History and Poetry: William Blake and The French Revolution *

William Blake’s poem The French Revolution is probably the first British literary representation of the revolution in France. Blake wrote it in 1790 and 1791, that is, during the first phase of the revolution, without the benefit of any historical perspective. It is remarkable that even Voltaire and Rousseau still represent revolutionary ideas in this poem; it was only a few years later that Blake associated them with the “Unholy Trinity”: the rigid rationalism of Newton, Bacon and Locke. However, the capitalised words Religion, Order and God appear here as the “mind-forg’d manacles” in Blake’s well-known social views: as the restrictive powers setting up boundaries against human freedom. Facing contemporary history helped Blake develop his intricate system of mythology and find the aesthetic qualities matching his radical ideas. Of course, ideology and imagery in Blake should not be separated, even in case the reader wants to give his texts a purely political reading. Ideas and images form a dynamic unity in Blake, mutually shaping each other. In this paper I will make an attempt to outline how these two produce the aesthetic qualities of this early poem. In The French Revolution Blake contrasts images of war with the notion of pacifism; even the king fits into the peaceful vision of the closure. Instead of decapitating him, Blake finds a place for him in a new world order. One should remember that the poem was written between 1790 and 1791, before Louis XVI lost his popularity, tried to flee the country and was eventually executed. The imagery obviously follows the biblical pattern of regaining Paradise, with former enemies finding peace and forming universal harmony. Pacifism is the ruling principle of the poem. Paris becomes a heavenly Jerusalem, where soldiers and noise have no place: Awful up rose the king, him the peers follow’d, they saw the courts of the Palace Forsaken, and Paris without a soldier, silent, for the noise was gone up