor, \u2018the Platonist\u2019, through mutual friends like the sculptor John Flaxman, and his patron George Cumberland (for whose Thoughts on Outline<\/em> of 1796 he engraved some of the illustrations). Taylor may even be \u2018Sipsop the Pythagorean\u2019 in Blake\u2019s satirical Island in the Moon<\/em> (1784). It is likely that Blake attended the lectures on Platonism given by Taylor at Flaxman\u2019s studio at 27 Wardour Street in Soho. Taylor\u2019s introductory essay to his translations of the Hymns of Orpheus<\/em> provided a succinct account of sacrifice and magic. It also includes a passage on the sunflower that may well have inspired Blake\u2019s poem, where Taylor paraphrases Proclus concerning the magical notion of a natural sympathy between things:<\/p>\n \u2018For how shall we account for those plants called heliotropes, that is attendants on the sun, moving in correspondence with the revolution of its orb; but selenitropes, or attendants on the moon, turning in exact conformity with her motion? It is because all things pray, and compose hymns to the leaders of their respective orders; but some intellectually, and others rationally; some in a natural, and others after a sensible manner. Hence the sunflower, as far as it is able, moves in a circular dance towards the sun; so that if anyone could hear the pulsation made by its circuit in the air, he would perceive something composed by a sound of this kind, in honour of its king, such as a plant is capable of framing\u2019.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Blake can certainly be associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries through the reproductions of the Portland Vase he engraved for Erasmus Darwin\u2019s The Botanical Garden<\/em> (1791).[5]<\/a> Darwin explained that the intention of his botanical poem was to \u2018inlist Imagination under the banner of Science; and to lead her votaries from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter, ones which form the ratiocination of philosophy\u2019.[6]<\/a> He justified the use of mythical imagery in his didactic poem by appealing to the allegorical or \u2018hieroglyphic\u2019 nature of myths: \u2018Many of the important operations of Nature were shadowed or allegorized in the heathen mythology, as the first Cupid springing from the Egg of Night, the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, the Rape of Proserpine, the Congress of Jupiter and Juno, Death and Resuscitation of Adonis, &c.\u2019[7]<\/a> In particular, Darwin included a verse description of the Portland Vase<\/a> (1st<\/sup> Century B.C., British Museum) and an explanatory essay about it in an appendix. The Portland or Barberini vase was a Roman antiquity which had been reproduced in his pottery by Josiah Wedgwood who was Darwin\u2019s friend and fellow member of the Lunar Society. Wedgwood put his reproduction on display in his London show-room in 1790 and gave a lecture about it, while Blake, as we have seen, was commissioned to engrave the illustrations which accompanied Darwin\u2019s essay, which appears to be based on the lecture given by Wedgwood.<\/p>\n Darwin interpreted the Portland Vase\u2019s decoration in verse: \u2018Or bid Mortality rejoice and mourn \/ O\u2019er the fine forms on Portland\u2019s mystic urn \u2013<\/p>\n Here<\/em> by fall\u2019n columns and disjoin\u2019d arcades,<\/p>\n On mouldering stones, beneath deciduous shades,<\/p>\n Sits HUMANKIND in hieroglyphic state,<\/p>\n Serious, and pondering on their changeful state;<\/p>\n While with inverted torch, and swimming eyes,<\/p>\n Sinks the fair shade of MORTAL LIFE, and dies.<\/p>\n There<\/em> the pale GHOST through Death\u2019s wide portal bends<\/p>\n His timid feet, the dusky step descends;<\/p>\n With smiles assuasive LOVE DIVINE invites,<\/p>\n Guides on broad wing, with torch uplifted lights;<\/p>\n IMMORTAL LIFE, her hand extending, courts<\/p>\n The lingering form, his tottering step supports;<\/p>\n Leads on to Pluto\u2019s realms the dreary way,<\/p>\n And gives him trembling to Elysian day.<\/p>\n Below<\/em>, in sacred robes the PRIESTESS dress\u2019d,<\/p>\n The coif close-hooded, and the fluttering vest,<\/p>\n With pointing finger guides the initiate youth,<\/p>\n Unweaves the many-colour\u2019d veil of Truth,<\/p>\n Drives the profane from Mystery\u2019s bolted door,<\/p>\n And Silence guards the Eleusinian lore.\u2019[8]<\/a><\/p>\n Darwin went on to explain in his prose commentary that: \u2018These mysteries were invented in Egypt, and afterwards transferred to Greece, and flourished more particularly at Athens, which was at the time the seat of the fine arts. They consisted of scenical exhibitions representing and inculcating the expectation of a future life after death, and on this account were encouraged by the government, insomuch that the Athenian laws punished a discovery of their secrets with death\u2019.