Proverbs of Hell 19

This is the 19th post in my series on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” please see this post for details and context.

To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

There’s a phrase “Gilding the Lily” which is a metaphor for the idea of over articulating or decorating something that is already self-evidently beautiful. Like Pearls Before Swine or Don’t Let the Door Hit You, it barely even needs attention, we all know that lilies don’t need to be gilded. Even if many try every single day. Some would say I’m doing it right now.

However, my point is to illustrate that even something as humble as a mere flower has power. Mr. Blake’s point is that to create even that small flower would take “the labour of ages,” as the pale tea drinkers would spell it. He is illustrating that literally any work of beauty, even a basic little daisy in a bush full of them, would take a human not only an immense amount of time to produce through our tools and skill, but would likely not even succeed. The labour of ages isn’t referring to a single person’s efforts, but the efforts of artisans, scholars, and craftsmen over centuries on centuries. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone who practices an archaic art or craft like looming or basket weaving, you know that they are struggling against the same limitations and producing the same glorious flowers as their grandparent’s grandparents were. Nothing is as simple or easy as it seems even if it’s something as “small” or “insignificant” as a small flower.

I would consider my life worth all the stress and heartache if something I crafted through my own labor brought as much joy as one of the flowers falling down on the sidewalk outside my window. It would be some of the highest praise I can imagine. Artisans should get more respect sure, but remember that even the greatest craftsfolks have all failed for centuries to create something so transcendentally beautiful, self sustaining, and suited to its environment as a simple flower. Don’t be so hard on yourself or others.

Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.

I love these punchy comparisons, as we ramp up to the last page of the Proverbs, Blake is becoming shorter and sharper with his advice. We’ve come this far, he doesn’t need to convince us or prevaricate anymore.

Profanity discourse is always fun and it’s especially fun when it’s centuries old. Damn and Bless here are held up as opposite sentiments. Damn is a word used when something bad happens and you need fortitude. You “damn” something, declaring it worth opposition, and brace your body to either overcome or escape it. Bless in this comparison would be the acknowledgement that you cannot control something and you should let it thrive on its own terms, the speaker relaxes as they disengage with the object of contention.

Now, this was ~200 years ago in London, William Blake did not have a concept of “Damn, son” or “Bless your heart.” Yet, as anyone who’s spent much time in the Southern US knows, these two words can both mean positive and negative things depending on the speaker and the listener. Damn can brace the speaker up in the face of overwhelming excellence, while Bless can let someone so completely disengage that they stop extending social niceties such as “humanity” and “agency” to people who dismay them in everyday life.

There are much further conclusions if you follow the implications of these words back to their religious roots, and Blake most assuredly did, but I talked a lot of smack about priests last entry so maybe this one can be kept as a personal little treat for you this gloomy Saturday.

The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.

If anyone ever accused Blake of repetition, I’d be the first on the witness stand. This is another entry in the “keep your mind on your own virtues not other’s vices” genre of his advice.

Obviously the two substances present here have opposite adjectives. Old water would be presumed to be like the standing water from earlier in this same page, filled with contaminants and residents that would make it not suitable for human consumption. New wine would also be the same, still filled with busy organisms converting the tasty fruit sugar into alcohol, and as someone who’s worked in wineries, you don’t want to drink that stuff. Over time, wine settles into its more stable and delicious state, filled with intricacies and stories left by the, now mostly gone, living organisms that gave it these characteristics. It is consumed in leisure or wealth and represents careful craftsmanship (see above) and the stability to preserve artisan goods for decades until they are prime for consumption.

Water is a basic necessity of life, required for the organisms within just as much as the drinker requires it. It’s drunk at all times and is widely available, even to the nomadic and the destitute (in societies worth preserving at least,) and the important part of it is not the flavor or the characteristics which wine would tout before even letting you touch it.

It should be self evident that Blake’s point once more is, no qualities are universally positive, and selecting one as always positive will lead to drinking poison. There are of course, more torturous ways to stretch this metaphor, but I’ll leave that as another little exercise for you.

Don’t forget to take care of yourself and turn some lights on, you’re ruining your eyes.

Music: