Uzbekistan state university of world languages english philology faculty

2.2 The uniqueness and significance of the "Prophetic Songs"
At present, an adequate perception of Blake's legacy has revealed the specifics of the author's irony, the definition of the plot-plot ratio of various poems.
The depth of the author's philosophical outlook was embodied in ten "Prophetic Books" - " The Book of Thel"(1789), "Tiriel" (1789), "The Vision of the Daughters of Albion" (1793), " The Marriage of Heaven and Hell "(1793), " The French Revolution "(1791), " America "(1793)"Europe "(1794), "Vala" (1797), " Milton "(1804-1808) and "Jerusalem" (1804-1820), together with the adjacent " Book of Urisen"(1794), "Book of Los" (1795) and " Book of Achania"(1795), which represent various versions and parts of a grandiose mythological epic that covers, according to the author's plan, as a new biblical epic, the destinies of the world and humanity from their creation through the fall and millennia of suffering to the coming restoration and liberation¹¹.
Blake's works show us how deep and subtle the author's inner world was. It was completely different from the one that everyone else lives in, which makes it clear what Blake himself is, and what his creative mission was.
He was not a poet "for everyone" and, apparently, did not strive for this. He wrote for those who, like himself, were concerned with the topic of spirituality.
A separate place among Blake's "prophetic books" is occupied by the first of them - "The Book of Tel" (1789). By the time of writing, by the simplicity and clarity of images and style, it comes into contact with simultaneous lyrical "Songs".
In the poems "Tiriel" (1789)," The Book of Tel"(1789)," Visions of the Daughters of Albion " (1793), the plot of the journey prevails. As V. Serdechnaya points out, "the poems are united in a cycle according to the principle of the triad thesis-antithesis-synthesis: the hero ofTirielis experienced and cannot accept the knowledge of something new; Tel, on the contrary, is innocent and afraid of knowledge; the heroine of the last poem passes from innocence to experience and becomes internally pure, combining both ways"
Each of the poems leaves a sense of incompleteness, aims to evoke a special reader activity; however, as the history of reading Blake shows, this opportunity was not immediately seen by his potential readers and is still not open to everyone.
The duality of the narrative, which combines the "literal" narration and the allegorical nature of the parable, makes it difficult to interpret Blake's works.
Blake himself distinguishes the generally understood meaning of the work from the author's meaning invested in it. Note that the science of "hermeneutics", as the science of philosophical interpretation of the text, its interpretation, appears only in the twentieth century, and Blake a hundred years before that subtly notes:"A tree that plunges someone into tears of delight, in the Eyes of others-only something Green that stands in the way." In the nineteenth century, no one saw the concept of Blake, they only saw something green
Blake's prophetic poems are characterized by intertext, that is, the relationship of one text to another, the dialogical interaction of texts, but this method of constructing the text is characteristic of postmodernism in the mid-twentieth century, where the text is often built from quotations and references to other texts. Here, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, self-repetition sets the most important trend in Blake's work: repeating the same situations, verbal images, lines, and motifs becomes a special way to create a complete author's myth.
In the poems "Tiriel" (1789), "The Book of Thel" (1789), "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" (1793), the narrated event is the knowledge of the world, the transition from Innocence to Experience (or vice versa), which are understood in the context of Blake's philosophy as two equal beginnings of being. The problems of cognition are described by an implicit author, but close to the characters, whose word is allegorical, but can be deciphered quite easily.
Here the old Tiriel, who lives in the world of experience, is contrasted with the innocent Tel, who seeks and fears knowledge; Utun, having gained the experience of falling, rises above it and remains internally pure, combining the features of Tiriel and Tel.
The basis for combining the poems is the typological similarity событияof the narrated event: the plot side is based on the same plot variants of functions: sending, traveling, a difficult task and its solution.
Poem " The Marriage of Heaven and Hell "(1793). Its main event is the overcoming of the opposites of being-good and evil, Heaven and Hell-achieved through the purification of perception. Features of the genre of the poem that bring it closer to the scientific, philosophical narrative - a detailed system of argumentation of thoughts, rhetorical techniques, philosophical theses. Let us support the thesis of V. V. Serdechnaya that Blake's contemporaries were shocked by the so-called "inversion of the sides of being: "Angels" are shown as hypocrites and moralizers, and "Devils" as carriers of truth and freedom¹²."
For Swinburne, one of the first researchers of Blake, the poem is a vision of a mystic; for the artist D. Linnell, it is the testimony of a madman; for the literary critic D. Erdman, it is an allegory of modern political events; for the philosopher J. Bataille, it is evidence of Blake's involvement in the world of Evil; for A. Glebovskaya , it is a statement of the dialectical nature of being; for T. Vasilyeva , it is a song of the exaltation of man.
There is probably no anti-religious sentiment here, because for Blake, the Bible is not just an object of reinterpretation: it remains for him a work filled with Poetic Genius; the poet calls himself a " soldier of Christ."
As Tokareva notes, " the poet speaks passionately about the disintegration of the contemporary church, but defends religion (as it should be according to Blake) - a means of uniting people and liberating the creative principle." The events of the poem are extremely interesting, it says that once the order of the world was broken, and the sides of existence were reversed, but order should soon be restored. "Devil" reports the limitations of human perception, "infernal" wisdom is designed to shake the usual stereotypes of thinking and behavior. Blake goes on to defend his remarkable thesis that for salvation after death, a person needs to clear the "doors of perception", that is, not be limited to the sensory perception of the world, draw knowledge, know both good and evil, and believe that the beginning of freedom will win.
The plot structure of the poem is based on the unfolding of the idea that changing the way the world is perceived leads to the inner liberation of a person. The narrator proves the thesis about the relativity of perception several times. At the same time, you need to get acquainted with the mythology of Blake, as if you need to recognize the proposed signs and unravel the allegories.
Blake appeals to those who know a lot, but are ready to rethink knowledge, who are able to distinguish the narrator of the poem from the Devil.
This expectation was not met by his contemporaries: Blake was not only popular, but even accepted by the readership of his time. Nevertheless, in the 20th century, the poem "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" became a cult text. The idea of expanding the boundaries of perception available to humans, which is relevant for this era, provided an appeal to the poem and Aldous Huxley (essay "Doors of Perception"), and the culture of the 60s (the name of the popular group "Doors"), and modern cinema (the main character of the film" Dead Man " Jim Jarmusch, William Blake, often quotes a poem by his namesake).
Of course, Blake's works are initially focused on the prepared reader, which led to the unwillingness of his contemporaries to read his works, because romantics preferred lyricism and psychologism rather than a philosophical allegorical understanding of the essence of events. Misunderstanding of the poet was overcome only in the XX century, which perceived Blake.
What did the author put into his "Prophetic Poems"? What stories did he re-describe? In fact, this is an attempt to create a new Bible, an attempt to describe the world in a new way. Its structure of theprophetic text consists of the actual speaker-the prophet addressing the audience, and a higher power (voice) that reveals special knowledge to him
Romantics claim that art provides a path to wisdom; but this is not a way to communicate ready-made truth, but a way to involve people in the process of learning. Poetry for romanticism is only a way, not a form of communicating ready-made wisdom. This means that the subject of Blake's teaching belongs to the coming era of romanticism. This is confirmed by the characterization of the poem by A. Zverev: "And although in its essence this is a romantic thought, you can understand it only by plunging into the atmosphere of the XVIII century that is living out its century"
According to T. S. Eliot, quoted by Tokareva, " Blake's poetry has the unattractive quality of great poetry." By some paradoxical law, as Blake finds his reader farther away in time, the "unattractiveness" of his poetry recedes before its grandeur. And the reader of today is perhaps more ready for Blake than his contemporary¹³.
In the poems " The Book of Urizen"(1794), "The Book of Achania"(1795) and "The Book of Los" (1795), the plot event is the formation of a false perception of the world by man, manifested in the creation of scientific, religious and philosophical systems.
In Blake's latest poems, the author's already difficult style of narration is complicated, many references to biblical myths are given, while the poems remain "encrypted", designed for deep reading. Just familiarity with the Bible and ancient mythologies, the ability to identify the scientific picture of the world - are not sufficient requirements for the reader of these poems. Blake's researcher, the Canadian Scholar Fry, has observed that "unlike Shakespeare, Homer, or Chaucer, who create' a smooth readable surface for the lazy reader, 'Blake's poems, like Dante's,' make it impossible for the reader to ignore the fact that they contain deeper meanings.' Another Blake scholar, Kaufman, notes (translated by Stepanov) that " Blake's art, endlessly revising the expectations of the audience, continuously opens the doors of perception."
At the same time, being familiar with biblical mythology, it becomes possible to correlate Blake's texts with the prophetic books of the Old Testament: "Vala" - the book of the prophet Isaiah; "Milton" - Jeremiah; "Jerusalem" - Ezekiel.
Minor poems can be correlated with the books of minor prophets. Blake's first minor poem, "Tiriel", finds correspondences in the structure of the book of the first of the minor prophets - Hosea: they are united by the motif of universal kinship, plot elements of the curse of the sons and the death of the lawless, the image of the righteous fowler (Gar in"Tiriel", the prophet in Hosea).
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" has many correspondences with the book of the prophet Zechariah: the poem also has 14 parts (not counting the later "Song of Freedom"); vision is replaced by vision, they are commented on by an Angel; the poem repeats the motifs of harvest and infertility, alchemical purification by fire and the fiery end of the world. The Book of Nahum is an obvious prototype of the "Visions of the Daughters of Albion": the female city of Nineveh is reflected in the image ofUtun, likened to America; both are disgraced, jealous, naked and captive; the people of America, like Nineveh, are enslaved - the stream of Nahum's prophecies actually turns into the plot of Blake's poem¹⁴.
Similarly, "The Book of Tel" and the book of Jonah, "America" and the book of Amos, "The Book of Urizen" and the book of Micah, "Europe" and the book of Habakkuk,"The Song of Los" and the book of Haggai, "The Book of Achanias" and the book of Obadiah, "The Book of Los" and the book of Malachi can be compared.
Imagination - Blake's supreme deity, to whom his most enthusiastic hymns are dedicated-turns out to be a key concept in Blake's philosophy. Imagination is opposed by Self-Interest - the rationalist mind, bound in a circle of mundane, only mundane, interests. Hostile to each other, these two forms of consciousness for Blake do not allow the individual to communicate with the God within himself.
At the same time, taking into account the development of biblical mythology by Blake, we can agree with Zhirmunsky's statement that "the struggle of Imagination and Self - interest is the motif that dominates all Blake's mythology, and this is the struggle for a complete, harmonious person."
In Blake's Marriage of Good and Evil, Good (Heaven, Paradise) becomes a passive principle that accepts everything, and therefore is not capable of development; on the contrary, rebellious Evil (Hell) seems to him an active principle, it, breaking traditional ideas, drives development. Good represents spiritual stagnation, and Evil-the tossing and struggling of the spirit, without which the movement of thought is impossible. At the same time, Blake remains true to his position and argues that two opposite principles cannot exist without each other and only their coexistence, "marriage" leads to true spirituality, and soon the hour will come when Good and Evil will return to their true places.