BEAU BRUMMELL

I’ll tell you a well guarded secret! I am incredibly turned on by a well rounded, firm pair of male buttocks! Those tight, tight jeans, that enhance the male bottom. And to moving around to face him, my eyes wander and linger on the sun bleached denim; creased and delightfully stretched over heavy genitalia.

Do I have a fetish or am I just a letch?

Whatever it is, I know that I’m not alone in this. And it is on display. And yes, I am being defensive. I bet that there are men and women of all walks of life, who long to part those firm buttocks; bounce, jiggle and test the weight of that enticing genitalia in the palm of their hand. The fashion for men not leaving a lot to the imagination, started over two hundred years ago and the man responsible was Beau Brummell.

He was, perhaps, the first celebrity. Certainly a celebrity in the terms that we understand it today. He had a cult following. He was his own “In Crowd.” All of the Regency guys wanted to look like Beau, walk and talk like Beau, they craved Beau’s panache.

Even the fact that Beau had a slightly crooked nose -- well it was part of his style, giving him a masculine air. He was no pretty boy. Marlon Brando had the same defect after a sparring match with a stage hand. Brando was all male; so was Beau Brummell. And their appearance, their look, was for male and female consumption. He’s there for the homoeroticist, the exhibitionist and the voyeur. Whatever your orientation, there is something to look at. Or maybe you just fancy dressing up in those tight, body hugging trousers.

Beau Brummell was a trendsetter and he was definitely -- Cool.

“Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell  7 June 1778 – 30 March 1840, was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV.

Brummell was born in London, the son of William Brummell, of Donnington Grove in Berkshire. He was fair complexioned, and had "a high nose, which was broken down by a kick from a horse soon after he went into the Tenth Dragoons...." His father died in 1794, leaving him an inheritance of more than 20,000 pounds. He was educated at Eton and at Oriel College, and later joined the Tenth Light Dragoons. It was during this time he came to the attention of George, Prince of Wales. Through the influence of the Prince, Brummell was promoted to captain by 1796. When his regiment was sent from London to Manchester he resigned his commission because of Manchester's poor reputation and atmosphere and the lack of culture and civility exercised by the general populace.” WIKI

He made the art of dressing into hard work, yet at the same time made it appear effortless. Quite frankly, I think Beau Brummell made men sexy. Male and female eyes fixed on him when he entered a room. He inspired the fashion for those skin tight trousers, delineating every curve, every movement, every muscle of the buttocks. Tight, genitalia enhancing crotches, making women, and men aware of what’s underneath. You couldn’t help but notice could you -- well could you? Coats were cut away at the front, framing that just discernable swelling around the crotch. Skin tight trousers delineating powerful thigh muscles. I’ve read somewhere that Beau advocated “definitely no underwear” to eliminate a visible panty line.

He established the mode of men wearing understated, but fitted, tailored clothes including dark suits and full-length trousers, adorned with an elaborately-knotted cravat.

Beau Brummell is credited with introducing and establishing as fashion the modern man's suit, worn with a tie. He claimed to take five hours to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. His style of dress is often referred to as dandyism

Brummell was lucky enough to be built in a manner that was then considered fashionable for a man’s body. All of these factors, his theatricality, never knowing if he was serious or in jest, personal hygiene, and physique helped make him the rock star of his age.

“Brummell took a house on Chesterfield Street in Mayfair, and, for a time, avoided extravagance and gaming: for example, he kept horses but no carriages. He was included in Prince George's circle, where he made an impression with his elegant, understated manner of dress and clever remarks. His fastidious attention to cleaning his teeth, shaving, and bathing daily became popular. When asked how much it would cost to keep a single man in clothes, he was alleged to have replied: ‘Why, with tolerable economy, I think it might be done with £800’.” Times Online

Although dandyism was already taking hold even without Brummell, he had a gift for theatrically performing its details better than everyone else. It would be interesting to know whether it was sincere behaviour on his part, or artifice. I suppose one could say that that is the ultimate question about the man. But in matters of personal hygiene, the Beau was both fastidious and fanatical.

His personal grooming was very modern. He kept himself clean, which most people did not do in his day.

"Every day, his toilette would take more than two hours and would involve brushing his teeth, shaving, a thorough wash and scrub; followed by brushing his body all over with a stiff brush and finally pursuing any errant remaining hairs with a pair of tweezers. He prided himself on never needing scent because he was so clean". WIKI

“This kind of care was not of its time, but it is a part of  culture today. He was a perfectionist in his choice of clothes. There's a story of someone who visited him, and met his valet coming out of the room with a huge load of cravats. “These are our failures”! said the valet. Brummell said of himself ‘I have no talents other than to dress; my genius is in the wearing of clothes’.” Times Online

Men of influence and wealth, gathered at his town house daily just to watch the ritual of Beau Brummell dressing.

A look into Beau’s psyche might shed some light on why he became so extreme at what he liked. What for instance shaped the Beau’s behaviour? It has been suggested that he suffered severe razor rash from constantly shaving too close. This leads me to believe he was not as comfortable as some may have believed and that a certain degree of obsession might have driven the Beau towards fastidiousness.

“Beau’s downfall began at a masquerade ball, in July of 1813, at which the Prince Regent greeted two of the patrons of the ball, but then "cut" Brummell by snubbing them, staring him in the face, but not speaking to him. This provoked Beau Brummell's famous remark, "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?". This finalized the long-developed rift between them, dated by Campbell to 1811, the year the Prince became Regent and began abandoning all his old Whig friends. Normally, the loss of royal favour to a favourite was doom, but Brummell ran as much on the approval and friendship of other rulers of the several fashion circles. He became the anomaly of a favourite flourishing without a patron, still in charge of fashion and courted by large segments of society.”
WIKI

But his debts caught up with him as debts always do. In 1816 he fled to France to escape debtor’s prison and remained there for the rest of his life. While friends helped him to secure the position of British consul in Caen briefly during the 1830s, he gradually slipped into decline brought about by the syphilis that he’d contracted years before. He spent time in a French debtor’s prison until, impoverished and, by now insane, he died in an asylum in Caen in 1840.

“Without Brummell there would be no suit, for men or, indeed, women, or tailoring in the Savile Row, Wall Street or the Chanel sense. The tailored look that has developed out of his style, however, he created in an unorthodox way — it has even been said, in a very British way: he was a maverick who created rules. He became a symbol for a new mode of urbane masculinity, while it was precisely his masculinity that was possibly the most complex, troubled and compelling aspect of his personality.” Times Online

He helped establish Jermyn Street and Savile Row as arbiters of good taste in the males that they dressed.

“In the absence of colour and dazzle, tailoring would be noticed as never before. Although corsets and calf-muscle stocking-implants were not unknown, the new look was achieved mainly in the subtle remoulding of the body achieved by cutters, tailors and effects such as the sculpted W collar that remains on jackets to this day.

The real power of Brummell’s genius — or the genius of the style he made famous — is the ubiquity of its elements beyond the close confines of the Savile Row suit. They are resilient constants in every supposed revolution, from the New Look of the 1950s to the New Romantics of the 1980s to the New Men of the 1990s and the recurrent, patrician styles of American menswear, as created by Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Tom Ford. In New York or Hong Kong, at every gathering of world leaders, businessmen, lawyers and doctors, not to mention actors on red carpets, the basic forms of Brummell’s look are delineated.” Times Online

Beau Brummell, whose life has since inspired numerous books, plays and films, can be seen standing on Jermyn Street where a statue of him by Irena Sedlecka was erected in 2002. His legacy to fashion lives on. The classic man’s grey, three piece suit and tie.

The Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme

SLAVE MARKET


Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904)
was a French painter and sculptor in the style now call Academicism. The range of his work included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. WIKI.


His painting, “Slave Market”, is lyrical; it has a narrative, it tells a story. The viewer forms the story in his own mind. Transfixed, the viewer gazes at the lovely image of the naked woman. The viewer asks a series of questions. What is going on here? Who is the woman? Is she really going to be sold; bought by an unknown man? The same man might go on to another market and purchase a cow, a pig, a horse. The naked female is going to be someone’s property to do with as he wishes. She is for his consumption. He can flog her, have sex with her when he chooses. She will not have any legal right to refuse him.


The viewer is a voyeur; excited and watching.


A group of men in Arabian dress, surround her; one examines her teeth. I think that this is a visual metaphor which places her on a level with an animal. It is the traditional way to assess a horse’s age, by looking at his teeth. The woman is submissive; her nudity is emphasised by the fact that everyone else in the painting is clothed. She appears drugged; she seems to sway sleepily. She gazes seductively, languorously at the Arabian man. She is ready for sex, she is one step away from rubbing her genitalia against the prospective buyer’s thigh.


This is where the viewer begins to tell himself the story. What has happened to bring a woman of European appearance to a slave market? And what will happen next?
The painting is a BDSM fantasy. It is erotic in its use of visual metaphor and subject matter. Gérôme succeeds in creating a striking image that remains in the viewer’s memory.


Was Gérôme present at such an event as a slave market? We don’t know; but he was well travelled in the Orient. He travelled to Constantinople, in 1853.This would be the first of several travels to the East; in 1854 he made another journey to Turkey.


His paintings of the Orient are atmospheric, suggesting exotic scents and sounds. The Orient is mysterious; sensual.




SLAVE MARKET


In this painting, the nude woman up for sale seems slightly more with it. She holds an arm in front of her face to hide her shame. Any sex that is going to happen, after her new owner takes her to his harem, will not necessarily be consensual. It will be rape.

Here, Gérôme turns to even more fantastic settings and more erotic portrayals. This is a painting telling a story of ancient Rome. The bidders are noisy, yelling out their price and probably yelling out obscenities too. All the slaves on display are European in appearance. They are stripped naked, and they’re obviously much sought after and apprehensive about it. The girl crouching on the right looks directly at you, the viewer, as if she hopes you’ll buy her.





PHYRNE BEFORE THE AREOPAGUS


The Greek myth tells us that Phyrne was famously beautiful. On the occasion of a festival of Poseidon at Eleusis, she laid aside her garments, let down her hair, and stepped naked into the sea in the sight of the people.  When accused of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries, she was defended by the orator Hypereides, one of her lovers. The speech for the prosecution was written by Anaximenes of Lampsacus according to Diodorus Periegetes. When it seemed as if the verdict would be unfavourable, Hypereides tore open her robe and displayed her breasts, which so moved her judges that they acquitted her. According to others, she herself removed her clothing. The judges' change of heart was not simply because they were overcome by the beauty of her naked body, but because such unusual physical beauty was often seen as a facet of divinity or a mark of divine favour during those times. WIKI


Phyrne is hiding her face at her sudden theatrical exposure; there is a certain dramatic pause about the gesture. Faux modesty? It is a moment of pure drama; it is meant to be. But it is her face that she hides, not her body. It’s as if she knows the power that her fabulous body has over men. The faces and postures of the judges, suggest a moment of numinous awe. As if they are in the presence of something holy.


It appears that Gérôme had a complex relationship with the Orient. Is he recording a truth here in these paintings; or is he suggesting a fantasy? Exposure and humiliation can be just as much a female fantasy, as it can be a male. Wanting to be displayed and humiliated is a fantasy of submissives, as it is a fantasy of a Dominant, who dreams of being in control. Rape, torture and pain, as well as humiliation are on his/her mind.


And we don’t know Gérôme’s own mind on this. Perhaps he was turned on by his paintings. "Orientalism" is more widely used to refer to the works of the many 19th century artists, who specialized in "Oriental" subjects, often drawing on their travels to North Africa and Western Asia. Artists as well as scholars were already described as "Orientalists" in the 19th century, especially in France.


There was also a fascination with the Orient across the English Channel, with the Romantic movement there. A few weeks ago, I was talking about Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan. Gérôme’s paintings of slave girls echo the drama and mood of the poem, with its swaying, drowsy use of language.


“Weave a circle ’round him thrice,
And close your eyes in holy dread:
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise!”



“Perfectly painted, with an absolute precision of line and a masterly use of colour, Gérôme’s works, despite the academic nature of his subjects and compositions, established a more complex relationship with modern art than might seem to be the case at first sight. This issue has been the subject of recent attention on the part of art historians when reassessing Gérôme’s work and artistic personality. He combined the Romantic interest in reproducing subjects from the classical world, the Far East and even French history with a rationalist desire to offer a truthful account, with the latter intention even prevailing over the need to make the composition intelligible and leading him to infringe academic norms on occasions”. WIKI


Gérôme was one of the most famous painters of his day, although he was also the subject of criticism and controversy throughout his career. His popularity was largely the result of his careful promotion of his works, which became known beyond the frontiers of France and even reached the United States where he was one of the most admired and collected artists from the 1870s onwards.


