The Greatest Curse That Can Fall Upon A Nation

From Blake’s Public Address on his Engraving of Chaucer’s Pilgrims

This is Blake on originality in art. He’s talking mostly about engravers in England but he applies his thought to poetry as well. He attacks Monopolizing Traders and blames them for foisting bad art on the public and as a result making people cynical. I’ve put in bold face some of his more pertinent and amusing insults.

 

Originality in art and poetry is cyclically called into question. We live in a time when it is a post modern platitude to assert that there is no originality in art. Only people incapable of originality assert this; they elevate their own ignorance and ineptitude into a general rule. They do so even as they reject the notion that there are general rules. The only legitimate general rules are negations.

 

The production he is referring to is his engraving of Chaucer’s Pilgrims. This tiny excerpt is a taste. The entire Public Address (pp 560-571 of Erdman and Bloom’s Poetry and Prose of William Blake) makes fascinating reading, as do all of his marginalia and letters. Blake was no stranger to the aesthetic, philosophical, political and ethical issues we face. He was a revolutionary in thought, foresighted, but he judged for himself and didn’t give a damn who agreed with him. It is said he had 12 readers in his life time. Apparently that is enough.

 

“The originality of the Production makes it necessary to say a few words

 

“While the Works of Pope and Dryden are looked upon as the Same Art with those of Milton & Shakespeare while the works of Strange & Woollett are looked upon as the same Art with those of Rafael & Albert Durer there can be no Art in a Nation but such as is Subservient to the interest of the Monopolizing Trader [who manufactures Art by the Hands of Ignorant Journeymen till at length Christian Charity is held out as a Motive to encourage a Blockhead & he is Counted the Greatest Genius who can sell a Good for Nothing Commodity for a Great price  Obedience to the Will of the Monopolist is called Virtue and the really Industrious Virtuous and Independent Barry is driven out to make room for a pack of Idle Sycophants with whitlors on their fingers] Englishmen rouze yourselves from the fatal Slumber into which Booksellers and Trading Dealers have thrown you  Under the artfully propagated pretence that a Translation or a Copy of any kind can be as honourable to a nation as an Original  Be-lying the English Character in the well known Saying Englishmen Improve what others Invent. Thus Even Hogarth’s Works Prove a detestable Falsehood. No Man Can Improve An Original Invention. [Since Hogarth’s time we have had very few Efforts of Originality] Nor can an Original Invention Exist without Execution organized & minutely delineated & Articulated Either by God or Man. I do not mean smoothd up and niggled  & Poco Pend and all the beauties picked out and blurred and blotted but Drawn with a firm and decided  hand at once [with all its Spots & Blemishes which are beauties & not faults] like Fuseli & Michael Angelo Shakespeare and Milton

 

“Let a Man who has made a drawing go on & on & he will produce a Picture or Painting but if he chooses to leave it before he has spoild it he will do a Better Thing

 

“I have heard many People say Give me the Ideas. It is no matter what Words you put them into & others say Give me the Design it is no matter for the Execution. These People know Enough of Artifice but Nothing Of Art. Ideas cannot be Given but in their minutely Appropriate Words nor Can a Design be made without its minutely Appropriate Execution. The unorganized Blots and Blurs of Rubens and Titian are not Art nor can their Method ever express ideas or Imaginations any more than Popes Metaphysical jargon of Rhyming. Unappropriate Execution is the Most nauseous of all affectations & foppery He who copies does not Execute he only Imitates what is already executed Execution is only the result of Invention

 

“Whoever looks at any of the Great & Expensive Works of Engraving that have been Publishd by English Traders must feel a Loathing & disgust & accordingly most Englishmen have a Contempt for Art which is the Greatest Curse that can fall upon a Nation