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Perceiving More than Perception

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William Blake's Visions

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Abstract

Given that, by c. 1766, Blake had experienced ‘his first vision’ of ‘bright angelic wings bespangling … like stars,’ and, by c. 1809, in middle age, he was writing confidently that his paintings were based on ‘Stupendous Visions,’ affirming that ‘I have represented it as I saw it,’ it is not surprising that, at some stage, he would have needed to formulate explanations (if only for himself) of the phenomena he was encountering and how they impacted on his creative practice (E 554–5). In short, he needed to arrive at a working theory of perception congruent with his lived experience of ‘visions’ and, of equal urgency, he needed to incorporate it into his art if he was to express their power and impact.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    BR(2): p. 10.

  2. 2.

    For an introduction to There is No Natural Religion, see Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi (eds.), William Blake: the Early Illuminated Books (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1993) pp. 21–25. For greater detail, see Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) pp. 198–232. The discussion which follows in this chapter is indebted to their work.

  3. 3.

    The illuminated books Blake produced 1789–1795 are namely, Book of Thel, Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America A Prophecy, Europe A Prophecy, The Book of Urizen, The Book of Los, Ahania and The Song of Los. For their editions of printing, consult Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), Appendix, pp. 376–81.

  4. 4.

    Robert N. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake after Designs by Other Artists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) pp. 30–35.

  5. 5.

    BR(2): pp. 33, 39–40, 48.

  6. 6.

    BR(2): p. 40.

  7. 7.

    The fullest account is, Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

  8. 8.

    David Bindman, ‘The English Apocalypse,’ Francis Carey (ed.), The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2000) pp. 208–269.

  9. 9.

    David Worrall, ‘Illuminated Books,’ William Blake in Context, ed. Sarah Haggarty (Cambridge University Press, 2019) pp. 35–42.

  10. 10.

    BR(2): p. 33.

  11. 11.

    BR(2): p. 729.

  12. 12.

    Anthony Blunt, ‘Blake’s Pictorial Imagination,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 6 (1943) pp. 190–212.

  13. 13.

    Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake: No 12, Bampton Lectures in America Delivered at Columbia University 1959 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) pp. 25–6.

  14. 14.

    Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (London: Macmillan 2001).

  15. 15.

    Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake: No 12, Bampton Lectures in America Delivered at Columbia University 1959 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) p. 30.

  16. 16.

    Butlin: 642.

  17. 17.

    Keri Davies, ‘William Muir and the Blake Press at Edmonton,’ Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, 27 (1993) pp. 14–25.

  18. 18.

    Thomas Wright, Life of William Blake (Olney: Thomas Wright, 1929) 2 vols. Vol. 1 p. 2.

  19. 19.

    Keri Davies and Marsha K. Schuchard, ‘Recovering the lost Moravian history of William Blake’s family,’ Blake: an Illustrated Quarterly, 38 (2004), 36–43.

  20. 20.

    Thomas Wright, Key to Blake. Blake for Babes. A popular illustrated Introduction to the Works of William Blake (Olney, Bucks: Thomas Wright, 1923) pp. 6, 9, 20, 35.

  21. 21.

    Thomas Wright, Key to Blake. Blake for Babes. A popular illustrated Introduction to the Works of William Blake (Olney, Bucks: Thomas Wright, 1923) p. 12.

  22. 22.

    Thomas Wright, Key to Blake. Blake for Babes. A popular illustrated Introduction to the Works of William Blake (Olney, Bucks: Thomas Wright, 1923) p. 14.

  23. 23.

    BR(2): p. 673.

  24. 24.

    Dominic H. ffytche, ‘The Hallucinating Brain: Neurobiological Insights into the Nature of Hallucinations,’ Fiona Macpherson and Dimitris Platchias (eds.) Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2013) pp. 45–63.

  25. 25.

    Dominic H ffytche, ‘Neural codes for conscious vision,’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6 (2002) pp. 493–495.

  26. 26.

