The word apocalypse derives from the Greek word for "revelation", lending its name to the last book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelations. It refers to a prophetic vision which, through elaborate and often violent symbolism, signals the end of the current world and its inhabitants and, above all, is followed by a regeneration of the world to a perfect state. The violence and destruction inflicted on the earth cleanses, purges the earth of its evils and its wicked, in preparation for the inauguration of Christ's kingdom on earth. My goal is to explore this idea of ​​apocalypse through an examination of Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell and a discussion of its social, political, historical, and poetic context. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayFollowers of millenarianism believe that once evil and unjust are destroyed, there will be a thousand-year period of happiness peaceful on earth, the millennium, after which the forces of evil will be released to be banished forever. The philosophy of the Three Ages refers to the belief that the apocalypse would occur a thousand years after the completion of the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son, and the Age of the Holy Spirit respectively. Adolf Hitler subscribed to the theology of the Three Ages, believing that his Third Reich would grant glory to the world for a thousand years. Such images of destruction and great changes in the state of the world easily lend themselves to ideas of political revolution. Through reading the apocalyptic books of the Bible, one could read the promotion of the destruction of the status quo so that the fate of humanity is replaced by a new earth and, on it, a rediscovered paradise. This is immediately relevant to Romantic poets who were inspired by the promises of the American Revolution, which culminated in the election of George Washington as the first president of the United States of America in 1789, and by the more radical expectations raised by the first years. of the French Revolution taking place at the same time. They saw in the French Revolution an opening towards the end of history, presaging a new era of joy, a return to Paradise. Given this background and the revolution underway in England from a primarily agricultural nation to a modern industrial nation, it is understandable why so many people believed that the social structure was on the verge of collapse and the apocalypse was imminent. The political revolution was taking place parallel to the literary revolution, and Shelley in his Defense of Poetry described how the literature of the period "was, as it were, born of a new birth" and that in the works of the period burns a “electric life” which is “less their spirit than the spirit of the times”, thus coining the term “Spirit of the times”. William Hazlitt titled his book of essays The Spirit of the Age and in it argued that the early years of the French Revolution seemed to herald "the dawn of a new era" and claimed that "a new impetus had been given in the minds of men. , commenting that it was "a time of promise, a renewal of the world – and of letters". Wordsworth and Coleridge embodied this spirit when they revolutionized the theory and practice of poetry with their Lyrical Ballads of 1798. It is difficult for us to understand this spirit of fervor and anticipation of something truly great, as the recognized Robert Southey, writing in 1824: "Few people, except those who lived there, can conceive or understand what the memory of the French Revolution was, nor what visionary world seemed to open to those who had just come there enter. Old things seemed to disappear, andwe only dreamed of the regeneration of the human race. Besides poets, this biblical language of regeneration was taken up by preachers such as Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, Joseph Fawcett and Elhanan Winchester, who openly supported the Revolution, seeing it as a confirmation of biblical prophecy. William Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the early 1790s, at the start of the French Revolution. At this point it still held great promise and Blake had high hopes that it would be the universal violence that would bring about the inauguration of Christ's Kingdom. By opening The Argument (plate 2, line 1) with "Rintrah", which, according to Morton D. Paley, "embodies...the prophetic wrath of the righteous man", Blake immediately adapts his work to the biblical prophets Elijah of the 'Ancient. Testament and John the Baptist, who recounts the prophecy of Revelation in Revelation. The idea of ​​the poet himself as a prophet is presented to us in the introduction to the poem on plate 3, where Blake mentions Swedishborg, whose most famous work was entitled A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, and his prediction that the Messiah would return in 1757, the year of Blake's birth. At the time of composing this poem, Blake was thirty-three years old, the same age as Jesus when he resurrected, and he sees himself as the imaginative poet-prophet who will achieve redemption through this work, through the marriage of " Opposites” for “progression”. Among these, he cites “Reason and Energy” as “necessary for human existence” which he develops as “Good being the passive which obeys Reason, Evil is the active springing from Energy”. Good is paradise. Evil is hell." And it is through their marriage that the millennium will come. He refers the reader to Isaiah XXXIV and XXXV who prophesy "the day of the Lord's vengeance" and the subsequent redemption of the earth when "the desert and the dry land will be happy; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose", respectively. It also mentions Edom, the place from which the bloodstained holy avenger comes in Isaiah LXIII and prophesies the redemption of Adam and the recovery of Paradise. In context history of the early 1790s, this nation of Edom came to represent France with the figure of the avenging saint, a manifestation of the French Revolution in Blake's eyes, the sign of apocalyptic regeneration and Paradise regained. on a subject such as Heaven, Blake aligns himself with Milton, who, according to Blake, "was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it" in plate 6. If Revelation is a revelation, an unveiling. , then Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell is apocalyptic in its very nature against all religious absolutism by questioning the separation of good and evil and confusing the roles of Jesus and Satan, Blake states that ". in Paradise Lost… the governor or reason is called Messiah", that is to say Jesus, "but in the Book of Job, Milton's Messiah is called Satan", because it is he who acts as accuser moral and physical tormentor. Blake argues that if they can share roles, how can absolutism such as that advocated by the orthodox religion exist? Other similarities between Christ and Satan are exposed, such as the Devil rebelling against authority, defying God and being expelled from Heaven, while on Earth Jesus rebelled against the Pharisees who he believed were thus oppressing him than his people. The Devil wonders: “Has he not mocked the Sabbath? thus showing that Jesus was challenging the status quo because it was too restrictive. Furthermore, did He not “turn aside the law from the adulterous