The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1789

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Poetry

Only Plates 2-3, “The Argument,” and Plates 25-27, “A Song of Liberty,” are poetry. The remainder of the work is in prose. “The Argument” is a free-verse poem. It is divided into six stanzas of uneven length. The first stanza consists of two unrhymed lines. These lines are repeated as a refrain as the last two lines of the poem. The four unrhymed stanzas in between are of six lines, five lines, three lines, and four lines. The imagery shows how the “just man” (Plate 1) brings life, where before there was only death. The “vale of death” (Plate 1) and its “thorns” (Plate 1) and “barren heath” (Plate 1) give way to images of nature’s beauty and abundance—roses and honey bees, river, and spring. This new situation is disturbed when the “villain” (Plate 1) and “sneaking serpent” (Plate 1) enter the picture, driving the just man back into the wilderness.

“A Song of Liberty” is in a different form: a list of numbered verses. The lines are much longer, resembling biblical lines and verses. This is the same line length that Blake used in many of his Prophetic Books. The imagery is apocalyptic as war breaks out between the forces of revolution and the reactionary regimes of kings and priests. Amidst flames and thunder, the forces of liberty triumph.

Considering Blake is arguing in favor of the creative imagination and against oppressive rules and structures—seeking the relinquishment of reason’s hold on humanity—his mixing of forms was likely an intentional display of the unencumbered energy and creation of the Poet.

Satire

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a satire. Satire is a literary form that exposes the errors of institutions or ideas using humor and wit; it may point out how foolish or misguided the targeted work is, with the aim of correcting it and improving the lot of humanity. The 18th century was the great age of satire, particularly in the work of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, so it is perhaps not surprising that Blake chose such a form to express his ideas.

Blake’s target is Swedenborg and, more broadly, the conventional understanding of religion, especially the elevation of reason at the expense of other faculties and the dualism of body and soul. Blake believed that although Swedenborg had discussed important topics, his fundamental approach was wrong, and in the end, in spite of his belief that he was bringing new understanding to theological topics, he repeated all the errors from the past.

More particularly, The Marriage is a Menippean satire, as “characterized by its concern with intellectual error, its extraordinary diversity of subject-matter, a mixed verse-and-prose form, and a certain reliance on a symposium setting,” according to literary critic Harold Bloom (“Introduction,” in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 1987, p. 2). The word Menippean is derived from Menippus, an ancient Greek Cynic and satirist who lived in the third century BC. In addition to Bloom’s quoted list, the variety of elements in Menippean satires often include allegory and parody, as in The Marriage.

Allegory

An allegory is a narrative in which the events and characters contain a level of meaning beyond the literal level. Blake employs allegory on two occasions. In Plate 15, Blake is in the “Printing house in Hell” and describes the process of the dissemination of knowledge through books in terms of a number of stages. These stages involve expansion of the senses and creativity, as well as the etching process with which Blake was familiar. The characters—Dragon-man, Viper, Eagle, and Lions—are allegorical representations of the men who perform different tasks that lead to the final product.

Another short allegory occurs toward the end of the “Memorable Fancy” on Plates 17-20, when Blake shows the conventional Angel seven brick houses, in which they see a menagerie of monkeys, baboons, and similar who are all in chains but manage nonetheless to inflict harm on each other, including death. At the allegorical level, the brick houses are the Christian churches, and the vicious fighting animals stand for the senseless but brutal sectarian conflicts indulged in by the churches that the Angel supports and believes in.

Aphorism

An aphorism is a concise statement that contains a general or universal truth. In 1788, Blake read and annotated Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Aphorisms on Man (1788), which may have stimulated his interest in the pithiness of the aphorism. Just two years later, he began The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which he made plentiful use of these terse expressions. The “Proverbs of Hell” are aphorisms, and aphorisms occur in other places in the text as well. “Opposition is true Friendship” (Plate 20), and “One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression” (Plate 24), for example, provide succinct endings for two Memorable Fancies. The aphorism “every thing that lives is Holy” (Plate 27) serves a similar function for the Chorus in “A Song of Liberty.”

Parody

A parody is an imitation of the manner or style of a serious work. It is often designed to amuse or ridicule. Blake’s Memorable Fancies are parodies of Swedenborg’s Memorable Relations. Swedenborg, after discussing some theological matter, often presents a Memorable Relation, which records a conversation he had or a scene he witnessed with the angels and devils in Heaven or Hell. Swedenborg believed that he had easy access to these places in the afterlife and could freely discuss important matters with the spirits who existed there. Swedenborg is matter-of-fact and serious in these passages. He never indulges in humor or irony of any kind. Blake has a serious purpose too, but his Memorable Fancies are playful, amusing, and witty as they poke fun at the Swedish seer whom he once admired.

Swedenborg’s Memorable Relations can be quite long and dense, but a relatively short sample can convey the flavor of them. The following passage is from Swedenborg’s True Christian Religion, in which it is the Fourth Memorable Relation. A dragon, the kind of being mentioned in the book of Revelation, says the following to Swedenborg:

‘Come with me, and I will show you the delights of our eyes and hearts.’ And he led me through a gloomy forest and to the top of a hill, from which I could witness the delights of the dragonists, and I saw an amphitheater built in the form of a circus, with seats round about gradually rising from the front, on which the spectators were sitting. Those sitting upon the lowest seats appeared to me at a distance like satyrs and priapi, some having a slight covering over the parts that ought to be concealed, and others wholly naked. On the seats above these sat whoremongers and harlots; such they appeared to me from their gestures. The dragonist then said to me, ‘Now you shall see our sport.’ And I saw, as it were, calves, rams, sheep, kids and lambs let into the arena of the circus; and when these had been let in, a door was opened, and in rushed, as it were, young lions, panthers, tigers, and wolves, which attacked the other animals with fury, tearing them and slaughtering them. After this bloody slaughter, the satyrs sprinkled sand over the place of the slaughter. Then the dragonist said to me, ‘These are our sports, which delight our minds.’ I answered, ‘Begone, demon! after a while you will see this amphitheater turned into a lake of fire and brimstone.’ At this he laughed and went away. Afterward I was thinking to myself why such things are permitted by the Lord; and I received in my heart the answer that they are permitted so long as these spirits are in the world of spirits, but when their stay in that world is ended such theatrical scenes are turned into infernal horrors. All this that had been seen was induced by the dragonist by means of fantasies; thus there had been no calves, rams, sheep, kids, or lambs, but they caused the genuine goods and truths of the church, which they hated, to so appear (True Christian Religion, by Emanuel Swedenborg. 1771. Translated by John C. Ager, 1906, para. 388).

The resemblance to Blake’s fourth “Memorable Fancy” (Plates 17-22), will be clear, particularly the element of illusion: What a person sees is a reflection of their spiritual state, although Blake, of course, sees all this with the eye of irony, especially phrases such as the “goods and truths of the church,” which show Swedenborg’s conventional ideas, the “exotic” nature of his visions notwithstanding (W. H. Stevenson, editor of Blake’s The Complete Poems [Longman / Norton, 1972, pp. 102-03] quotes part of this Memorable Relation in a different translation and notes that it sheds light on Blake’s parody.)