[9]<\/a> Responding to Seppilli\u2019s recurring interest in initiation rites in Poesia e magia<\/em>, the design of the \u2018scenical\u2019 exhibition Poetry & Magic<\/em> approximated a mystery: the visitor encounters the hierophantic figure of Anita Seppilli in the hall of 39 Belgrave Square, begins their journey in the reality of the city\u2019s streets with the photography of The Sacrilege of Bridges<\/em> in the lecture room, passes the monster Caliban at the bottom of the stairs, is directed upwards and onwards by the inspired Blake communing with the Archangel Gabriel at the top of the grand staircase, and emerges into the symbolic realm of the Ball Room – a space of light, crystal chandeliers, antique mirrors and foliage glimpsed through large windows – with the prints and paintings of Marcelle Hanselaar, Stephen Chambers and Ana Maria Pacheco. Looking into the mirror the visitor reads the label: Poeta<\/em>. Coincidentally, Iain Sinclair\u2019s enthralling exhibition Histories & Hauntings<\/em><\/a> at Swedenborg House also operates on two levels and incorporates the ascent of a staircase as part of the visitor\u2019s experience towards insight and revelation.<\/p>\n Thomas Taylor wrote that \u2018the soul while an inhabitant of earth is in a fallen condition, an apostate from deity, an exile from the orb of light. That she can only be restored while on earth to the divine likeness, and be able after death to re-ascend to the intelligible world, by the exercise of the cathartic and theoretic<\/em> virtues; the former purifying her of the defilements of a mortal nature, and the latter elevating her to the vision of true being\u2019.[10]<\/a> The Greek myths, like those of Persephone, Orpheus and Dionysius, hid this higher truth behind the veil of allegory, and the role of the mysteries was to reveal this to the initiate: \u2018But further from this account of Dionysius, we may perceive the truth of Plato\u2019s observation that \u201cthe design of the mysteries is to lead us back to the perfection from which as a principle, we first made our descent\u201d\u2019.[11]<\/a> Where Taylor, like Marino, interpreted myth as allegory, for Seppilli, the symbol understood magically is not a substitute \u2013 e.g. the dismembering of Orpheus standing for<\/em> a necessary spiritual catharsis \u2013 but an equivalent:<\/p>\n \u2018We can use, and we will also use as we have already used it, the term \u2018symbol\u2019; but with the warning that in mytho-poiesis we are never dealing with symbols in the sense of substitutions, neither those used consciously nor of arbitrary substitutions, and therefore we must not speak of symbols that \u2018stand\u2019 for the object. On the contrary we are always dealing with something immediate, presented intuitively to consciousness together with the object symbolized, an ultimate \u2018reality\u2019, which expresses the true essence and power of the object: as long as the myth is vital, the symbol does not \u2018replace\u2019 but is \u2018equivalent\u2019 to the object, indeed it is its most intimate and significant nucleus. Only in this sense will we use the terms \u2018symbol\u2019 and \u2018symbolism\u2019.\u2019 [Si pu\u00f2 usare, e useremo anche noi come gi\u00e0 l\u2019abbiamo usato, il termine \u201csimbolo\u201d; ma con l\u2019avvertimento che nella mito-poiesi non si tratta mai di simboli nel senso di sostituzioni, coscienti di essere tali n\u00e9 di sostizuzioni arbirtrarie e perci\u00f2 non si deve parlare di simboli che \u201cstanno\u201d per l\u2019oggetto. Si tratta al contrario sempre di qualcosa di immediato, di intuitivamente presentatosi alla coscienza insieme all\u2019oggetto simbolizato, di una \u201crealt\u00e0\u201d ultima, che esprime la vera essenza e potenza dell\u2019oggetto: fino a che il mito \u00e8 vitale, il simbolo non \u201csostituisce\u201d ma \u201cequivale\u201d all\u2019oggetto, anzi \u00e8 il suo nucleo pi\u00f9 intimo e significativo. Solo in questo senso adoparemo i termini \u201csimbolo\u201d e \u201csimbolismo\u201d<\/em>].[12]<\/a><\/p>\n A century ago, the French poet Andr\u00e9 Breton wrote a poem for Pierre Reverdy entitled Sunflower<\/em>. It was a work that was special in that \u2018I did not like it and never had\u2019 and yet which haunted his memory with disturbing fragments that prevented him from rejecting it (\u2018the traveller passing through the Halles at summerfall\u2026\u2019, \u2018the lady with no shadow\u2026\u2019, the \u2018calla lilies\u2019 of despair, etc.). It was only in 1934, when he fell in love with Jacqueline Lamba, that Breton realised that the poem foretold their meeting in some detail and had been \u2018really inspired<\/em>\u2019.