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Blake's illuminated books, produced from 1783-1795, are remarkable examples of complex syntheses: of form - poetry and painting; and of subject - the real with the mythical. This complexity has resulted in more than a century of debate regarding their interpretation. How do the text and images interact? Are the mythical characters veiled descriptions of real people? Or, is the work just a fantastical and diverting journey through Blake's vivid imagination? Their compelling and fascinating nature has led William Vaughan to comment of the books: they are "really at the heart of Blake's thinking. For Blake scholars they are where he begins and ends." |
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| Europe: a Prophecy does not set
out to be prophetic in the conventional sense: it does not set
out to predict the future. Rather, according to Paley (in Dörrbecker),
the function of the prophetic form is "to expose the otherwise
hidden motives and consequences of human decisions". As Dörrbecker
explains: "it is a 'prophetic' mode of historical representation
as interpretation" where "the history of the immediate past is
recounted as an exemplum with a view towards the future".
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Blake created his own mythological creations to populate his
poems and paintings: concepts and ideas became personified into
universal representations. He used these mythological
characters to explain and act out his singular view of history.
According to Martin Butler, Blake divided the nature of man into
four personified elements:
"Los, the imagination and eventual source of redemption; Urizen, the reason and vengeful Jehovah of the Old Testament as opposed to the merciful Christ of the New; Luvah, the senses; and Tharmas, the emotions". Each of these characters has an emanation, or female "offshoot", who is commonly a negative character attempting to dominate her male counterpart. Europe sees the interaction between Los and his emanation Enitharmon, who represents pity. They have given birth to Orc, the spirit of energy - another important force for salvation. Orc's birth angers Urizen, who feels threatened, and Los who is jealous; consequently Orc is "bound". The poem describes Enitharmon's dream as she sleeps for eighteen hundred years. According to Dörrbecker the dream sequence allows Blake to explore "the growth of the old order, of the unholy alliance of organized religion with tyrannical monarchy, and the challenge confronting the ancien régime in the revolution at the end of the Eighteenth Century". |
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| The poem opens with a reference to the birth of the
"secret child" who causes war to cease: an obvious reference,
according to Dörrbecker, of the birth
of Jesus. It closes with Orc, who has become free from bondage, appearing "in the vineyards of red
France" as an apocalyptic second coming. |
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| According to Piquet, Blake's Europe
slides in comfortably beside a variety of apocalyptic poems written between
1790 and 1820 by several authors including
Joan of Arc by Robert Southey,
Destiny of Nations by Coleridge and Shelley's
Queen Mab. Piquet suggests that all
of these poems offer a transposition of Biblical books on a
"different key". He suggests that they conform to a "millenarian"
outlook where history is presented from a panoramic viewpoint. The poet/prophet
uses flashbacks and anticipations of the future to simultaneously
control the three dimensions of time: "a past brimming over
with injustice and oppression, a present in which pent up energies
break out, an imminent future marked by the advent of a Regained
Paradise and the end of a woeful history of human suffering". |
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When considering Europe in the context of Blake's other Continental Prophecies, critics have often read it as a glorification of the French Revolution - heralding an impending end to the old order and the beginning of a universal liberation of mankind. However, this is just one interpretation. Competing theories suggest that Blake may have intended the Continental Prophecies to highlight the inherent limitations of political revolutions. Dörrbecker describes the multitude of different interpretations and readings of Blake's poetry as "the principle of rhetorical indeterminacy" where the reader is forced into an "actively hermeneutic role" through interpreting meaning. Readers are obliged to make interpretative choices and thus "participate in the . construction of 'meaning'". |
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Europe comprises seventeen
plates engraved, printed and coloured by Blake's own hand (an
additional small preface plate has been found in two extant copies
of the work - probably added after 1820). Blake was not a fan of
ordinary typography, instead preferring that his major poems and
epics should be read only in the illuminated printing style that
he had designed. This process, which combines text and image, was
apparently intended to mirror the appearance of medieval
manuscripts. Europe, produced in
1794, was one of the earliest examples of this new technique. The technique that Blake developed allowed him to have complete artistic control over his work: what Essick describes as "a unity between conception and execution". Blake largely used a technique known as relief etching to achieve the effects he desired. This process was easier and faster than traditional intaglio printing. Relief etching allowed the artist to paint the images and text (in reverse) directly onto the copper plate using an acid resistant varnish known as stopping-out solution. When placed in an acid bath, the uncovered areas of the plate were eaten away leaving the area "stopped out" standing in relief. The plates were subsequently inked with pigment specially thickened by mixing with carpenter's glue; this created a rich, heavy textured effect upon printing. The designs were usually tidied up later with watercolour and ink. |
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  Detail from plate 7: Blake has somehow captured fear, heroism and the inevitability of imminent tragedy in the eyes of the old man. |
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Certainly the illuminated books did not sell very well; their poor marketability combined with the high cost and time demands of creation resulted in very few of the books being produced. There are only twelve extant copies of Europe, of which three were printed posthumously. Of the nine remaining, two were printed in 1795 and another was produced late in Blake's life in 1821.
