The Myth of Creation in William Blake's The Four Zoas

Northrop Frye knows the cyclic version of creation myth in his reading of The Four Zoas according to which the human lives in heaven unified with God, unfallen state; he then falls and loses the harmony had with God, fallen state; and he should restore the previous unfallen state in Apocalypse or Last Judgment. Unlike Fry, while thinking of Maurice Blanchot I argue that Blake has created a new myth of creation different from the cyclic one by focusing on what Blake calls Beulah as the stage intermediate between spiritual and physical existence. In the non-original state, Beulah is the state of perpetual creation beyond dialectic and dualism known in Eternity and the life on the earth, a sort of becoming. For Blake, this proves that entities are not created to be manifested in the state of independent selfhood, but they are in relation with the others. This makes both selfhood and indefiniteness simultaneously possible to exist. It is Beulah itself which is all and the only space of existence opening itself from within itself. All entities including God are in interrelationship while being in the process of interruption (acquiring selfhood) within continuation (interrelationship) simultaneously. This demonstrates Blake's new myth of creation avoiding the primal crisis of the cyclic myth of creation. He has also introduced a new idea of relationship.

Vision and technique in Paradise Lost and The Four Zoas

U članku se Miltonu i Blakeu pristupa kao predstavnicima onoga što bismo mogli nazvati vizionarskom tradicijiom u engleskom pjesništvu. Usredotočujući se na djela Izgubljeni Raj i Četiri Zaosa učinjen je pokušaj da se: prvo, dadu obrisi motiva koje otjelovljuju ove tekstovi i drugo, da se naznače njihove različinosti. Nakon nekoliko opaski o tome što se podrazumijeva terminom »vizionarsko« dat je sažet prikaz pjesama. Mada oba teksta imaju identično ishodište, i najpovršnije čitanje razotkriva odlučne divergencije. U radu se analizira sljedećih pet strukturalnih razmimoilaženja : (i) dok Milton primjenjuje linearnu, determinističku organziaciju epizoda, kod Blakea je uočljiv njihov cikličan, zamjenljiv karakter, (ii) selektivno i integrativno korištenje materijala, (iii) različite karakterizacije protagonista, (iv) razlike kod predstavljanja prostora/daljine i (v) razlike uočljive u jezičnom sloju. Oslanjajući se na određene sudove George Steinera, Joseph Campbella i Arthur O. Lovejoya, predlaže se da se ove razlike objasne promijenjenom slikom svijeta, različitošću psiholoških tipova i nastajanjem jedne nove stilske formacije (romantizam).