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n Since Daphnis is<\/em> poetry, to weave a spell, to recite a charm while scattering barley into the fire \u2013 to reassemble the scattered parts of the body of Bacchus (or Orpheus, or Osiris) \u2013 is to call him home, to embody him in verse. To \u2018re-member\u2019. To re-live his painful absence in our hearts (\u2018ricordare<\/em>\u2019).[14]<\/a> To be bitten again with remorse.[15]<\/a> For hope to give shape to our desire for renewed inspiration. For the grace of the saint to shatter our \u2018mind-forged manacles\u2019. For the image of the sunflower \u2013 an alchemical tower in Breton\u2019s L\u2019Amour fou<\/em> – to guide us prophetically towards love. As magic to move a mortal lover the selfish spell proves useless; as poetry, however, aligning our souls once more with the forces of the universe, it can transcend matter and draw down the moon. Poetry is magic<\/em>.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition<\/em>, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969, volume 1, pp. 216-17.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid, p. 129.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Philip J. Cardinale and Joseph R. Cardinale, \u2018A Newly Discovered Blake Book: William Blake\u2019s Copy of Thomas Taylor\u2019s The Mystical Initiations; or, Hymns of Orpheus<\/em> (1787)\u2019, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly<\/em>, 22, 3, 20-11, pp. 84-102. See also: George Mills Harper, \u2018The Source of Blake\u2019s \u201cAh! Sun-Flower\u201d\u2019, The Modern Language Review<\/em>, 48, 2, 1953, pp. 139-42.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Kathleen Raine and George Mills Harper (eds), Thomas Taylor The Platonist. Selected Writings<\/em>, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969, pp. 194-95. On Taylor, see also: Frank B. Evans, III, \u2018Thomas Taylor, Platonist of the Romantic Period\u2019, PMLA<\/em>, 55, 4, 1940, pp. 1060-79; Frederick E. Pierce, \u2018Blake and Thomas Taylor\u2019, PMLA<\/em>, 43, 4, 1928, pp. 1121-41. For Taylor\u2019s essentially Neo-Platonic position and his unreliable translations of Plato, see: James A. Notopoulos, \u2018Shelley and Thomas Taylor\u2019, pp. 502-17, especially, p. 507: \u2018He read into Plato the mystical Neo-Pythagorean mathematics and interpreted Plato in the religious context of Orphism\u2019.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Raine, Blake and Tradition,<\/em> vol. 1, pp. 126-65.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden<\/em>; A Poem, in Two Parts. Part 1 containing The Economy of Vegetation. Part II. The Loves of the Plants with Philosophical Notes<\/em>, London: J. Johnson, 1791, p. v.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> Ibid, p. vii.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> Ibid, p. 88.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> Ibid, (53) Note XXII \u2013 Portland Vase.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> Thomas Taylor, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse<\/em>, London: C. Whittingham, 1805, p. 35.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> Thomas Taylor The Platonist<\/em>, p. 413.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> Anita Seppilli, Poesia e magia<\/em>, Turin: Einaudi, 1971, p. 235.<\/p>\n [13]<\/a> Andr\u00e9 Breton, Mad Love (L\u2019Amour fou),<\/em> trans. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1987, pp. 53-64.<\/p>\n [14]<\/a> I owe this observation to Martina Mazzotta.<\/p>\n [15]<\/a> Ernesto de Martino, The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism<\/em>, translated by Dorothy Louise Zinn, foreword by Vincent Crapanzano, London: Free Association Books, 2005.<\/p>\n [16]<\/a> This was one of the conclusions of the inspiring round-table discussion between author Iain Sinclair, professional witch Kate Tomas, and Professor John Tresch of the Warburg Institute which occurred in the Italian Cultural Institute on 28 November 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the Songs of Experience, William Blake contrasted the \u2018soft deceitful wiles\u2019 of enmity and jealousy (A Poison Tree), and the \u2018mind-forg\u2019d manacles\u2019 constraining the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[283393],"tags":[290908,290911,176169,290910,285916,290912,290909,283518],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/files\/2023\/08\/Blake-Poison-Tree.jpg\")
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