The Eye Altering Alters All Blake ...

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
//-->Colby QuarterlyVolume 19Issue 1MarchMarch 1983Article 4"The Eye Altering Alters All": Blake and EstheticPerceptionNicholas O. WarnerFollow this and additional works at:Recommended CitationColby Library Quarterly, Volume 19, no.1, March 1983, p.18-28This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by anauthorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. For more information, please contactmfkelly@colby.edu.Warner: "The Eye Altering Alters All": Blake and Esthetic Perception"The Eye Altering Alters All":Blake and Esthetic Perceptionby NICHOLAS O. WARNERTHE current climate of critical diversity and methodological exper-imentation, it is natural to speculate on the value of various criticaltheories in approaching the notoriously recalcitrant work of WilliamBlake. Among the plethora of such approaches, two that reveal a strik-ing affinity with Blake's own esthetic theories and practice are E. H.Gombrich's concept of "the beholder's share" and Wolfgang Iser'sphenomenologically based theory of reader-response. Blake's work is,of course, in no way reducible to the concerns of these or any other criti-cal methodologies. But the two approaches to be discussed here providea useful theoretical framework for studying Blake, in addition to thecritical perspectives that have already been applied to his work.1The in-sights of both Gombrich and Iser, those of the former applied to Blake'sart, those of the latter to his writing, are particularly helpful in achiev-ing the "energy of response" that Blake, as Northrop Frye long agoobserved, demands.2Their specific connections to Blake lie in an anti-Lockean epistemology which affirms the active nature of perception,and in their emphasis on the artist's transformation of traditional mate-rial. Before going on to a closer examination of these connections, wewould do well to begin by looking at the clues that Blake himself givesus for probing his work and our relationship to it.INIBLAKE repeatedly seems to call for a critical approach geared to creativeperception and response: "A fool sees not the same tree that a wiseman sees"; "The Sun's Light when he unfolds it / Depends on theI am grateful to the American Philosophical Society for a grant from the Penrose Fund which madecompletion of this article possible.1. Among recent studies to view Blake through critical lenses other than the archetypal one developedby Frye, the most notable are, to my mind, Anne Mellor'sBlake's Human Form Divine(Berkeley:Univ. of California Press, 1974), which discusses Blake's work in terms of WOlfflin's theories of openand closed form; W.J.T. Mitchell'sBlake's Composite Art(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978), astudy of visual-verbal connections in Blake that often employs a structuralist perspective; Diana HumeGeorge'sBlake and Freud(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1980), in which each of these figures is read interms of the other; and Leopold Damrosch,Jr.'sSymbol and Truth in Blake's Myth,a densely allusivework that draws heavily on French linguistic and structuralist criticism. Gombrich partially informsMellor's and Mitchell's discussions of Blake, but Iser's work, as far as I know, has never been related toBlake.2. Northrop Frye,Fearful Symmetry(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 7.'18Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 19831Colby Quarterly, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1983], Art. 4NICHOLAS O. WARNER19Organ that beholds it"; "the Eye altering alters all"(E.,pp. 35, 257,476).3 Again and again Blake insists that what our eyes behold is partlythe product, as well as the object, of our own perception. This view ofthe relativity and creativity of perception forms one of the most impor-tant themes of that central work in the Blakean canon,The Marriage ofHeaven and Hell(still one of the best glosses on Blake's thought). Ger-mane to the whole work is the paradox that one angel's heaven is an-other's hell, or perhaps that one angel's hell is a devil's heaven. Evenhumanity's fall is seen from two entirely different viewpoints: "It in-deed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devils ac-count is, that the Messiah fell.&formed a heaven of what he stole fromthe Abyss"(MHH, E.,p. 34). And, in one of the Memorable FanciesfromThe Marriage,Blake gives his theory of perception a humoroustwist in the narrator's description of his encounter with a pompousangel. After showing the narrator a vision of Leviathan, "advancingtoward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence," the angel fearfully. . . clim'd up from his station into the mill; I remain'd alone,&then this appearancewas no more, butIfound myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon-lighthearing a harper who sung to the harp,&his theme was, The man who never alters hisopinion is like standing water,&breeds reptiles of the mind.ButIarose, and sought for the mill,&thereIfound my Angel, who surprised askedme, howIescaped?Ianswerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics. . . .(MHH, E.,pp.40-41)This parable of the relativity of perception demonstrates Blake'sbelief that seeing is not mere sensation, but a process contingent onexpectations and preconceptions as well as on sensory data. In mattersof perception, as in so much for Blake, "One Law for the Lion&Ox isOppression"(MHH, E.,p. 43). The eye contributes to the reality it per-ceives, as Blake never tires of asserting, most notably in his famousletter to the Reverend Dr. Trusler, and inA Vision of the Last Judg-ment.In the letter to Dr. Trusler (August 23, 1799), Blake answers the rever-end's charge of obscurity. His response turns into a manifesto affirmingthe relativity of perception and the importance of perceiver involvementin the comprehension of art: "You say that I want somebody to eluci-date my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarilyobscure to weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot isnot worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients considerd what is not tooExplicit as the fittest for Instruction because it rouzes the faculties toact"(E.,p. 676).A few sentences later, Blake gives us one of his fullest statements on3. All references to Blake's writings are taken from David V. Erdman'sThe Poetry and Prose ofWilliam Blake(Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970), cited in the text asE.2Warner: "The Eye Altering Alters All": Blake and Esthetic Perception20COLBY LIBRARY QUARTERLYthe significance of individual differences in perception and on the im-portance of the inner eye in determining what the outer eye beholds:I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike. To the Eyes ofa Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun,&a bag worn with the use of Money hasmore beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some totears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way . . . As aman is So he Sees. As the Eye is formed such are its Powers.