The fact that Gérôme’s work was so well known in the United States undoubtedly contributed to its role as a source of inspiration for some major Hollywood films. It is this dual nature of his output, at once both scholarly and popular, that makes it so important and appreciated today, both on the part of art historians and the general public.


“Art historians commonly describe Gérôme's paintings as cinematic, and his works have in fact inspired many film adaptations. Widely circulated as prints and photographs, these pictures achieved a global celebrity status by the end of the 19th century. Thus, when early filmmakers referenced these images in their films, they knew that audiences would recognize them.


Gérôme continues to influence filmmakers to this day. In this lecture, Marc Gotlieb, director of the graduate program in the history of art at Williams College, introduces Jean-Léon Gérôme's paintings through the lens of modern cinema. This perspective—characterized by Hollywood and its approach to storytelling and suspense—brings to life pictures that once captivated the attention of audiences across Europe and the United States, even as those pictures were anathema to Modernist aesthetics.”
From Gérôme's Cinematic Imagination. The Getty Centre.


Today, in Europe and America, we don’t really think about the Orient. These days we call the region the Middle East. And when we think about the Middle East, we think about isis, beheadings in the desert; bombings and shootings in Paris. Lee Rigby, hacked to death in front of a horrified public.


Sad isn’t it? It shouldn’t be like that -- but it is. Yet Gérôme is showing us a strange fiction of the “Other” that gives the West a valuable territory of fantasy and desire, which I think is still valid in the 21st century.


“Today the West is bleakly incurious about the history of Islam, its cultural heritage, its art, peoples and learning. There's a blank wall of terror.”
Jonathan Jones Thursday 22nd May 2008. The Guardian newspaper.



Jonathan Jones’ is actually talking about a book that he’s reviewing but his comment seems pertinent here. Our fears have dulled our curiosity. The “Other” has found a different face and it frightens us.


Well -- given the world events of the last ten years, this was bound to happen. The West is fearful. Our curiosity is stunted and yet the Orient still has a history and a culture that shimmers with difference and beauty.


The Orient has a profound cultural heritage of Art, Literature, Philosophy and Intellect. Great civilisations come and go. Time passes...time passes.


The Orient had written language, while we were still scratching our heads trying to work out whether or not the wheel would work.

As for the concept of the Orient itself, we have the wonderful paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme to remind us of that mysterious, soul enriching culture and its history. 

Thanks to Jan Vander Laenen for introducing me to the paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Love is a universal emotion. So is hatred; jealousy; rage; despair. Each emotion is hard wired into the centre of our being. We are programmed. Emily Brontë tackles each emotion through her characters, Heathcliff and Catherine, in her Gothic novel “Wuthering Heights”.


I personally think that “Wuthering Heights” is the great Erotic novel of the 19th and “20th centuries. Written by Emily Brontë, it was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It is Emily’s only novel.


The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.


It is now considered a classic of English literature, but “Wuthering Heights” met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Although Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was generally considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works during most of the nineteenth century, many subsequent critics of “Wuthering Heights” argued that it was a superior achievement.


“Wuthering Heights” is a love story. A love that is distorted; crippled. It is also a work of Gothic fiction, which is demonstrated in the opening chapters.

Today, in the 21st century, we can read Emily Brontë’s passionate story, and read into the sub-text and the explicit text, a tale of bondage and sadomasochism. We talk about falling in love, you can fall in hate too. The dominant, warring personalities of Catherine and Heathcliff, dominate and push the plot forward to its catastrophic conclusion.


The story is narrated by Mr Lockwood, a gentleman visiting the Yorkshire moors where the novel is set, and Nelly Dean, housekeeper to the Earnshaw family, who had been witness of the interlocked destinies of the original owners of the Heights


Mr Lockwood, visits Wuthering Heights and because of bad weather has to stay overnight. He is shown to Catherine’s old room. He speaks of a dream, a nightmare…


“…I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in—let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, 'Let me in!' and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear. 'How can I!' I said at length. 'Let me go, if you want me to let you in!' The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on! 'Begone!' I shouted. 'I'll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.' 'It is twenty years,' mourned the voice: 'twenty years. I've been a waif for twenty years!’”


In a series of flashbacks and time shifts, Emily Brontë draws a powerful picture of the enigmatic Heathcliff, who is brought to Wuthering Heights from the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw. Heathcliff is ragged, a street urchin, a gypsy boy. Heathcliff is treated as Earnshaw's own children, Catherine and Hindley. After Mr Earnshaw’s death, Heathcliff is bullied by Hindley. Heathcliff and Catherine love each other, but Catherine marries Edgar Linton, a wealthy neighbour from Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff 's destructive force is unleashed, and his first victim is Catherine, who dies giving birth to a girl, another Catherine. Heathcliff seduces Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, for no other reason than spite and vengeance, and marries her. They flee to the south. Isabella dies, and Heathcliff takes custody of their son Linton. The boy, Linton and Catherine, the first Catherine’s daughter, Cathy, are married, but always sickly, Linton dies. Increasingly isolated and alienated from daily life, Heathcliff experiences visions, and he longs for the death that will reunite him with Catherine. 


The novel begins when all four, including Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, are children. Catherine and Hindley are true blooded siblings, and Heathcliff is adopted into their family. That is all that we are told; if the reader wonders why Mr Earnshaw brings home this child, Heathcliff, Emily Brontë reveals no more; although a few critics have suggested that Heathcliff may be Catherine's illegitimate half-brother.


The plot unravels, and with it, the characters, blooming into bitterness and pride simply by being dishonest with each other. The entire drama is the destruction of the human soul. Brontë brings in a whole new perspective on love. It isn't the epic ballad in tales, or the beautiful quiet bloom between spouses; this is twisted, rampant, tragic and interbred with other less desirable qualities until it is no longer recognisable. Emily Brontë deconstructs love, showing it for the destructive force that it can be when we operate through dishonesty; when our motives lack integrity.


Heathcliff and Catherine are savage; their love is caustic, distorted. As children they roam the Yorkshire Moors like wild creatures; but as an adult, Catherine realises that marriage to Heathcliff would be impossible. She has learnt the qualities of refinement, and accepts the proposal of Edgar Linton.


In a dialogue with Nelly Dean, Catherine states;


“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…” 

In a chillingly profane declaration, Catherine asserts;


“Nelly, I am Heathcliff!”


