The Unity of Contraries in William Blake's World of Vegetation

抄録

William Blake, English-romantic poet and copperplate engraving artist, often compares human to vegetable organism in his late prophetic books. This paper is an attempt to analyze the unity of ‘contraries’ through the association between Blake's world of vegetation and the Bible, especially, The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. First, I trace the sources of inspiration for Blake in Celtic culture, Christianity and philosophy. And next, I discuss the unity of contraries into ‘the Poetic Genius’ as Blake's dialectic in his world of vegetation.

Around the time when Blake wrote “To the Muses” in his first work, Poetical Sketches, muses were the very existence of scholarship. But gradually his confidence in muses began to waver. Muses are the daughters of ‘Mnemosyne’ and so Blake regarded the works inspired by muses as not exactly a good art. For Blake, ‘the Poetic Genius’ is the most important existence.

As for the common terms between Blake's prophecy and The Book of Ezekiel, I deal with two specific examples, the analogy of human likened to vegetable and ‘four.’ Both also have the similar plot, the division and unity of the personified ‘Jerusalem,’ and the process in which Jerusalem went to ruin, and later it was rebuilt as a theocracy.