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Illustrated manuscript of Genesis : second title page

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
ca. 1826-1827
Accession number
000.33
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
13 x 9 1/4 in. (33 x 23.5 cm.) sheet: 14 15/16 x 11 in. (38 x 28 cm.)
Medium
pencil, pen, watercolor and liquid gold on wove paper
Description
Blake repeats the same basic design, and at least the same four uppermost figures, in this more highly developed version of the title page. All authorities except Damon (1924 and 1965) take this to be a replacement for the other version; but since leaf 2 is also an unfinished design, it is possible (although unlikely) that Blake set it aside and later began work on leaf 1. In spite of basic similarities in format, the tone shifts dramatically: the black, tomato red, and strong blue colors of leaf 1 are replaced by pastel green, pink, blue, yellow and rose. Adam and the halo/sun are smaller; his gestures, particularly the left arm, are less dramatic. The general effect is more peaceful and decorative and less dominated by taut and theatrical postures. The Holy Ghost looks to the right, rather than turning back to the left as in leaf 1. The Son now wears a billowing, diaphanous robe and stands (among clouds?) much as He is pictured in one of Blake's illustrations of ca. 1824-27 to Dante's Paradiso (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Butlin 1981, No. 812.90). A scroll cascades from His left hand and falls into Adam's upraised right hand. In light of the Son's cruciform posture, this scroll suggests a written covenant of man's eventual salvation. The first four letters of the title spring into vegetative life. Blake first used interwoven natural and calligraphic forms on the title page to Songs of Innocence (1789), where it also suggests a union of world and word (or, in the Genesis manuscript, world and God's creative Word). Blake was familiar with symbolic interpretations of plants and flowers from at least the early 1790s, when he engraved several plates for Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden. Blake probably also knew the Temple of Flora (1799-1807) by Robert John Thornton, for whose school text of Virgil's Pastorals (1821) Blake designed and executed his only wood engravings. Thus it seems likely that the plants decorating GENESIS are botanically specific and emblematically significant. Nanavutty 1947 has interpreted them accordingly. The three funnel-shaped forms dangling from the "G" are the seed pods of nelumbo nucifera, or sacred lotus, which Thornton describes as an ancient Egyptian symbol associated with Ceres (Nanavutty, 130 of the 1973 reprint). A similar significance pertains to the ears of grain growing from the terminal of the letter, converting its vertical form into a sheaf. The diagonal of the "N" supports the pencil outline of a serpentine stem ending in five petals which Nanavutty identifies as nymphea caerulea, the flower on the blue lotus. These emblems of fruitfulness on the left side of the design contrast with the flowers on the right. The first "E" bears three red roses, traditional emblems of martyrdom. The center horizontal of the second "E" is covered by a large blossom identified by Nanavutty as the lilium martagon, or lily of Calvary, also pictured on plate 23 of Blake's Jerusalem (ca. 1804-20). However, it is very similar to the two flowers on the title page to Blake's The Book of Thel (1789), usually identified as the anemone pulsatilla, or pasqueflower, described by Darwin. [1] In either case, the flower is associated with Christ's sacrifice and resurrection. Between the first and second line of letters are two trees, perhaps the feathery date palm (phoenix dactylifera), emblems of "salvation and victory as well as the matyr's sacrifice," but also of marriage when pictured in pairs (Nanavutty, 136 of the 1973 reprint). Blake pictures a palm with similarly descending fronds on plate 37 of Jerusalem. [2] Nanavutty (132-33 of the 1973 reprint) and Butlin 1981, 597, suggest the presence of two snakes above the left-most rose on the first "E" and rising from the blossom on the second "E," but these may simply be tendrils. The last two letters are formed of clusters of grass or grain, complemented by the light green coloring highlighting all letters. Blake places two large, fruit-bearing trees at the lower corners of his composition. These are undoubtedly the "Tree of Life" and the "Tree of Good & Evil" Blake names in his heading to the second chapter of Genesis. Nanavutty (138 of the 1973 reprint) notes that the Tree of Life is on the left, presumably because it stands just below Christ, but the trees are otherwise not clearly differentiated. Both have the thick, short trunks of the oak, a tree Blake associated with the Druidic errors of fallen religion. The four figures in the lower margin can be seen, in this second title page, as more or less human bodies with the heads (right to left) of an ox, a lion, a bird and a reptilian creature with only residual human characteristics. A few lines below them, particularly on the right, may indicate water into which the feet of the two central figures disappear. The two on the right gesture, palms outward, in fear or surprise. The two on the left are crowned. The bizarre figure far left, with arm raised (in fear?), sticks out his tongue. Multi-colored scales cover his left arm and right shoulder. The animal heads associate these figures with three of the Evangelists: the lion of St. Mark, the eagle of St. John, and the ox of St. Luke. No single beast is traditionally allied with St. Matthew, but the beast on the left may complete the group of four Evangelists, as Rossetti suggests (see 000.32). Blake's figures also evoke the typological parallels to the Evangelical beasts: the vision of the four faces in Ezekiel 1:10 (man, lion, ox, eagle) and the four creatures, called "zoa" in the original Greek, of Revelation 4:7 (lion, calf, man, eagle). Blake may have further associated all these foursomes with the river parted into "four heads" in Genesis 2:10. The equivalents to these Biblical quarternaries in Blake's mythological poetry are the four Zoas, each an embodiment of a fundamental attribute of humanity. Several passages in The Four Zoas, Blake's long manuscript poem of ca. 1796-1807, associate Luvah with the bull, Urizen with the lion, and Tharmas with the eagle. [3] The fourth Zoa, Urthona (also called Los), is not identified with a particular animal, but like St. Matthew he may be implied by the creature far left. In their separate, beastly forms, as presented on the title page, the Zoas indicate man's fall into a degraded and contentious state of division. Thus, the whole design, moving from top to bottom, represents a descent from imaginative creativity to the fallen nature of the two trees and the Zoas, a descent that parallels the plot outlined by Blake's chapter headings. The course of human history encompasses all these "states," as Blake calls them in Milton and Jerusalem, and thus Adam stands at the decisive midpoint in the composition. His feet are firmly planted in the material world, but his right hand is in touch with divinity through the medium of a written document. Thus, Adam is also a portrait of the reader, whose position is the same as he opens the Book of Genesis. Notes 1. See David V. Erdman, The Illuminateed Blake (Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974). 34. 2. Probably associated with "the Palm of Suffering" reerred to on Pl. 59 (Blake 1982, 208). 3. See Blake 1982, 318, lines 10 and 25 ("Bulls of Luvah" and "Lions of Urizen"); 331, line 10 (Tharmas compares himself to a "famishd Eagle"). These passages support neither Damon's identifications (1965, 151) of the figures on the Genesis title page as Lucah, Urthona, Urizen, and Tharmas, nor Nanavutty's list (139-40 in the 1973 reprint) of Urthona, Urizen, Luvah, Tharmas (both reading left to right). But Blake himself was not consistent in his associations of the Zoas with various animals. For example, "Luvah in Oc became a Serpent" (Blake 1982, 380, line 26), a statement supporting Damon's identification of the scaly figure far left as Luvah.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
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