Heathcliff and Catherine are like vampires, incessantly feeding on each other; exchanging blood for blood, wound for wound.


Their love is personified in the desolate and unpredictable Yorkshire Moors.


Catherine chooses culture and materialism, over Nature; her own nature, and the wild unpredictable Heathcliff. Catherine’s dishonesty to herself; to her soul, is the catalyst for the following tragic events.


But Heathcliff has overheard Catherine’s statement;


“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff…”

Heathcliff exits from the lives of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights for some time.


Heathcliff returns as a gentleman, having grown stronger and richer during his absence. Catherine is delighted to see him although Edgar is not happy. Edgar's sister, Isabella, now eighteen, falls in love with Heathcliff, seeing him as a romantic, Byronic hero. Heathcliff despises her, but encourages the infatuation, seeing it as a chance for revenge on Edgar. When he embraces Isabella one day at the Grange, there is an argument with Edgar, which causes Catherine to lock herself in her room and fall ill.


The relationship between Isabella and Heathcliff is one of Master and slave, beatings and sadomasochism. Heathcliff kills Isabella’s beloved little dog, simply because he can. And Isabella watches.


“The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered that I wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for herself. But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she had an inate admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! Now, was it not the depth of absurdity -- of genuine idiocy, for that pitiful, slavish, mean minded brach to dream that I could love her?”


And later, Heathcliff tells Nelly Dean of his marriage to Isabella;

“…I’ve sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back…”


While Catherine is ill, Heathcliff elopes with Isabella, causing Edgar to disown his sister. The fugitives marry and return two months later to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff hears that Catherine is ill and arranges with Ellen to visit her in secret. In the early hours of the day after their meeting, Catherine gives birth to her daughter, Cathy, and then dies.


I mentioned earlier, that the love of Catherine and Heathcliff is tainted with vampirism. The consumer of Gothic fiction will be able to relate the death of Catherine in terms of the vampire. Nelly Dean describes Catherine’s appearance;


“On the day of her death, ‘her appearance was altered, there seemed unearthly
beauty in the change’;”


And; “she has a ‘white cheek, and a bloodless lip’”.


Like a vampire, Heathcliff is a creature of darkness; he is of the night. He walks the moonlit, wild, stormy moors alone.


Catherine too, exhibits vampiric traits before her death. In folklore, rejection of a Christian doctrine is one of the few routes by which a person may spontaneously become a vampire. Catherine rejects Christian notions of the afterlife, both in the dream she relates to Nelly, in which she is thrust out of heaven, and in her declaration to Heathcliff that;


“‘they may bury me twelve feet deep but I won’t rest till you are with me I never will!’”


Catherine also displays vampiric traits in an incident that results from
her temporary removal at age fifteen to Thrushcross Grange: the sudden deaths of
both Linton parents. After young Heathcliff disappears, Catherine tells Nelly she is
‘starving’, and falls ill. The Lintons invite her to recuperate at their home, where both parents ‘took the fever, and died within a few days of each other’


When the two are separated, both are forced to refocus their vampiric desire to consume; while Catherine eventually turns her consumptive drive inward, Heathcliff turns his outward, creating a vortex that consumes and destroys all in its reach.


But Heathcliff’s vampirism takes a more literal sense, when he tells Nelly Dean that he has been in considerable proximity with Catherine's body; is Heathcliff the vampire, gloating greedily over Catherine‘s corpse? Or are we to take Nelly’s disapproval as a sign that Heathcliff has committed an act of necrophilia? The passage is chilling; appealing to the dark, unhealthy side of the imagination.


Heathcliff tells Nelly Dean, that while the earth is being prepared for Edgar Linton’s grave, he opens Catherine’s coffin.


“I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again -- it is hers yet -- he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up…”


Catherine’s remains are uncorrupted after eighteen years in the ground. Another sign of the vampire. In Heathcliff's viewing of Catherine's corpse, and knowing Heathcliff as the reader now does, I think that a suspicion of necrophilia can be justified. His plans of being buried next to her, hint of a consummation after death. But we really don’t know, Emily Brontë plants the seeds of suggestion in her reader’s mind; it’s up to the reader whether or not to let them germinate.


Perhaps it is something let well alone. But, such is the power of Emily Brontë’s writing, and her acute delineation of character, you just can’t help thinking…


But what is going on here with this shy, delicate parson’s daughter? She lives an insulated existence, close to the Yorkshire Moors, in the Parsonage, with her brother and sisters. Where do these wild emotions that she commits to pen and ink, come from?


It is well documented that all of the Brontë’s were avid readers. Emily and the others, would probably been aware of the work of their contemporaries; Edgar Allen Poe and Ann Radcliffe. They would have known Coleridge’s Gothic poetry, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. And of course they would have read about Lord Byron and following that, the Byronic hero.


Here is part of what Charlotte says about her sister, Emily, and the characters in her novel.


“Where delineation of human character is concerned, the case is different. I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates. My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued that what her mind had gathered of the real concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful than sportive, found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree, loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom; but on that mind time and experience alone could work: to the influence of other intellects it was not amenable.
Having avowed that over much of 'Wuthering Heights' there broods 'a horror of great darkness'; that, in its storm-heated and electrical atmosphere, we seem at times to breathe lightning: let me point to those spots where clouded day-light and the eclipsed sun still attest their existence. For a specimen of true benevolence and homely fidelity, look at the character of Nelly Dean; for an example of constancy and tenderness, remark that of Edgar Linton. (Some people will think these qualities do not shine so well incarnate in a man as they would do in a woman, but Ellis Bell could never be brought to comprehend this notion: nothing moved her more than any insinuation that the faithfulness and clemency, the long-suffering and loving-kindness which are esteemed virtues in the daughters of Eve, become foibles in the sons of Adam. She held that mercy and forgiveness are the divinest attributes of the Great Being who made both man and woman, and that what clothes the Godhead in glory, can disgrace no form of feeble humanity.) There is a dry saturnine humour in the delineation of old Joseph, and some glimpses of grace and gaiety animate the younger Catherine. Nor is even the first heroine of the name destitute of a certain strange beauty in her fierceness, or of honesty in the midst of perverted passion and passionate perversity.

Heathcliff, indeed, stands unredeemed; never once swerving in his arrow-straight course to perdition, from the time when 'the little black-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came from the Devil,' was first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its feet in the farmhouse kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim, stalwart corpse laid on its back in the panel-enclosed bed, with wide-gazing eyes that seemed 'to sneer at her attempt to close them, and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too’”.