    J. L. Barbur, J. D. G. Watson, R. S. J. Frackowiak and S. Zeki, ‘Conscious visual perception without VI,’ Brain 116 (1993) pp. 1293–1302.

  27. 27.

    K. Moutoussis and S. Zeki, ‘The relationship between cortical activation and perception investigated with invisible stimuli,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America 14 (2002) pp. 9527–9532; John-Dylan Haynes and Gerain Rees, ‘Predicting the orientation of invisible stimuli from activity in human primary visual cortex,’ Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005) pp. 686–691.

  28. 28.

    The neurobiological connections between perception and consciousness are still debated; Lionel Naccache, ‘Chapter 18—Visual Consciousness: A “Re-Updated” Neurological Tour,’ The Neurology of Consciousness (Second Edition), Steven Laureys, Olivia Gosseries and Giulio Tononi (eds.) (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2016) pp. 281–295.

  29. 29.

    Thomas Wright, Key to Blake. Blake for Babes. A popular illustrated Introduction to the Works of William Blake (Olney, Bucks: Thomas Wright, 1923) p. 14.

  30. 30.

    The Episcopalian minister and religious dance advocate, William Norman Guthrie (1868–1944) provides a remarkably open-minded discussion of Blake’s visions (‘Visions? Let us stop to consider’), ‘William Blake: Poet and Artist,’ The Sewanee Review 5 (1897) pp. 328–348.

  31. 31.

    David Worrall, ‘William Bryan, Another Anti-Swedenborgian Visionary Engraver of 1789,’ Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 34 (2000) pp. 14–22. See also, the Collected Letters of Robert Southey project, https://romantic-circles.org/editions/southey_prophecy/HTML/people, Accessed 18/10/2021.

  32. 32.

    William Bryan, A Testimony of the Spirit of Truth, Concerning Richard Brothers (London: J. Wright, 1795) p. 21.

  33. 33.

    David Worrall, ‘William Blake, the Female Prophet and the American Agent: The Evidence of the Swedenborgian Great East Cheap Conference,’ in Blake and Conflict, eds. Jon Mee and Sarah Haggarty (Houndmills, 2009), 48–64; David Worrall and Nancy Jiwhon Cho, ‘William Blake’s Meeting with Dorothy Gott: The Female Origins of Blake’s Prophetic Mode,’ Romanticism 6:1 (2010) pp. 60–71.

  34. 34.

    Dorothy Got, The Midnight Cry, “Behold, the Bridegroom comes!” Or, An Order from God To Get Your Lamps Lighted, Otherwise you must go into Darkness (1788) p. 26.

  35. 35.

    Butlin: 600. Butlin notes it as a tempera, ‘Untraced since 1809.’ BR(2): p. 335 and 335n.

  36. 36.

    Blake did not meet C.H. Tulk until 1816; BR(2): p. 326.

  37. 37.

    BR(2): p. 336.

  38. 38.

    BR(2): p. 292.

  39. 39.

    Simon R. Jones and Charles Fernyhough, ‘Talking back to the spirits: the voices and visions of Emanuel Swedenborg,’ History of the Human Sciences 21 (2008) pp. 1–31.

  40. 40.

    ‘Disorderly walking’ was fraternizing outside the Quaker faith. ‘Marrying out,’ marrying outside of the Quaker faith, was the ultimate taboo. Much like Moravian practices, such actions would normally precipitate a visit from other members of the congregation to give advice and guidance.

  41. 41.

    BR(2): pp. 341–2.

  42. 42.

    Dorothy Got, The Midnight Cry, “Behold, the Bridegroom comes!” Or, An Order from God To Get Your Lamps Lighted, Otherwise you must go into Darkness (1788) p. 92.

  43. 43.

    Blake probably used nitric acid possibly weakened with salt of ammonia, Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) pp. 78–81.

  44. 44.

    Mei-Ying Sung, William Blake and the Art of Engraving (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009).

  45. 45.

