Proverbs of Hell 7 and 8

This is an entry in my series on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell,” see this post for context

Again, I have fallen victim to schedule slip, this time I had to do my taxes so that ate up all my computer time for the day. This year they owe me so I might get a sit-down dinner out of it.

Folly is the cloke of knavery.

I love that alternate spelling of cloak. I really appreciate the language in early modern works like this because spelling was a matter of opinion and even letters are not completely standard. The Marriage is full of those long Ss that look like Fs, sometimes alongside the more standard ones in the same word. As for the proverb itself, everyone has had the experience of seeing someone dramatically emphasize their own folly to conceal their intentions. “Oopsy daisy” can make your blood run cold.

Shame is Prides cloke.

This proverb coming so close after the last one, with the same metaphor, makes it seem like a parallel or simile. So in that way, if folly is a “disguise” for knaves, then shame must be a disguise for pride. Since the last proverb implied folly as a showy display, then it must be referring to that habit some truly arrogant people have where their shame is a direct reflection of their own standards of behavior and beliefs. Where those internal standards give them a sense of superiority from which to loudly shame themselves, and this feels like a “grace” for those around them. We all know those people are the worst.

With that we are done with the first plate of the “Proverbs of Hell,” and up to this point it’s read like a list of semi-random pieces of advice written by urge and whim. Blake ends it with a short, terse, monosyllabic couplet crammed in the lower margin. Like he couldn’t think of anything to paint there. While we’re talking about the format, one of the proverbs covered mentioned yesterday was about a fool persisting and becoming wise, and I neglected to mention the cute way it is written down. The fool persists so long that when he realizes his mistake, he has to cram “wise” underneath “become” with a remorseful sigh. These are little elements that are lost with mechanized and automated text being the main way we consume writing, and I prescribe anyone sick of it a trip to a comic shop or webcomic service. We are quietly living through a golden age of independent comics and no one talks about it because there’s very little money involved. That’s always where the real culture is. On to the next plate:

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

hoo boy

So this section is a little subsection in itself, which is something Blake does in all the sections of The Marriage. They are not explicitly grouped together, other than they were all written in the same ink, probably on the same day, in the same handwriting. Those Ts might as well be stamped they are so uniform.

This is a straight up equivalency, and it’s reasonable to assume it’s a negative equivalence. Prisons back then were not what they are today. The most common sort was what were called “debtor prisons” that were as miserable as those words put together make them sound. Cripplingly primitive lodgings where people with significant debt could be held while they worked to pay them off. Fines, exile, and the death penalty were all way more common forms of punishment than now (maybe not fines) and so the people in those prisons were only the worst of those who couldn’t be otherwise disposed. The chains and bricks of the law kept people in misery and restraint as the operative threat of their power, while also serving as the justification itself for those chains and bricks. There is no Prison without Law, so Law is also responsible for the misery as well as the order.

Blake is drawing a direct comparison to brothels. There are historians who spend their careers researching brothels in time periods like this one and I’m not as familiar with them in this time as the prisons, but I cannot imagine it was fun to live in one. Blake’s point is that Religion, seeking to justify its existence and power just as Law must, sets up the same misery trap as a prison, the only real difference is them condemning for moral instead of legal liability. To Blake, a man condemned to work because he violated the Law, is the same as a woman condemned to prostitution because she violated Religion. I appreciate this comparison, because it both implies the self reinforcement of the Brothel:Religion and Prison:Law dynamic, and understanding that any social form of legalistic control is going to require “criminals” or “sinners” to show how failure is responded to in their systems. I think the point feels overstated in our modern context because the role of prisons has expanded so drastically in western society since this time, while the role of brothels has faded away from being heavily featured in modern religious systems.

As the next four (yes I’ll do them all) show, Blake is drawing a line between his understanding of the capital-G Christian God and the workings of religions as organizations of humans. It’s worth remembering that The Marriage as a book is framed as a response to another work of Christian fan fiction by a theologian named Swedenborg called Heaven and Hell even though it’s not mentioned in the proverbs, so these delineations shouldn’t be considered hastily tossed off examples. Blake was responding to contemporary theology of his day that was becoming more and more legalistic and dense, with people like Swedenborg proposing a tiered Heaven with different requirements and levels.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

If God designed everything, then the beauty and glamour of the natural world is an indicator of lush and lavish tastes, so why is the pride of a well dressed person or an opulent decorator condemned?

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

Goats are amazing creatures who can adapt to many different environments and roles. They’ve served as essential domestic creatures all over the world for literally millennia. Yet, the same church that would give God the credit for these creatures, also used them as representatives of hellish temptation and deceptive violence. If even their “lust” is an essential part of how they survive, why is it worth scorn and condemnation? Why is the creation of more goats an influence of some unseen enemy?

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

Lions live in a hard world, and are frequently territorial and aggressive. If they were not so, they wouldn’t survive. So if their wrath is the best response for their situation, how can we condemn all wrath as evil if God included it in creatures as noble and revered as lions?

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

Hubba hubba, awooga even.

This short list systematically picks apart the rationale for condemning brothels in fewer characters than a tweet, and I’ve written more words about it than he wrote in this entire section of the book. This is one of those sections that gets Blake (a man who was happily married almost his entire life) called an early advocate of “free love” in the hippie sense, when I think it’s clear from the start that he’s specifically critiquing the role that version of the Christian church had placed brothels in. If they are filled with the works and glories of God then why are they seen as the ultimate punishment for immorality on Earth? Again, I think this passage sounds way harsher to an American these days since Big Prison as a business is an all-devouring monster eating America from both ends, and brothels are now underground or digital hustles. I imagine Blake wouldn’t have been happy about this situation either but would have had different ways of phrasing it if he was writing for today.

Gosh this was a long one, I’ll have to come back and edit this more later because I don’t want to fall behind, but we’re still on schedule. Don’t forget about that one thing you’re supposed to cancel and put on some fresh socks, in the middle of the day, go on, you deserve it.

Music:

If you think this song is as awesome as I do, it’s worth watching the live version just to bring home how great the lead guitarist and vocalist Baek Hwong is: