Blake and Emerson

"Visions of the Daughters of Albion"
-William Blake

Then Theotormon broke his silence and he answered:

"Tell me what is the night or day to one o'erflowed with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains

[plate 4]

Wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched
Drunken with woe, forgotten, and shut up from cold despair?

"Tell me where dwell the thoughts, forgotten till thou call them forth?
Tell me where dwell the joys of old! & where the ancient loves?
...
Where goest thou, O thought? to what remote land is thy flight?
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings and dews and honey and balm,
Or poison from the desert wilds, from the eyes of the envier?

Then Bromion said, and shook the cavern with his lamentation:

"Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit;
But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth
To gratify senses unknown? trees beasts and birds unknown:
Unknown, not unpercieved, spread in the infinite microscope,
In places yet unvisited by the voyager, and in worlds
Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown?


So that was a very long and somewhat convoluted introduction to my very first blog. You may be wondering how in the world I am going to connect Blake to Emerson. I promise that I have a point. Together, the two characters of Theotormon and Bromion parallel the arguments made by Emerson in "The Poet." Emerson states that poets are the "sayers and namers" of the world. They "turn the world to glass, and show us all things in their right series and procession" (730). He also asserts that all of humanity has the ability to see poetry, but the poets are essentially the carriers of the world's keys. Poets are born with the innate ability to "come one step nearer than any other" to the things of the world. While we can all see the beauty of the world, and think for ourselves, poets are the decoders of this beauty and thought. Theotormon could be representative of the rest of humanity. He is in need of new thought, or a new way to view his own thoughts. "The inaccessibleness of every thought but that we are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it; you are as remote when you are nearest as when you are nearest as when you are farthest. Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode or in an action or in looks or behavior, has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our chains and admits us to a new scene" (735). Poor Theotormon just needed a "sayer" or "namer" to help him see the beauty in the world and unlock the prison of his thought. Bromion, villian that he is, resonates with Ralph Waldo Emerson's assertion regarding everyone's ability to see and sense the beauty of the world. Though we can see that which surrounds us, the unbridled potential that the world holds can only be unlocked by a poet. Things in this world are "unknown and unpercieved" but poets have the ability to remedy this.