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| The Glasgow University copy, designated copy "B", is from the original 1794 printing - probably produced shortly after a series of proof prints. Martin Butlin suggests that copy B was probably partially colour printed in 1794 before being coloured in 1795 or 1796, when Blake's interested in colour printing was at its height. |
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We can trace the provenance of our copy right back to the first half of the Nineteenth Century. The first known owner of the work is Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, a friend of Blake and a remarkable character. He was an accomplished poet and painter but also had a dark side. He was strongly suspected of murdering his sister-in-law, Helen Abercrombie, as part of an insurance scam although insufficient evidence was found to charge him. However, he was later arrested for forgery and transported to Tasmania where he died in 1847. His copy of Europe was subsequently owned by Philip Augustus Hanrott who acquired the work from the book dealer H. G. Bohn, before selling it himself, to the book dealer French on 19th July 1833. Following a period of ownership by C. J. Toovey, Europe passed into the hands of the Cunliffe family where it remained until 1971. During the early period of its life, the copy was bound with two other Blake works, copy B of America: a Prophecy and Jerusalem, copy G. However, in 1963 Lord Cunliffe had the three works dis-bound. In 1971, Europe passed into the hands of H. M. Treasury in lieu of death duties. It was deposited in Glasgow University Library by the Treasury before finally being donated four years later in 1975.
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William Blake was a remarkable and contradictory character.
A man who worked beyond the acceptable mainstream of artistic
society, he did not belong to any particular artistic circle;
yet, undoubtedly, his artistic sensibility and vision was
influenced by the radical social and political milieu of late
Eighteenth Century London. As William Vaughan points out,
Blake was a new kind of artist - a harbinger of what was to come
- "The very idea of the artist as an intransigent
individualist emerged as a result of the intellectual and
political ferment of his age". Blake's background is often discussed when critics try to explain or interpret his work. He was born into a non-conformist family of London artisans before going on to train as an engraver. The young William Blake was different from most other children - he reported seeing "visions": the earliest and perhaps most notorious one being of a tree filled with angels on Peckham Rye. However, these visions did not cease: they continued right into Blake's adulthood and according to Essick, "the intertwining of extrasensory perception and artistic expression [later proved] integral to his concepts of mind, art, and religion". Following an unsuccessful attempt at historical painting at the newly formed Royal Academy, Blake began to experiment more with his own style and subject matter. Unlike other contemporary artists he embraced his own imagination for subjects to paint. This shift in emphasis became central to how Blake viewed the world around him and the role of art. For Blake, according to William Vaughan, art only became worthwhile if it was, in some way didactic: artists had a role as "guardian[s] of the spirit and the imagination" in a modern and rapidly changing world. For Blake, art was inseparable from religion. He rejected traditional ideas about organised religion, instead believing that true religion could only be revealed through imagination hence artistic expression.
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William Blake's art was not popular during his own lifetime; for much of his life he was forced to survive by eking out a living through the generous and charitable commissions of a few close friends. It was only later in the second half of the nineteenth century that, championed by the Pre-Raphaelite movement, his merits as an artist and poet began to be recognised. |
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Now Blake is celebrated as one of the most important figures in western art and literature - a true icon. Blakeiana has become an international industry with his images and poems reproduced throughout the world and academic papers on his work and its meaning published in their thousands. As William Vaughan notes, "Even today . he remains a controversial figure . for some an inspiring genius . for others . an unsettling eccentric". On this important anniversary of Blake's birth, Glasgow University can be proud indeed to own a copy of this rare and important work in its Library. Another of Blake's remarkable illuminated books, Visions of the daughters of Albion, also held by Glasgow University Library will be on display until the beginning of December 2007. It can be viewed in the Special Collections display case on level 12 of the library. The display forms part of the 2007 Archive Awareness campaign on 'Freedom and Liberty'. For more information on the Archive Awareness campaign, please see: http://www.archiveawareness.com
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Other illuminated works by Blake in Special Collections: |
The following were invaluable in compiling this article: |
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Return to main Special Collections
Exhibition Page Robert MacLean November 2007
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