And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Since Blake’s poem is clearly invoking the legend that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain — indeed even brought a young Jesus with him on an earlier visit — the popular reading of the “dark Satanic Mills” as being the factories of the early Industrial Revolution does not make a great deal of sense.
The brooding monuments of Britain’s pagan past make more historical sense, particularly as there is even sketch evidence from Blake’s papers.
This is also the Saturday chit-chat post.
15 Comments
Lorenzo, at university I did a unit on Blake and his works in my BA. It was agreed that Blake did not mean the industrial mills in that poem.
The possibility we discussed there was that Oxford and Cambridge were the dark satanic mills. In Blake’s opinion, Oxford and Cambridge churned out people whose horizons were limited by the particular thought patterns they learned there, hence they were “dark satanic mills” limiting intelligent individuals from expanding their views out in the way that he had.
Blake’s Satanic figure is Urizen, representing conventional reason and law, and the dialectical opposite is Orc, representing creative energy and passion. Orc is also the spirit of revolution. Urizen is to be resisted because he circumscribes people’s minds and behaviours and limits their imagination according to what is conventional.
Anyway, any thoughts welcome. Blake was such an interesting fellow. I’d always thought he was just nuts prior to undertaking this subject, but there was a method in his madness, as it were, and quite a detailed insight into how passion and sexuality drive the human personality.
If he wrote the poem today he’d be in strife with the Israelis and the Palestinians.
LE@1 I had heard of the Oxford and Cambridge theory, but was not aware there was any textual evidence for it.
Something that has amused me for a while, and with a legal bent to it. Hard to say which is the best, but maybe “was that a yes or a no?” just edges the rest.
Just discussed this poem over with the Baron and we’re both a bit doubtful over the idea that the poem Jerusalem describes Joseph of Arimethea coming to England… I had always assumed without thinking about it much that it was about Christ coming to England; obviously this is not plausible in a limited historical interpretation, but maybe Blake was either being ambiguous in his intent, or metaphorical in that obscure way he had, or simply meaning that the Holy Spirit came to England following the death and ressurection of Christ. (“Lo, I shall be with you always.”)
TimT, I always thought it was both literal and metaphysical. So it’s intended to refer to the Joseph of Arimathea myth, but it is also intended to mean that those feet in ancient times stepped here (both physically and metaphysically), and they are STILL HERE and with us always.
Anyways, when I searched for the theory that Blake was referring to Oxford and Cambridge in this poem, the first hit on Google was my VERY OWN POST from 2006. HAH! How’s that for a self-fulfilling prophecy? But I’m not alone (see eg, here and here). No, there’s no textual evidence within the poem itself, only Blake’s resentment of the fact that radical Christians such as himself were not accepted at Oxford and Cambridge.
LE
Sounds like the ancient Greeks idea of the struggle between the rationalism and order of Apollo and the creative chaos of Dionysus.
KVD @ 4 – sorry – spam filter ate your comment 4 times…have rescued it.
HC, yes it was. Blake was very much into dialectical struggles (hence he wrote a poem called ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ fairly early on exploring this idea). It was also arguably proto-Freudian – Orc is the id, Urizen is the ego or perhaps super-ego.
LE, though I don’t see how it refers to Joseph of Arimethea – as far as I can tell there is no reference to this, but there is a direct reference to Christ (‘And was the holy lamb of God/On England’s pleasant pastures seen”).
The Oxford/Cambridge theory is interesting!
The Test Acts kept a lot of talented people out of Oxbridge: John Stuart Mill was another (for atheism), Alexander Pope (for Catholicism), for example. It was the source of a great deal of irritation.
Tim T, the argument is that it refers indirectly to Joseph, not directly. One of the Joseph of Arimathea legends was that Joseph was a tin merchant and he came to Cornwall to get tin, and took young Jesus with him.
Anyway, because I am a curious beast, I just went and looked up AW Smith, “‘And Did Those Feet…?’: The ‘Legend’ of Christ’s Visit to Britain” (1989) 100(1) Folklore 63–83. Smith suggests the following:
1. The Jesus visiting England myth did not arise before about 1890, but which was enthusiastically taken on by Cornwall/Somerset locals who all claimed He had visited them, or that Jesus had somehow studied with the Druids of Glastonbury.
2. In his poem, Blake was not referring to the Jesus visiting England myth, but it has subsequently widely been interpreted as such, and is one of the wellsprings of the myth.
3. The real origin of the myth is with a would-be prophet called Richard Brothers who lived around the same time as Blake and who postulated a “British Israel”. Apparently there was a theory that there had been a colony of Jews and Phoenicians in Cornwall and Somerset, and that perhaps they were one of the lost tribes. It was later adherents of the British Israel concept who came up with the idea that, “surely if the lost tribes were here, they’d bring Jesus too.”
If one is to believe Smith, it’s not so clear Blake was referring to the Joseph legend, because the bit about Joseph bringing Jesus along with him appears to have post-dated Blake.
Happy to send the article to anyone interested – I saved it in PDF format.
Nothing like posting on this blog to expand your knowledge
Had no idea that the Jospeph of Arimathea visit legend was so recent; it seemed classic medieval fanfic to me
Will have to put it into the same category as horns on Norse (“viking”) helmets.
The central Joseph of Arimathea myth IS medieval (with all those feed-ins to Arthurian legend too) but the Jesus coming with him part is the part which is much, much later. But it’s all part of an effort to tie Britain in with the Bible…
LE@13 That makes more sense.
Impossible to read the poem in full without singing it in your head. Such powerful music for such a powerful (though very mysterious) poem.