woman” because of the hypocrisy and oppressive nature of the law? Both Satan and Jesus acted as revolutionaries in the past, which not only reinforcesBlake's argument against absolutism in religion, but also proves that revolution is not necessarily bad. the disguise of a radical devil". He also felt alienated by the increasing institutionalization of the Swedish New Jerusalem Church and by some of his controversial writings on what Paley had called "the cohabitation conflict" which sanctioned the use of concubines by men in certain circumstances but not by women, perhaps mentioned in the phrase "Brothers [are built] with bricks of religion It reverses many of Swedenborg's teachings, focusing". initially on Hell, described as a source of unrepressed creative and revolutionary energy, rather than on Heaven, described as authoritarian and regulated, and presenting himself as "a powerful devil" writing with "corroding fires", a reference to the technique used by Blake to engrave passages on metal using acids. This technique in itself is apocalyptic in that it reveals the truth where nothing appeared, thus achieving its goal. apocalyptic “by printing according to the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting visible surfaces, and displaying infinity”. which was hidden. » Once again he aligns himself with tradition, this time with Dante's Inferno where the poet, as Blake does here, journeys to hell. Blake blends the traditions of Milton and Dante with his own revolutionary goal: to reveal to his readers the repressive nature of institutional religion and conventional morality. It replaces the biblical Book of Proverbs with its diabolical version entitled "Proverbs from Hell", a list of provocative and sometimes paradoxical proverbs whose aim is to energize the mind and provoke reflection. In a diabolical proverb, he launches a call to action, presumably revolutionary, with the proverb "He who desires but does not act breeds the plague", treating inertia as if it were a highly contagious afflicting the world and preventing the necessary revolution. He also recognizes that if the revolution is to be apocalyptic, there will inevitably be casualties, but "the cut worm forgives the plow", implying that people will be willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good. In biblical terms, those who sacrificed their lives in the name of God would be the first to join Christ in the millennium of Heaven on Earth. Blake declares that the world is "finite and corrupt", but that through the revelations and regeneration of Revelation it will be "infinite and holy". His job as a poet is to open the "doors of perception" so that everything "appears to man as it is, infinite" through his heightened sensual perception of the world. Perhaps the most telling passage is the one titled Opposition is True Friendship which focuses on exposing and denouncing Swedishborg's preaching. He claims that Swedenborg is like the Angel Blake encountered during his passage through Hell, because both have “the vanity of presenting themselves as the only wise ones; they do it with a confident insolence born of systematic reasoning.” Similarly, “Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, although it is only the contents or index of books already published.” Blake promotes the use of imagination to create new and revolutionary thoughts that will bring heaven to earth. In contrast, Swedenborg is rooted in the opposite mindset, as Blake explains: “Now listen to an obvious fact: Swedenborg did not write a new truth. Now listen to another one: he wrote all the old lies. The reason behind this, according to Blake, is that he "conversed withangels who are all religious, and did not converse with demons, who all hate religion, because he was incapable because of his conceited notions", once again emphasizing the repressive nature of formalism, conventional religion. This The idea is developed in the next section where Blake recounts a conversation he witnessed between an angel and a devil. The conversation focuses on a debate over the Ten Commandments, which the Devil considers repressive, as representatives of religion. orthodox, attempting to restrict desire and creativity Only when the opposites of reason and energy can coexist will humanity flourish, Blake argues In terms of apocalyptic imagery, the most striking. is that of Leviathan wreaking havoc on the earth in Plate 18, a clear representation of the French Revolution as noted by Paley, who states that "Leviathan is, as has been widely recognized, a vision of the French Revolution" and, more interestingly again, by Martin K. Nurmi who emphasizes that the direction of the Leviathan “to the east, approximately three degrees distant” indicates the direction of Paris, center of the French Revolution. Paley points out that "it is likely that this part of the episode parodies Swedishborg's view of the destruction of Babylon in A Treatise Concerning the Last Judgment and the Destruction of Babylon" while also serving to show how the millennium and the Apocalypse are contiguous. Blake's "Friend the Angel" flees the terrifying scene, leaving the narrator in what seems to be part of the millennial world "on a pleasant bank by a moonlit river, hearing a harpist singing to the harp". Revelation and the Millennium are actually the same, seen with different perceptions "because of your metaphysics", that is, your spiritual beliefs. Thus Blake presents the French Revolution as both apocalyptic and millennial. As an appendix to The Marriage, Blake wrote A Song of Liberty which celebrates the overthrow of a tyrant, with strong echoes of Revelation XII in the characters of the mother, the divine baby and the menacing beast. It mixes images from factual history, such as "France, demolish your dungeon" in reference to the storming and demolition of the Bastille prison by the French Revolution, with biblical images from the Apocalypse. He employs a list of imperatives that culminate in a call to man: “Lift up your eyes! Look up! » and “enlarge your face”, whether you are in England (Oh citizen of London), in the Middle East (Oh Jew) or in Africa (Oh African! Black African!) so that the revolution, the apocalypse and thereby following the millennium are carried out throughout the world. This would result in "the son of fire" inflicting an apocalyptic catastrophe on the world, then "losing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying, 'The Empire is no more!' And now the lion and the wolf will cease.' » This echoes the prophecy of Isaiah LXV which says "the wolf and the lamb will feed together" in the post-apocalyptic kingdom of heaven on earth. Blake, in choosing to make marriage the theme of this work, is part of the tradition of the first generation Romantic poets that Kelvin Everest describes as the "frequent deployment of marriage imagery... [which] draws inspiration from the "biblical imagery of the millennium as a marriage", as shown in Revelation when the holy city, New Jerusalem, is seen "coming down from God from heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Revelation, XXI) in order to constitute a marriage between the new Kingdom of Heaven and Christ. Blake aligns himself with this tradition while suggesting the most revolutionary marriage of Heaven and Hell. However, as a skeptic of the Orthodox religion and its practices.