Currer Bell. Haworth Parsonage. 1848

DAVID AND JONATHAN: WERE THEY GAY?

Jonathan's Token to David
ARTIST: Lord Frederick Leighton
OWNER: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:United Kingdom

Many gay men believe that Jonathan and David were same sex lovers, based on the way God presents their story in scripture and based on the Hebrew words used to describe their relationship.

Some gay men and many non gays disagree, insisting that the florid language and men kissing men is typical Middle Eastern behaviour, and in no way indicates a homosexual relationship.

Non gays allege that the Bible strictly forbids all homosexual activity therefore Jonathan and David could not be gay. The reasoning is that if they were gay lovers, God would not laud their partnership in such positive fashion.
Gay Christian 101


It’s a simple enough story, the tale of David and Jonathan, yet a debate arises, as to whether the two guys were simply friends, or whether they were lovers. It’s a pretty intense relationship, whatever way you look at it. I loved the story when I was a child, these two handsome, noble men, swearing undying love for one another, despite the disapproval of Jonathan’s father, Saul.

I didn’t understand, as a child what it is that Saul is objecting to. I thought he was just jealous. Now, I do understand and I think when Saul loses it and throws a spear at Jonathan his son, well, it suddenly becomes clear.

In the King James Bible 1769. I Samuel. Chapter 20. V.30 we are told;


“Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said unto him, Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman, do I not know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse (David) to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother’s nakedness?”


The reference to the nakedness of one's parents is one of the methods used in the Bible to refer to a sexual relationship.  Jonathan had chosen David as his lover. 


Here is a 1976 translation of the same passage in the “Good News Bible.


“Saul was furious with Jonathan and said to him, “how rebellious and faithless your mother was! Now I know that you are taking sides with David and are disgracing yourself and that mother of yours!”


It takes away the impact, doesn’t it?

This passage in the Good News Bible, is diluted to the extent you wonder if the translator is talking about the same event. Is the translator trying to manipulate the idea away from physical love, turning what can be seen as a clear case of the passion shared by David and Jonathan in the 1769 translation? He turns the relationship into something watery. They were friends and that is that. And if that is so, what is there for Saul to object to? Is he simply throwing a hissy fit, because Jonathan has misplaced loyalties?


The Good News translation, changes the point of view; here, Saul seems simply piqued, as opposed to livid.


Saul’s anger is reflective of the vile passage in Leviticus, outlying correct behaviour.

In the King James version, Leviticus 18.22 is translated. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.”

All of the various translations agree with that sentiment.

But there is definitely something going on here that makes the later translators uncomfortable. This passage in 1 Samuel. Chapter 18 v1 of the King James Bible 1769 tells us;


“And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”

And it continues in v4. “And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.”

The extract is highly erotic. It could be interpreted that Jonathan is not only disrobing, but is turning the symbols of his manhood over to David. 

This clarifies Saul's problem.  One of the most important duties of being a king was producing an heir.  Obviously, Jonathan had no intention of producing an heir, and therefore could not provide the final step needed to make good his claim to the kingship.  He loved David and only David.

The same passage in the Good News Bible 1992, is translated thus;


 “Saul and David finished their conversation. After that, Saul's son Jonathan was deeply attracted to David and came to love him as much as he loved himself.” 1992 Good News Bible

There we go again, they were just good friends.

“And Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him: for he loved him as he loved his own soul.” - 1769 King James Bible.

And in the Good News Bible.


“Once again Jonathan made David promise to love him, for Jonathan loved David as much as he loved himself.”

In 1 Samuel. Chapter 20.v42 the King James Bible says;


“David arose out of a place toward the south, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself three times: and they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded.
 And Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, forasmuch as we have sworn both of us in the name of the LORD, saying, The LORD be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever. And he arose and departed: and Jonathan went into the city.”


Here is the same part of the narrative in the Good News Bible.


“ David got up from behind the pile of stones, fell on his knees and bowed with his face to the ground three times. Both he and Jonathan were crying as they kissed each other; David's grief was even greater than Jonathan's. Then Jonathan said to David, 
         God be with you. The Lord will make sure that you and I, and your descendants and mine, will forever keep the sacred promise we have made to each other. Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town.”

As Saul continues to pursue David, the pair renew their covenant, after which they do not meet again. Eventually Saul and David reconcile. Jonathan, however, is slain on Mt. Gilboa along with his two brothers Abinadab and Malchi-shua, and there Saul commits suicide. David learns of Saul and Jonathan's death and chants a lament, which in part says:

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions... "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. "How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!"
2 Samuel. Chapter 1. V25 -27 New American Standard Bible.

David’s lament comes right out with it; “Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women.”

“The traditional and mainstream religious interpretation of the relationship has been one of platonic love and an example of homosociality. Some later Medieval and Renaissance literature drew upon the story to underline strong personal friendships between men, some of which involved romantic love. In modern times, some scholars, writers, as well as activists have emphasized what they interpret as elements of homoeroticism (chaste or otherwise) in the story. WIKI


“But some modern scholars and writers have interpreted the love between David and Jonathan as more intimate than platonic friendship. This interpretation views the bonds the men shared as romantic love, regardless of whether or not the relationship was physically consummated. Jonathan and David cared deeply about each other in a way that was arguably more tender and intimate than a platonic friendship.


David's praise in 2 Samuel 1:26 for Jonathan's 'love' (for him) over the 'love' of women is considered evidence for same-sex attraction, along with Saul's exclamation to his son at the dinner table, "I know you have chosen the son of Jesse - which is a disgrace to yourself and the nakedness of your mother!" The "choosing" (bahar) may indicate a permanent choice and firm relationship, and the mention of "nakedness" (erwa) could be interpreted to convey a negative sexual nuance, giving the impression that Saul saw something indecent in Jonathan's and David's relationship.

Some also point out that the relationship between the two men is addressed with the same words and emphasis as other love relationships in the Hebrew Testament, whether heterosexual or between God and people: 


When they are alone together, David confides that he has "found grace in Jonathan's eyes", a phrase, proponents say, normally refers to romantic or physical attraction. Throughout the passages, David and Jonathan consistently affirm and reaffirm their love and devotion to each other, and Jonathan is willing to betray his father, family, wealth, and traditions for David.” WIKI


The debate often surfaces. It is surprising to me that the case of David and Jonathan is so little discussed. Whenever there is a heated discussion about whether or not God loves homosexuals, the passage from Leviticus Chapter 18. v 22 is always quoted. With Leviticus, the language has simply been brought up to date. The contemporary ear can be in no doubt about what is heard, just as the people did who heard the message long ago.