    Anna Castelnovo, Simone Cavallotti, Orsola Gambini, Armando D’Agostino, ‘Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences: A critical overview of population and clinical studies,’ Journal of Affective Disorders, 186 (2015) pp. 266–274.

  46. 46.

    David V. Erdman, with Donald K. Moore, The Notebook of William Blake: A Photographic and Typographic Facsimile (New York: Readex Books, 1973, revised edn, 1977).

  47. 47.

    Butlin: 201.1(5); 201.3(9); 201.5(13); 201.7(11); 201.9(7); 201.10(8).

  48. 48.

    Butlin: 245.

  49. 49.

    BR(2): p. 609. Alexander Gilchrist, in his William Blake: Pictor Ignotus (1863), gives a slightly different version: ‘In a vision of the night, the form of Robert stood before him, and revealed the wished-for secret …’ cited BR(2): pp. 43–44. Robert Blake was buried on 11 February 1787.

  50. 50.

    Anna Castelnovo, Simone Cavallotti, Orsola Gambini and Armando D’Agostino, ‘Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences: A critical overview of population and clinical studies,’ Journal of Affective Disorders 186 (2015) pp. 266–274.

  51. 51.

    Klaus Podoll and Derek Robinson, Migraine Art: The Experience From Within (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008) p. 123.

  52. 52.

    Renaud Evrard, Marianne Dollander, Evelyn Elsaesser, Callum Cooper, David Lorimer, Chris Roe, ‘Exceptional necrophanic experiences and paradoxical mourning: Studies of the phenomenology and the repercussions of frightening experiences of contact with the deceased,’ L’Évolution Psychiatrique, 86 (2021) Pages e1–e24: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evopsy.2021.09.001.

  53. 53.

    Simon R. Jones, Charles Fernyhough and David Meads, ‘In a dark time: Development, validation, and correlates of the Durham hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations questionnaire,’ Personality and Individual Differences 46 (2009) pp. 30–34.

  54. 54.

    Matthew Ratcliffe, ‘Sensed presence without sensory qualities: a phenomenological study of bereavement hallucinations,’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (2021) pp. 601–616.

  55. 55.

    Simon R. Jones, Charles Fernyhough and David Meads, ‘In a dark time: Development, validation, and correlates of the Durham hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations questionnaire,’ Personality and Individual Differences 46 (2009) pp. 30–34.

  56. 56.

    Simon R. Jones, Charles Fernyhough and David Meads, ‘In a dark time: Development, validation, and correlates of the Durham hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations questionnaire,’ Personality and Individual Differences 46 (2009) pp. 30–34. A rationale for the exclusion of the ‘benevolent’ question is noted and explained in the essay.

  57. 57.

    Anna Castelnovo, Simone Cavallotti, Orsola Gambini and Armando D’Agostino, ‘Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences: A critical overview of population and clinical studies,’ Journal of Affective Disorders 186 (2015) pp. 266–274.

  58. 58.

    Briana L. Root & Julie Juola Exline (2014), ‘The Role of Continuing Bonds in Coping With Grief: Overview and Future Directions,’ Death Studies, 38:1, 1–8.

  59. 59.

    Wei Yu, Li He, Wei Xu, Jianping Wang, Holly G. Prigerson, ‘How do attachment dimensions affect bereavement adjustment? A mediation model of continuing bonds,’ Psychiatry Research, 238 (2016) pp. 93–99.

  60. 60.

    Kamp, Karina Stengaard, Steffen, Edith Maria, et al., ‘Sensory and Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Review,’ Schizophrenia Bulletin 46 (2020) pp. 1367–1381.

  61. 61.

    BR(2): pp. 43–4.

  62. 62.

    Wei Yu, Li He, Wei Xu, Jianping Wang, Holly G. Prigerson, ‘How do attachment dimensions affect bereavement adjustment? A mediation model of continuing bonds,’ Psychiatry Research, 238 (2016) pp. 93–99.

