I must confess that I came to this course as a cynic, as a smug and arrogant, somewhat close-minded literary critic who held the view, as most would, that the Romantics were a bunch of flowery, highfalutin, willy-nilly writers who loved nature to an unhealthy degree. Ignorance and literary blasphemy on my part? Yes and no. My “yes” doesn’t deserve an explanation, for I rightly assume that the brilliant students reading this post know exactly who the Romantics are. However, my “no,” of course, deserves an explanation, a pretty damn good one at that. My stance on literature was closely aligned with the two chief theorists of the New Novel—Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute. I, as these theorists, believed that any attempt to control the world by assigning it a meaning is no longer possible, and the idea of human depth should be rejected. I was a child of the Enlightenment; I was an uncompromising, militant rationalist. Reason was the highest good—no questions asked. Here was my quick rule of thumb: if anything opposed reason, it should be mocked, jeered and sneered at, ultimately—not taken seriously. It seems comical now, but the only writers I took seriously were the existentialists. So, I ask: how do you think an individual with an almost infinite appetite for such brutish rationalism think of the Romantics? Not too favorably. Why the change of heart? Only a few but forceful words: The Philosophy of Imagination. It’s the philosophy of animate ideas and unrestrained creativity. In my opinion, Blake writes under this philosophy in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”

As a writer, I’ve been trained to write with economy, brevity, and clarity. And it should come as no surprise that most non-fiction is written in this style. Reading and writing in this manner has shortened my patience for complex, difficult writing with no apparent structure in sight. It has, to say the least, deadened my analytical skills. Mix this with my strict rationalism and you have a literary impoverished combination. Everyone has trouble reading Blake, even scholars (given the creation of his own theology, mysticism, and philosophy, and throwing that on top of biblical theology and other philosophy), but I was having trouble with him beyond imagination. His words, images, and meanings were impalpable, almost non-existent to me. But in class, when I witnessed my professor and my fellow students analyzing “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” an analytical self awakened within me, one who loved animate ideas and unrestrained creativity, and one who did not find outlandish spiritual ideas laughable—but beautiful. I had begun to mentally participate in the reading. At once, I forgot how rewarding it was to surgically dissect a poem full of imagination. Oh, the ideas: the Hegelian dialectic, the Miltonian references, the Kantian sublimity. Absolutely beautiful.

Man’s perception is less than acceptable. Unfortunately, his imprisoned senses only allow him to see imitations, never originals. Blake wants to do Man a favor by seeking the original and introducing the “new” to him in order to shock him out of his reality. According to Blake, Man is not only a sense-imprisoned being, but also a source of contraries, institutionalized religion, socially imposed forces, and alterable perception. To combat this, he elects to bring religion, divinity, and unalterable perception of a god figure to the level of Man. Although Man seems hopeless at first glance, an unlikely hero close to Man can help--the child. Given their innocence, children are Blake’s best audience. Unlike adults, they are not shocked into paralysis by the “new.” Rather, they are shocked into motion, for they possess ever-expanding energy, imagination, and a malleable mind. Reform is possible for them since everything hasn’t been imprisoned yet. The child becomes the main image for Blake—an essential role-model for Man. There’s a problem, though. Children cannot put their abilities into reasonable use. But Man can. Thus, Blake writes “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” to shock man into an intellectual reform.

The title of the poem tells all. The marriage of Heaven and Hell must be initiated by Hell alone since Heaven is unalterable and unchangeable. This statement needs a bit of explaining. Archetypally, Heaven and Hell are polar opposites, a perfect example of opposing forces. In Milton’s epic, Lucifer loses paradise, in other words--Heaven. He doesn’t function by opposing forces as humans, so he is capable of attaining the godhead. But God denies his arrogant grab at the celestial throne and casts him out. As a result, Hell becomes a means for change, a means for progression. Thus, hell is alterable and changeable, becoming a dynamic prototype that Man can perceive. At a time of revolution, everyone wants change. And since Heaven cannot change, it becomes an evil and a weakened entity for people. In typical Blake fashion, he inverts the picture and has Hell write proverbs instead of Heaven. And Man is damned for believing that these proverbs contain great insight. Man’s perception of Hell does not suggest that his world is full of demons. Rather, his world is full of energy, capability, possibility, and change. Blake uses the bible as a work of literature, playing with the contraries (He even takes the idea of correspondences and equilibrium and flips them into contraries). In everyday life, Man thinks contradictions are flaws, logical fallacies. But what about existential contradictions? Blake doesn’t think contradictions are flaws at all. Such a position can cause confusion, but it is Blake’s job as the poetic genius to bring Man out of this confusion and reveal what is hidden beneath.

According to Kantian sublimity, Man can understand that reason is bounded and limited with the help of his imagination. However, imagination’s most important utility is to see that imagination is limited itself. Imagination can see its own limitations, which is the bound of reason. Blake seeks to point out the bounds of reason by giving us the original instead of an imitation like Swedenborg would give. Blake’s poem allowed me to transcend my bias for rationalism alone and appreciate the idea that reason and imagination should exist in harmony. This brief and quaint aphorism should prevail: Reason without imagination is a tragedy.