“No man is to have sexual relations with another man. God hates that.” The Good News Bible

Here’s a reminder of what it says in the King James Bible.


“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.”



Whether it’s “hate” or “abomination” the sentiment hasn’t changed.


Concerning David and Jonathan, it seems to me that the translators of the Bible have a lot to answer for. The sentiment has definitely changed.


“We do not control language, it controls us.” I’ve used that quote from Jacques Lacan before. We mess with words, and they have a way of biting us in the foot, or any other extremity. How ironic it would be if language were to have the opposite effect to the effect that the Biblical Scholars were intending.


There’s an opportunity with David and Jonathan’s narrative to see homosexuality in a positive light. But that can’t be allowed to happen.


It is almost as if a slow realisation dawns, as the centuries pass, of what is really going on here. The Bible, which many believe is God’s word, is telling us that David and Jonathan were lovers. Really? They had sex!! Gosh! When guys get naked together -- stuff happens! The translators don’t exactly change the narrative, they turn it into something different, they make it uninteresting, and in doing so, they take away its power.


What is it that the Biblical authorities of all denominations are so afraid of? Perhaps because David and Jonathan’s narrative gives gay men, particularly, young gay men a positive role model. There is no way that the authorities want to lose their power. The power to condemn. The story gives young gay men the awareness, and a power to stop feeling fear, guilt and shame, because of their sexual orientation.


And that would never do. The Biblical translators, really are a piece of work and they want gay men filled with self loathing and repelled by their desires. They want them contrite and eager to be reconciled to Biblical teachings. They can be redeemed by obeying God’s word in Leviticus.


I think that the thought processes must have gone something like this.


Something has to be done -- after all David became a powerful King of Israel. The Bible tells us of how much God loved David. Jesus was David’s descendant. Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, was of the House of David. There is no way that the authorities can hear it said that Jesus was descended from a homosexual/bisexual. So the translators water the language down. The words lose their impact. The language used, really has taken away the story’s power. And in doing that, they have taken away the essence, the heart of the story too. The beautiful, and yes, erotically charged, love story of David and Jonathan has lost its poetry.


I wish that I could read David and Jonathan’s story in the original Hebrew. I think that must be the language it was written in. Or would it have been an even more ancient language; Sumerian perhaps?


I have a feeling that my emotions would take me over. I would tremble and weep.

THE SATIRE OF JONATHAN SWIFT

“A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” by Jonathan Swift

WRITTEN FOR THE HONOUR OF THE FAIR SEX.
1731



Corinna, pride of Drury-Lane,
For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent-Garden boast
So bright a batter'd strolling toast!
No drunken rake to pick her up,
No cellar where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour,
Four stories climbing to her bower;
Then, seated on a three-legg'd chair,
Takes off her artificial hair;
Now picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eyebrows from a mouse's hide
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays 'em,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays 'em.
Now dext'rously her plumpers draws,
That serve to fill her hollow jaws,
Untwists a wire, and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes;
Pulls out the rags contrived to prop
Her flabby dugs, and down they drop.
Proceeding on, the lovely goddess
Unlaces next her steel-ribb'd bodice,
Which, by the operator's skill,
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill.
Up goes her hand, and off she slips
The bolsters that supply her hips;
With gentlest touch she next explores
Her chancres, issues, running sores;
Effects of many a sad disaster,
And then to each applies a plaster:
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the daubs of white and red,
And smooth the furrows in her front
With greasy paper stuck upon't.
She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
With pains of love tormented lies;
Or, if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell[1] and the Compter[1] dreams,
And feels the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
Or to Jamaica[2] seems transported
Alone, and by no planter courted;
Or, near Fleet-ditch's[3] oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by;
Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables, and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But never from religious clubs;
Whose favour she is sure to find,
Because she pays them all in kind.


Corinna wakes. A dreadful sight!
Behold the ruins of the night!
A wicked rat her plaster stole,
Half eat, and dragg'd it to his hole.
The crystal eye, alas! was miss'd;
And puss had on her plumpers p--st,
A pigeon pick'd her issue-pease:
And Shock her tresses fill'd with fleas.


The nymph, though in this mangled plight
Must ev'ry morn her limbs unite.
But how shall I describe her arts
To re-collect the scatter'd parts?
Or show the anguish, toil, and pain,
Of gath'ring up herself again?
The bashful Muse will never bear
In such a scene to interfere.
Corinna, in the morning dizen'd,
Who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison'd.


 
Yes, it’s funny, it’s meant to be. Yes, it’s nasty, spiteful, horrible -- it’s meant to be those things too. Jonathan Swift’s ironically entitled “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” composed in 1731 and sarcastically subtitled “Written for the Honour of the Fair Sex,” reflects the relentless, emphatically unromantic, and savagely satirical vision that marks the later years of Swift’s art. This most unpoetic of poems presents the uproarious process by means of which an eighteenth century London prostitute prepares for sleep -- a process which involves her divesting herself of those various artifices with which she seeks to disguise both her physical and moral character.


Swift’s cruel deconstruction of woman is painful. And if we look at the beauty industry today, nothing has really changed. We’ve just got a lot more sophisticated; we’re so much better at deception. We’ve got airbrushing, cosmetic surgery, more ways to remove hair than you’d think possible. And there are convincing ways to add hair too. Those wonderful hair extensions; they come in every shade you desire. There are lotions and potions that Swift’s, Corrina, pride of Drury Lane, could only dream of.


But we still have Corrina; we see her physical manifestation daily, in the media. The celebrity who has gone too far; her bee stung mouth, making her look as if she has been beaten up, rather than enhanced. And those women who decide to increase their cup size by just a few more inches. Their mutilated breasts have become udders. There are men and women, whose glow in the dark teeth are bordering on the scary.


“A young woman is seen returning home after a night out, and removing her dress, breast-lifting pads, hair extensions, false eyelashes, and a dental plate. The narrator advises that bleeding gums are one of the first signs of gum disease, which is a leading cause of tooth loss. As the woman reveals a missing tooth, she concludes that Corsodyl mouthwash is clinically proven to treat gum disease.”

 


This is the narrative of a TV ad running here in the UK at the moment. But it could have been based on Jonathan Swift’s satirical poem.