  63. 63.

    Robert Blair, The Grave, A Poem, Illustrated by Twelve Etchings Executed by Louis Schiavonetti, From the Original inventions Of William Blake (1808) p. 16. The designs are by Blake but Robert Cromek, the publisher, commissioned another engraver, Louis Schiavonetti, to do the engraving.

  64. 64.

    Michael Barbato, Greg Barclay, Jan Potter, Wilf Yeo, ‘The Moment of Death,’ Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 53 (2017) pp. e1–e3: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2017.03.003. Accessed 4 May 2019.

  65. 65.

    Cameron M. Doyle, Kurt Gray, ‘How people perceive the minds of the dead: The importance of consciousness at the moment of death,’ Cognition, 202 (2020), 1043, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104308.

  66. 66.

    Julie Lavorgna, Angus Trumble and Mark Aronson, Benjamin West and the Venetian Secret (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2008).

  67. 67.

    Lucretia Thomas, Lénie Torregrossa, Renate Reniers, Clara Humpston, Exploring multimodal hallucinations and disturbances in the basic and bodily self: A cross-sectional study in a non-clinical sample, Journal of Psychiatric Research, 143 (2021) pp. 144–154.

  68. 68.

    G. D. Schott, ‘Mirror-writing: neurological reflections on an unusual phenomenon,’ J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 78 (2007) pp. 5–13.

  69. 69.

    Julia Simner, ‘Beyond perception: synaesthesia as a psycholinguistic phenomenon,’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11 (2007) pp. 23–29.

  70. 70.

    Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi (eds.), William Blake: the Early Illuminated Books (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1993) pp. 28, 31.

  71. 71.

    Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), Appendix, pp. 376–81. In 1796 Blake printed masked impressions from pre-existing illuminated books to make up A Small Book of Designs and A Large Book of Designs as well as printing further copies of Songs of Innocence and/or Songs of Experience in 1802 and 1804.

  72. 72.

    George Cumberland, ‘Hints on various Modes of Printing from Autographs,’ Journal of Natural Philosophy XXVIII (1811) pp. 56–59, Cumberland’s italics.

  73. 73.

    BR(2): p. 609.

  74. 74.

    Gourlay, Alexander S. “Blake Writes Backward.” Huntington Library Quarterly, 80 (2017) pp. 403–21.

  75. 75.

    Noam Sagiv, Julia Simner, James Collins, Brian Butterworth, Jamie Ward, ‘What is the relationship between synaesthesia and visuo-spatial number forms?,’ Cognition, 101 (2006) pp. 114–128.

  76. 76.

    Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) p. 23 and ‘Chapter 7: Writing the Text,’ pp. 57–60.

  77. 77.

    G. D. Schott, ‘Mirror-writing: neurological reflections on an unusual phenomenon,’ J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 78 (2007) pp. 5–13.

  78. 78.

    F. J. Allen, ‘Mirror-writing,’ Brain 19 (1896) pp. 385–387.

  79. 79.

    T. Fernandes and R. Kolinsky, ‘From hand to eye: the role of literacy, familiarity, graspability, and vision-for-action on enantiomorphy,’ Acta Psychologica, 142 (2013) pp. 51–61.

  80. 80.

    Michael Phillips (ed.), William Blake: Apprentice and Master (Oxford: Ashmolean, 2014). See also Richard Goddard, ‘Drawing on Copper’: The Basire Family of Copper-Plate Engravers and their Works (Maastricht, 2017); Lucy Peltz, ‘Basire, Isaac (1704–1768),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1619, accessed 11 Jan 2016].

  81. 81.

    Morris Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992) p. 188.

  82. 82.

    Robert N. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake after Designs by Other Artists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) pp. 34–35.

  83. 83.

    BR(2): p. 664.

  84. 84.

    Rebecca Treiman, Jessica Gordon, Richard Boada, Robin L. Peterson & Bruce F. Pennington, ‘Statistical Learning, Letter Reversals, and Reading,’ Scientific Studies of Reading, 18:6 (2014) pp. 383–394.

