Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

“
Despojaos de la santidad y revestíos de la inteligencia.
” [“Relinquish holiness and summon intelligence.”] And then, “
El imbécil no entrará en el Cielo por santo que sea
.” [“The fool shall not enter into Heaven, let him be ever so holy.”] 10 That is, Blake also offers man intellectual salvation. We have the duty to be just as well as intelligent. Now, Swedenborg reached this point, but Blake goes further. Swedenborg was a man of science, a visionary, a theologian, etcetera. But he did not have much of an aesthetic sensibility. Blake, however, had a powerful aesthetic sense, and he said that man’s salvation had to be threefold. He had to be saved through virtue—that is, Blake condemns cruelty, evil, envy—through intelligence—man should try to understand the world, develop intellectually—and through beauty—that is, through the practice of art. Blake preached that the idea of art is the patrimony of a select few, who must in one way or another be artists. Now, since he wants to link his doctrine to that of Jesus Christ, he says that Christ was also an artist, for Christ’s ideas are never expressed abstractly (Milton never understood this), but rather through parables, that is, in poems. Christ says, for example, “I did not come to bring peace,” and an abstract understanding would be, “I did not come to bring peace, but war.” But Christ, who is a poet, says, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” When they are about to stone an adulterous woman to death, he doesn’t say that the law is unjust, but rather writes some words in the sand. He writes some words: surely the law that condemns the sinning woman. Then he erases them with his elbow, anticipating “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” And he says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” That is, he uses concrete examples, poetic examples.
    Now, according to Blake, Christ did not work, did not speak in this way in order to express things more vividly, but because he naturally thought in images, in metaphors and parables. For example, he did not say that given all his temptations, it is difficult for a wealthy man to enter Heaven. He said that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. That is, he used hyperbole. All of this is quite important for Blake.
    Blake also believes—and this prefigures a large part of current psychoanalysis—that we should not smother our impulses. He says, for example, that an injured man has the desire to take revenge, that it is natural to want revenge, and that if a man does not take revenge, that desire remains in the depth of his soul, and corrupts him. This is why in his most characteristic work,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
—I think it has been translated into Spanish, I do not remember if by [Rafael] Alberti or Neruda—he has the “Proverbs of Hell,” except that for Blake what common theologians call Hell is really Heaven; for instance, there we read: “
El gusano partido en dos perdoná al arado
.” [“The cut worm forgives the plow.”] 11 What else can a worm do? And he also says that it is unfair to have the same law for the lion—who is pure strength, energy—as for the ox. That is, he anticipatesNietzsche’s doctrines, which come much later.
    At the end of his life, Blake seems to repent and preaches love and compassion, and mentions Christ’s name more often. This work,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
, is strange, for it is written partly in verse and partly in prose. And there is a series of proverbs in which he spells out his philosophy. Then there are other books that are referred to as his “prophetic books,” and these are very difficult to read, but we suddenly find extraordinarily beautiful passages. 12 There is, for example, a goddess named Oothoon. This goddess is very much in love with a man, and she hunts women to give to the man, she hunts them with steel, and diamond traps. We have these verses: “But nets of steel and traps of diamond will Oothoon spread, and catch for thee girls of mild silver and furious gold.” 13 That is “
Pero Oothoon tenderá para ti redes de hierro y trampas de diamante, y cazará para ti muchchas de suave plata y de furioso oro
.” Then Blake speaks of fortune, of corporal delights, because for him, those delights were not sins as they are for Christians generally, and for Puritans in particular.
    Blake’s