4

no one would quarrel with Blake's intuition of the nature of mind, but even the most sympathetic must lament the form of expression which that intention took. His insight was of the singleness of mind, and therefore of its appalling complexity .... Yet the proliferation of characters, the splittings the reproductions, the dislocations, that are so bewildering, even the confusions of identity whereby one character suddenly becomes another--all these serve rather to remind us of his insight rather than to express it.¹¹

Schorer concludes his penetrating analysis of the psychological depths poem

reveals with the view that, as poetry. The Four Zoas fails to meet acceptable

standards of taste:

as poetry, it was disastrous to take this way of

showing that states of mind, involving the whole being, are in a constant flux involving perpetual external and organic interchanges, appearing now in one form with one activity and function, and now in another form with a subtly or utterly different activity and function. The possibilities are both too vast and too complex for form.12

Like Schorer, J. Bronowski finds it difficult to accept that Blake had carefully structured the poem:

Blake himself knew that . . . his symbolism is held together only by his energy and his imaginative insight. For Blake was trying to make men give up systems, rationalists and religious alike.13

In a similar vein John Beer believes that

[there] are moments when Blake, in the strength

of his obstinacy, has recourse to a purely arbitrary

system.14

Schorer, The Politics of Vision, p.290.

12 Ibid., p. 290.

13 J. Bronowski, William Blake 1757-1827:A Man Without a

Mask, pp, 10-11; see also pp. 56-57, 97-128.

14

John Beer, Blake's Humanism (New York: Manchester University

Press Barnes & Noble Inc., 1968), p. 201; see also pp. 216-217.