  85. 85.

    Robert N. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake after Designs by Other Artists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) p. 4.

  86. 86.

    Michael Phillips, William Blake: Apprentice & Master (Oxford: Ashmolean, 2014) Figs. 79–80.

  87. 87.

    David Drakard and Paul Holdway, Spode: Transfer Printed Ware 1784–1833, A New, Enlarged and Updated Edition (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002) p. 47.

  88. 88.

    Sergio Della Sala and Roberto Cubelli, ‘Directional apraxia: A unitary account of mirror-writing following brain injury or as found in normal young children,’ Journal of Neuropsychology, 1 (2007) pp. 3–26.

  89. 89.

    T. Fernandes and R. Kolinsky, ‘From hand to eye: the role of literacy, familiarity, graspability, and vision-for-action on enantiomorphy,’ Acta Psychologica, 142 (2013), pp. 51–61.

  90. 90.

    Robert D. McIntosh, Natascia De Lucia and Sergio Della Sala, ‘Mirror man: A case of skilled deliberate mirror-writing,’ Cognitive Neuropsychology 31 (2014) pp. 350–366.

  91. 91.

    Jean-Paul Fischer and Anne-Marie Koch, ‘Mirror-writing in typically developing children: A first longitudinal study,’ Cognitive Development, 38 (2016) pp. 114–124.

  92. 92.

    Helena Miton, Olivier Morin, ‘Graphic complexity in writing systems,’ Cognition 214 (2021) 104771, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104771.

  93. 93.

    ‘Percieves’ does not seem to be Blake’s preferred spelling. For other uses of ‘percieves’ and ‘percieved’ see E 35, 109, 133, 193 and 578. For ‘perceive’ and ‘perceives’ see E 592, 604 (twice), 608 (twice), 647, 750 and 751.

  94. 94.

    Gibson, Eleanor J. et al. ‘A developmental study of the discrimination of letter-like forms.’ Journal of comparative and physiological psychology 55 (1962): pp. 897–906.

  95. 95.

    David V. Erdman, ‘Dating Blake’s Script: The “g” Hypothesis,’ Blake Newsletter 3 (1969) pp. 8–13; ‘Dating Blake’s Script: A Postscript,’ Blake Newsletter 3 (1969) p. 42.

  96. 96.

    Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) pp. 234–40.

  97. 97.

    Sergio Della Sala and Roberto Cubelli, ‘Directional apraxia: A unitary account of mirror-writing following brain injury or as found in normal young children,’ Journal of Neuropsychology, 1 (2007) pp. 3–26.

  98. 98.

    V.G. Angelillo, N. De Lucia, L. Trojano, D. Grossi, ‘Persistent left unilateral mirror-writing: A neuropsychological case study,’ Brain & Language, 114 (3) (2010), pp. 157–163.

  99. 99.

    Mills, C. K. Mirror-writing. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 19 (1894) pp. 85–91.

  100. 100.

    Butlin: 261.1.

  101. 101.

    Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) p. 190.

  102. 102.

    J.M. Cornell, ‘Spontaneous mirror-writing in children,’ Canadian Journal of Psychology 39 (1985) pp. 174–79.

  103. 103.

    G. D. Schott, ‘Mirror-writing: neurological reflections on an unusual phenomenon,’ J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 78 (2007) pp. 5–13.

  104. 104.

    Sergio Della Sala, Clara Calia, Maria Fara De Caro & Robert D. McIntosh, Transient involuntary mirror-writing triggered by anxiety, Neurocase, 21 (2015) pp. 665–673.

  105. 105.

    Gourlay, Alexander S. “Blake Writes Backward.” Huntington Library Quarterly 80 (2017), pp. 403–21.

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    David Worrall

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Worrall, D. (2024). Perceiving More than Perception. In: William Blake's Visions. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53254-2_3

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