12

to Wilkie and Johnson lies in its remarkable psychological depths, and Anne Kostelanetz Mellor makes a similar point, for to her Albion's fall and division is "psychological rather than physical."

Joseph Antony Wittreich, Jr. also accepts the centrality of McNeil's hypothesis when he claims that

the process involved here is presented in bold relief in what has been called Blake's 'new, loose, antimimetic form' of The Four Zoas, the poem in which Blake involves Milton's "anti-epic" as a precedent for his abandonment of the 'associative obligations of major poetry and by doing so threatens the mimetic mode itself'.37

He agrees also that the poem is a composite of brilliantly crafted details:s

by 1816 Blake had failed magnificently in his effort to compose a diffuse epic under the title of Vala and then of The Four Zoas.38

For their part, Wilkie and Johnson add much to an understanding of the psychological processes revealed by The Four Zoas* however, they conclude that the meaning of the work lies outside their findings:

a great deal remains unexplained. A thorough explanation would probably require major new discoveries about the psychology of artistic creation, perhaps about psychology in general. Our purpose in this book does not extend so far, though we hope our discussion of certain passages will throw some light on the subject. Certainly we do not believe that any single currently existing psychological system, model of the mind, or theory of the human personality can adequately explain Blake's myth and method.39

Anne Kostelanetz Mellor, Blake's Human Form Divine (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1974), p. 206.

Joseph Antony Wittreich Jr., "Opening the Seals: Blake's Epics and the Milton Traditions," Blake's Sublime Allegory, p. 42.

38

Joseph Antony Wittreich, Jr., Angel of Apocalypse: Blake's Idea

of Milton (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), p. 78; G. E. Bentley Jr.,"The Failure of Blake's Four Zoas," Texas Studies in English, XXXVII C1958), pp. 102-113.

39 Wilkie and Johnson, The Design of a Dream, p. 4.