Page 16 - GALIET THE HOLY WORD: Blake IV++

due to its exquisite prosody in even trochaic meter of 7- syllable lines,5 SEI’s Introduction flounders: its cacophony reflects the somber, gloomy mood of experience in uneven meter and syllabic lines. This simple, metric exercise elucidates Blake’s revolutionary philosophy that “contraries are necessary to human existence.”6 Contradiction and struggle are not only symbiotic, but also essential to the world’s creative spirit.
Tragedy, the necessary angst, replete with energy, momentum, strophic anxieties, disparities 3⁄4 the Titans and the Olympians, Apollo and Dionysus, Yahweh and Lucifer, Zeus and Prometheus 3⁄4 endows the human spirit with the exuberant energy of Poiesis, the threshold divine, the Wondrous Gate, whose columns are adorned with the livid itineraria and vivid memoria of suffering and revolt, whose garlands, the laurels of music, Poetry and Art inflame the spirit of Beauty just as in light, as in twilight, in cosmos and anti-cosmos.
5 This might be related to the symbolic number seven. In the Book of Revelation number 7 is crucial: it represents the “seven seals,” “seven vials,” the “seven heads of the dragon.” It also speaks of the seven sacraments, the seven ‘deadly sins,’ the seven virtues and the seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Experience. London: Tate Publishing, 2010.
6 Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Oxford, New York, Paris: Oxford University Press and Trianon Press, Paris, 2002.
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