But Swift was one of the many writers who championed the art of satire. Here, he parodies Donne's "On His Mistress Going To Bed". Swift wanted to show the reader "the other side of the coin" and to allow poetry to illustrate everyday occurrence. More than just a parody of the pastoral style, he points out the artificiality of the world around us and challenges the reader to look below the surface.


Here is John Donne’s poem, written in 1669.


Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown, going off, such beauteous state reveals,
as when from flowry meads th' hill's shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou, Angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite:
Those set our hairs on end, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why than,
what needst thou have more covering than a man?




 John Donne’s poem is intensely erotic; he is demonstrating a new explicitness about sexual desire and experience. Throughout Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, Donne's presumably male speaker tries to coax his mistress into bed. Donne's speaker fervently describes undressing and caressing his mistress; a poetic striptease. At the end, the speaker reveals that he is fully unclothed; however, it is unclear whether or not the mistress is undressing throughout the poem, or if she has remained clothed and the speaker is merely describing what her disrobing might be like.


The poem begins with the speaker calling to the mistress, encouraging her to come to bed. The speaker then goes on to talk about how he cannot be content until he engages in some sexual activity with the mistress. Several lines are then dedicated to the actual undressing of the mistress, piece by piece. The speaker makes several comparisons in relation to her clothing. For example, he compares her girdle to astronomical elements in the heavens. Their bed is compared to a "hallowed temple", and the speaker's physical exploration of the woman's body is compared to the exploration and subsequent settlement of the America's. While the mistress removes her clothes the speaker speaks of how beautiful her body is. He explains how he gets great pleasure in seeing the naked female body. In the conclusion of the poem instead of the speaker reiterating his remarks about the mistress's beauty, he speaks of embarking on a sexual adventure and sexual satisfaction. 


Throughout the poem, Donne has incorporated words or lines that could be perceived in more than one way. These double meanings add a hint of mystery to the poem. In line 2, he does not use labour to just mean work, but to work sexually. He makes many mentions and comparisons to heaven and things that are out of this world. This in a way alludes to the fact that he feels that this woman, or mistress, that he has lusted over, described, and conquered is out of this world. To him, she is like a heaven that he has discovered here on earth.


But back to Swift’s poem. It’s not enough to argue that we must read Swift’s poem in the context of its time. As far as I can see, we’ve always “enhanced” ourselves. Both men and women. It just depends which part of our bodies we want to draw attention to.


Eyes, lips, breasts, tight jeans, baggy jeans. I sprained both ankles in the same day staggering along in those 1970’s platform shoes. The desire for long, long legs. It’s dangerous trying to be beautiful and cool.


Corrina, pride of Drury Lane, is alive and well. She is everywhere. In every city, and small town that you can think of.

BLAKE'S VISIONS

William Blake  lived from 1757–1827. He was a Revolutionary Poet, an Artist, but before anything else, he was a Visionary. Because if Blake hadn’t had the visions, we wouldn’t have the Poetry and the Art.


From Wiki.


“Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to theChurch of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French andAmerican revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.”


From Poetry about.com


“William Blake was born in London in 1757, one of six children of a hosiery merchant. He was an imaginative child, “different” from the beginning, so he was not sent to school, but educated at home. He talked of visionary experiences from a very early age: at 10, he saw a tree filled with angels when he was wandering the countryside just outside town. He read Milton as a child and he began writing “Poetical Sketches” at 13. He was also interested in painting and drawing in childhood, but his parents could not afford art school, so he was apprenticed to an engraver at the age of 14.”


Except for a few years in Sussex, his entire life was spent in London. Its streets and their names took on spiritual symbolism in his writings, much as the place names of the Holy Land did in the writings of the biblical prophets whom Blake always regarded as his spiritual progenitors. If Blake’s visions were not true mystical visions, it is probably best to regard them not as hallucinations but as the artist's intense spiritual and sensory realization of the world.”



I had what I would call a vision when I was a child. It didn’t mean anything to me then, other than that I had seen something that wasn’t really there. I’m sure that a lot of people have those sort of experiences as children. I can see it before me now, just as I saw it then. It still doesn’t make any sort of sense to me. I believe those people who saw God, when they took LSD. Their visions were mystical, transcendental; as I think that Blake’s were. Who can say that they were not real? Who can question another person’s reality?


From Open Democracy. Net


Yes, William Blake was a visionary (but not a dreamer), aware of the realities and complexities of experience, particularly the poverty and oppression of the urban world where he spent most of his life. He had an amazing insight into contemporary economics, politics and culture, and was able to discern the effects of the authoritarianism of church and state as well as what he considered the arid philosophy of a rationalist view of the world which left little scope for the imagination. His critique was carried out by means of the language of the Bible, his own specially created mythology and the extraordinary juxtaposition of text and image in his illuminated books, by means of which he intended (as he put it) to "rouze the Faculties to act".



He abhorred the way in which Christians looked up to a God enthroned in heaven, a view which offered a model for a hierarchical human politics, which subordinated the majority to a (supposedly) superior elite. He also criticised the dominant philosophy of his day which believed that a narrow view of sense experience could help us to understand everything that there was to be known, including God. Blake's own visionary experiences showed him that rationalism ignored important dimensions of human life which would enable people to hope, to look for change, and to rely on more than that which their senses told them.




From “Masterworks of British Literature”.



“No poet of all the poets, was quite as enigmatic, visionary and, well, as far-out as William Blake. Although he ranks as one of the most important and influential of all Romantic poets, he had very little (if any) contact with romantic poetry or philosophy. In fact, from a very early age, Blake felt that he had a “Divine Vision,” a spiritual calling which meant for him a life of isolation in which to pursue poetry and art. Throughout most of his life, his brilliant poetry and illustrations gained little, if any, public recognition, and he lived in loneliness and abject poverty. He is, in many respects, one of the first British individuals to choose writing and art as a profession, and, therefore, one of the first stereotypical “starving artists,” someone who sacrifices a social and material life for the sequestered life of creation.


Particularly in his later career, Blake’s poetry grows in tremendous length as he creates phantasmagorical epics in which he creates a Byzantine and fantastic world that allegorises Christianity, creating poetic narratives out of the Fall of Man, the Passion story, the struggle between good and evil. He follows in the shadow of his precursor, John Milton and Paradise Lost. Blake, however, suffuses the Christian narrative with his own wild, visionary, allegorical and, quite often, bizarre poetry”.