(E.,p. 677)From Blake's letter, we can see that what troubles him is not a simpledifference of opinion or perspective, but rather the arrogant, positivisticdenial of the existence or validity of his own visions. Blake contemptu-ously rejects the assumption that perception is a passive and objectiveaffair, the mere registration of stimuli on an inactive observer. "As aman is, So he Sees," Blake tells Trusler; the perception and evaluation ofbeauty (the sun above a guinea, a vine of grapes above a sack of money)reflect the inner condition of the perceiver. Yet Blake could just as easilyhave said, "As a man sees, so he is," and, in fact, he comes close tosaying just that inJerusalem:Los rolled, his Eyes into two narrow circles, then sent himOver Jordan; all terrified fled: they became what they beheld.If perceptive Organs vary: Objects of Perception seem to vary:If the Perceptive Organs close: their Objects seem to close also(30:53-56,E.,p. 175)For Blake, perception involves creation. Thus, by looking only throughthe narrow chinks of his cavern, Dr. Trusler creates a frighteningly nar-row sense of reality in which he himself is trapped; because he refuses tolook beyond the confines of "This World," he can know no otherreality than that which "This World" offers.The reader will have noticed that Blake's statements on the generalnature of perception in his letter to Dr. Trusler are fused with his theoryof perception on the esthetic plane. Without transition or qualification,Blake's ideas of perceptual activity carryover to a consideration ofworks of art and their perceivers. By placing so much emphasis on therole of the audience, Blake makes the work of art depend on the per-ceiver for any meaningful existence. The work comes into being onlythrough the consciousness of the reader or viewer whose faculties aresufficiently roused. By the same token, that "which is too Explicit" in awork of art precludes the kind of esthetic engagement Blake calls for. Inpart, this explains how Dr. Trusler, at the sanle time that he condemnsBlake's work as fantastic, refuses to rouse his own faculties to meet thechallenging difficulty (by Blake's own admission) of that work. By sodoing, Trusler merely perpetuates the limited reality he perceives, andends up resembling the angel inThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell,de-tecting in Blake's work not the sublime songs of a harper, but only achaotic, fearsome Leviathan.Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 19833Colby Quarterly, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1983], Art. 4NICHOLAS O. WARNER21One of the more striking contrasts in Blake's letter, that between sunand guinea, reappears in different form just over a decade later, when itplays a significant role in the conclusion to Blake'sA Vision of the LastJudgment(1810), a highly important document in Blake's theories ofperception:Error or Creation will be Burned Up&then&not till then Truth or Eternity will appear Itis Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it I assert for My self that I do not beholdthe Outward Creation&that to me it is hindrance&not Action it is as the dirt upon myfeet No part of Me. What it will be Questiond When the Sun rises do you not see a roundDisk of fire somewhat like a Guinea 0 no no I see an Innumerable company of theHeavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty I question not myCorporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning aSight I look thro it&not with it.(E.,p. 555)In these last sentences ofA Vision of the Last Judgment,far from beingthe disoriented dreamer occasionally depicted both by admirers anddetractors, Blake demonstrates his awareness of what we generally callthe "real world" precisely through the very comparison he uses to dis-miss the ultimate importance of that world. Blake knows full well thatto most of us the sun indeed looks like a fiery yellow coin in the sky, butwhat is more important to Blake is how his imagination and the sun fuseto produce a vision of divinity emerging through the physical. LikePliny before him, Blake considered the mind to be the "real instrumentof sight and observation," while "the eyes act as a sort of vessel receiv-ing and transmitting the visible portion of the consciousness."4 Thetruest kind of perception is a senli-receptive, semi-creative state inwhich, as another Romantic poet was to put it, "we receive but what wegive" (Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode").IIof the statements we have examined so far are echoed in E. H.Gombrich's masterpiece of esthetic analysis,Art and Illusion.LikeBlake, and like members of the modern phenomenological school suchas Ernst Cassirer and Aron Gurwitsch,5 Gombrich challenges theLockean split between sensation and perception: "The whole distinctionbetween sensation and perception, plausible as it was, had to be givenup in the face of evidence from experiments with human beings andanimals. Nobody has ever seen a visual sensation, not even the impres-sionists, however ingeniously they stalked their prey."6 One may beMANY4. Pliny, quoted in E. H. Gombrich,Art and Illusion(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972), p.15.5. See, for example, Cassirer's "The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception," inPhiloso-phy and Phenomenological Research,V (September 1944), 1-35, and Gurwitsch's "The Phenomenol-ogy of Perception: Perceptual Implications," in James M. Edie, ed.,An Invitation to Phenomenology(Chicago: Quadrangle, 1965), pp. 17-29.6. Gombrich, p. 298.4 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

shinnobi.opx.pl