Blake's Politics 1

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol appears to be asking the "For Whom" question of
Culture. I hope Ralph will comment on my limited attempt
to understand the question in relation to Blake, stimulated
by his birthday posting.

I wanted to say something about the English significance of the
lines sung as "Jerusalem", but first I was surprised to find that
they are actually part of the preface to "Milton". This preface
1804, calls out:



"Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the
ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court,
and the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress
Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors!
Architects! Suffer not the fashionable Fools to depress your
powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible
works, or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such
works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of Men
whose whole delight is in Destroying."


Blake was a son of a London hosier, had no schooling, was apprenticed to
an engraver, and married the daughter of a market gardener. His
marginal class position at the time of rapid industrial revolution,
could be argued to be consistent with his exceptionally independent
perspective. Yet I know well the outside of the cottage on what was
then a deserted marshy estuary on the West Sussex coast where he stayed
for three years dependent on the uncertain patronage of a poetic
member of the English landed classes. While there, according to
the Oxford Companion to English Literature he was charged but
fortunately acquitted of high treason for having "uttered seditious
and treasonable expressions, such as 'D-n the King, d-n all his
subjects'".

Despite the apparent relevance today of denunciations of Hirelings in
the University (I thought Louis would particularly appreciate this), his
appeal sounds to be an essentially political idealist one, whose
failure was marked by the isolation of his later years.

What have I got wrong/failed to grasp,  Ralph?

Chris,

London



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