Now that would have been a happy new year indeed! This is William Blake's (1757-1827) vision of what God says in The Old Testament, when he speaks out of the whirlwind to the undeservedly suffering Job.

God's first speech in chapter 38 of The Book of Job is one of the most powerful theolalias (religious writing in which God speaks) in all of world literature. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your piety—the speech reflects perfectly what a vindictive, senile old sadist Yahweh is, branding man as a puny idiot in the face of God's created earthly wonders. "Hey, Job," brays the Almighty, "were you around when the morning stars sang together? I don't think so, loser!" Thanks, Almighty Dude, for your modesty and thrilling logic. Maybe I'll just smite you on one side of your cloud. That IS what you best understand, isn't it? Smiting those who worship you? Just to keep them crawlin', right, Big Beard?

This is among William Blake's later artistic works, one of 21 illustrations to the Book of Job, completed when Blake was almost 70 years old. If you have ever wondered what a masterpiece looks like, here is one. You can wait around dawdling on the corner for the masterpiece-man to drive up in his Lexus SUV and unload a "major work" into your trembling hands. Hey, you can wait for the boxing day sale of the eons—but you will not see the like of Blake's vision again any time soon.

Although the biblical story of Job is an account of undeserved suffering by a righteous believer, according to Blake, Job suffered because he adhered too closely to the letter of religious, written-in-a-book law, instead of allowing his own imagination to guide him in understanding his physical plight of bad luck and boils.

Job's suffering was a consequence of his humanity not of his paltry share of divinity.

Blake would have told Job that mystical spirituality must be explained reflexively too, that, as the ancient Greeks put it rather vatically "the way in is the way out."

Confused? Well, that's good!

Blake wanted people to employ fully our human capacity for wonderment.

Fat chance! He particularly loathed the credulous ninnies of orthodoxy running to ask mansion-homed priests and corrupt reverends, mealy-mouthed robbers of the poor all of them, to interpret Holy Writ, when it was, felt Blake, up to each experiencing imagination to supply its own meaning to spiritual moments.

“A professional engraver by trade, William Blake (1757 – 1827) was one of Britain ’s greatest printmakers. The twenty-one engraved illustrations for the Book of Job are Blake’s best-known and finest achievements. Executed in a progressive style, Blake’s prints are akin to expressionist and surreal images that were created one hundred years later. They also echo and reflect the visionary images of earlier German printmakers such as Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528).”                         from an exhibition catalogue

 

The introduction to Songs of Innocence (1789)

poem and engraving by William Blake

 

Thomas Phillips painted Blake in 1807. This picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

 

 

“To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your hand
And Eternity in an Hour.”

from Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

 

 

Happy New Year to all my visitors !