No less important than his Poetry was Blake’s Art. In fact, the illustrations and prints that he created for all of his volumes of poetry are as influential on Romanticism (if not more so) than his poetry itself. He created wild, swirling illustrations of angels, devils, scenes from the Bible and brilliantly colourful prints showing scenes from his own poems. Blake’s poetry is meant to be read with their accompanying illustrations.





Blake’s two collections; “The Songs of Innocence”, and “The Songs of Experience,” are companion pieces. Blake writes the poems in the former from the point of view of childlike innocence, and generally represents both a perspective that has not gained knowledge and experience concerning evil, that is poems that derive from experience before the Fall of Man and Original Sin. Blake writes poems in the latter from the point of view of adult experience in the world, or, more aptly, adulterated experience, the perspective from human experience with sin; that is poems that represent experience after the Fall of Man, and when sin becomes wrapped up in life.



Generally, each poem in each collection has its counterpart. In other words, a poem from the Songs of Innocence has its companion poem in the Songs of Experience. The most clear and famous example of this poetic dichotomy is “The Lamb” from Innocence, and “The Tyger” from Experience. The first mirrors a sort of nursery-rhyme voice of a child (of course, really, an adult creating the world as it might be seen by the child). “The Lamb” explores the Christian mystery of God’s unconditional love evidenced through Christ with complete and simple closure. All of the poem’s questions in stanza one, are answered with Christian but child-like affirmation in the second stanza. “The Tyger,” from Experience, however, is a comparatively dark and terrifying experience. In contrast to the innocent cuddliness of the Lamb, and the sweet question-answer between the child and the lamb, the Tyger depicts a fiery, powerful and dangerous creature. There is evident imagery of fire, darkness and hell. Whereas “The Lamb” answers all of the questions posed, “The Tyger” consists entirely of unanswered questions. Of course, the majority of the theological questions posed in the poem do not have answers.”

I want to look a little more closely at two of Blake’s poems from “Songs of Experience”.

In “The Sick Rose”, here Blake is the Revolutionary. He is talking about unacceptable desires: “his dark secret love” is a euphemism for corruption; not such a surprising idea in Blake’s day in a London rife with prostitution and where marriage was the socially acceptable surface that covered a multitude of other less socially-acceptable “sins”. This is, after all, about experience.





O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.



While the rose exists as a beautiful natural object that has become infected by a worm, it also exists as a literary rose, the conventional symbol of love. The image of the worm resonates with the Biblical serpent and also suggests a phallus. Worms are quintessentially earthbound, and symbolize death and decay. The "bed" into which the worm creeps denotes both the natural flowerbed and also the lovers' bed. The rose is sick, and the poem implies that love is sick as well. Yet the rose is unaware of its sickness. Of course, an actual rose could not know anything about its own condition, and so the emphasis falls on the allegorical suggestion that it is love that does not recognize its own ailing state. This results partly from the insidious secrecy with which the "worm" performs its work of corruption--not only is it invisible, it enters the bed at night. This secrecy indeed constitutes part of the infection itself. The "crimson joy" of the rose connotes both sexual pleasure and shame, thus joining the two concepts in a way that Blake thought was perverted and unhealthy. The rose's joyful attitude toward love is tainted by the aura of shame and secrecy that our culture attaches to love.



The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 
On what wings dare he aspire? 
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
 
And what shoulder, & what art. 
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 
And when thy heart began to beat, 
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
 
What the hammer? what the chain? 
In what furnace was thy brain? 
What the anvil? what dread grasp 
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
 
When the stars threw down their spears, 
And watered heaven with their tears, 
Did he smile his work to see? 
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
 
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?







To go to someway to understanding “The Tyger”, we need to know Blake's symbols. One of the central themes in his major works is that of the Creator as a blacksmith. This is both God the Creator (personified in Blake's myth as Los) and Blake himself (again with Los as his alter-ego.) Blake identified God's creative process with the work of an artist. And it is art that brings creation to its fulfilment -- by showing the world as it is, by sharpening perception, by giving form to ideas.





From Pathguy.com


Blake's story of creation differs from the Genesis account. In Blake’s story, the familiar world was created only after a cosmic catastrophe. When the life of the spirit was reduced to a sea of atoms, the Creator set a limit below which it could not deteriorate farther, and began creating the world of nature. The longer books that Blake wrote describe Los's creation of animals and people within the world of nature.



In believing that creation followed a cosmic catastrophe and a fall of spiritual beings into matter, Blake recalls Gnosticism, a multi-faceted religious movement that has run parallel to mainstream Christianity. Unlike most other Gnostics, Blake considered our own world to be a fine and wonderful place, but one that would ultimately give way to a restored universe. Blake believed that his own visions, which included end-of-the- world images and sometimes a sense of cosmic oneness, prefigured this, and that his art would help raise others "to the perception of the infinite." For Blake the purpose of creation is as a place for our own growth, in preparation for the beginning of our real lives.



A casual reader or student does not have to understand Blake's mystical-visionary beliefs to appreciate "The Tyger". For the casual reader, the poem is about the question that most of us asked when we first heard about God as the benevolent creator of nature. "Why is there bloodshed and pain and horror?" Well, we’ve all heard various answers that are obviously not true and "The Tyger",in finishing without an answer, is more honest than the unsatisfactory answers we have been given, regarding this essential question of faith.


I think that "The Tyger" is about having your reason overwhelmed at once by the beauty and the horror of the natural world. "When the stars threw down their spears / And watered heaven with their tears" is the most difficult section of "The Tyger". In the creation story in "Job", the stars sing for joy at creation, a scene that Blake illustrated. While Blake greatly appreciated the explosion of scientific knowledge during his era, the beauty and power of the poem illustrates that there is something about seeing a Tyger that we can't learn from science. Perhaps he is saying that we should wonder more; let ourselves go, and permit the sense of awe and fear that defies reason. And Blake's contemporary "rationalists" who had hoped for a tame, gentle world guided by kindness and understanding must face the reality of the Tyger.



The Tyger draws us are into the presence of a transcendent mystery at the very heart of creation. It inspires a certain horror and a sense of awe, that, and a certain terrible beauty.



In his own time, Blake was often ridiculed; whether he cared or not, we don’t know. But it is Fantastic that we have his Art, his Poetry and his Visions -- and that is Fantastic, in the true sense of the word.


I think that you can see most of William Blake's artwork at The Tate Gallery in London.

THE FEMALE PAEDOPHILE