Those of us who have studied William Blake to any extent will have come across the notion that whilst uniquely creative, Blake was also mad. In this reflection I will try to assess if there is any justification for this suggestion of mental illness.
Endeavouring to assess madness (disorder or psychosis) is fraught with difficulty, particularly when dealing with one who has been dead for nearly 200 years. However, there has been a long-held belief that there is some link between those who demonstrate remarkable powers of creativity, and mental illness. Examples would include the poet John Clare, Virginia Woolf and Silvia Platt to mention just three.
There are two methods available to undertake this assessment. The first and more objective of the two is the application of a computer-based system of analysis known as OPCRIT (version 3.3). This analysis consists of a suite of programs that allow “multiple operational criteria of schizophrenia and affective disorder to be applied to data coded from a 90 item check list”. (Steptoe (ed),1998;234) The application of this method (which has really to be undertaken by a professional psychologist) involves the use of 12 classification systems which have been built up over a period of years from 1959 to 1993. There is a further diagnostic schedule known as SADS-L concerned with the recognition of affective disorders (e.g. bi-polarism) which can also be applied. (Steptoe (ed), 1998;234-8). Whilst the results of this analysis applied to a number of authors is available, there does not seem to be any evidence of its application to Blake. (For all the apparent sophistication of these tests, a degree of scepticism is still warranted – in television programmes describing the work of R.D.Lang and others the difficulty of assessment was dramatically highlighted, and the use of a diagnostic questionnaire was found to show that 50% of Americans suffered from some form of mental disorder [The Trap – BBC2 11/3/07 and 18/3/07].)
The second method available is that of deducing the sanity or insanity of a creative person by examination of contemporary accounts written by their colleagues, friends and acquaintances. Whilst some biographers of Blake (e.g. Ackroyd) have avoided the subject others, particularly Gilchrist and Bentley have given some consideration to his extraordinary visionary and creative powers and the question of whether or not any form of mental illness was involved. [ It is interesting to note that the late Professor Roy Porter (Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre (UCL))
does not give any consideration to the sanity of the artist in his chapter on Blake in Flesh in the Age of Reason (London – Penguin – 2003).]
The following notes will have been derived in the main from the two biographies referred to above as well as William Blake – The Critical Heritage:-
The Life of William Blake – Alexander Gilchrist (ed.W.G.Robertson) – London – John Lane the Bodley Head – 1907 referred to as Gilchrist
The Stranger from Paradise – G.E.Bentley Jr – New Haven (USA) – Yale University Press – 2001. referred to as Bentley 2001
William Blake – The Critical Heritage – G.E.Bentley (ed) – London – Routledge and Kegan Paul – 1975 referred to as Bentley 1975
There are many comments from contemporaries about Blake’s state of mind, but many of these are likely to be very subjective, with possibly the use of the word mad instead of eccentricity. But any notes on the subject would be incomplete without reference to the more well known of these and so listed below are a number of comments that have been quoted in the two biographies above:-
Edward Fitzgerald concluded from his copy of Songs of Innocence that Blake “was quite mad: but of a madness that was really the elements of great genius ill sorted; in fact a genius with a screw loose as we used to say”. (Bentley,2001;132-3)
Joseph Farrington recording a coffee house meeting noted: “Blakes (sic) eccentric designs were mentioned. Stothard supported his claims to Genius, but allowed he had been misled to extravagance in his art, & He knew by whom [?Fuseli]. – Hoppner ridiculed the absurdity of his designs, and said nothing could be more easy than to produce such. They were like the conceits of a drunken fellow or madman”. (Bentley,2001;171-2)
Blake’s most enthusiastic admirers equated “his faculty of seeing spirits and conversing with the dead” with “a delightful vein of madness.” Hazlitt and Hoppner would not agree and certainly not with the view of Baptist Minister John Martin who said “If Blake is cracked, his is a crack that lets in the light”. (Bentley,2001;176)
A perhaps more considered account is recorded in The Scots Magazine – “We do not recollect to have any where seen so much genius united with so much eccentricity….and have enabled him to produce a work altogether unique, and possessing high claims to admiration.” (Bentley,2001;306)
A contemporary, Cornelius Varley “ emphasised there was nothing mad about him”
(Gilchrist;341) From Mr Finch we have, “He was not mad, but perverse and wilful; he reasoned correctly from arbitrary, and often false premises” (Gilchrist;341) Gilchrist emphasises that both Linnell (fellow artist and father-in-law) and Samuel Palmer agreed with Calvert’s statement that he “saw nothing but sanity, saw nothing mad in his conduct actions or character” (Gilchrist;341)
The descriptive catalogue of Blake’s 1809 exhibition brought some highly critical comments which probably caused Blake to retire from publicity. From his close friend Crabb Robinson we have “…folio of fragmentary utterances on art and religion, without plan or arrangement… [but] even amid these aberrations gleams of reason and intelligence shine out” From Robert Hunt (writing anonymously) in The Examiner “…..William Blake, an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement……published a catalogue, or rather a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness and egregious nonsense, the wild effusions of a distempered brain… That insanity should elevate itself to this fancied importance…” and so on. (Bentley,2001;333)
Crabb Robinson saw madness in Blake’s Descriptive Catalogue but genius in Poetical Sketches and Songs of Innocence and Experience. (Bentley,2001;339) and towards the end of Blake’s life Robinson recorded “ the wild and strange rhapsodies uttered by this insane man of genius” (Bentley,2001;411)
Seymour Kirkup ( a young art student when introduced to Blake) was at first puzzled by Blake’s work but some 50 years later wrote that he was persuaded by his own visions and dreams of the reality of the spirit world and came to believe that Blake was not deluded and that the spirits he spoke of had a reality beyond the imagination of Blake. (Bentley,2001;336-7)
In a comment written after the death of Blake, James Ward writes “There can be no doubt of his having been what the world calls a man of genius. But his genius was of a peculiar character, sometimes above, sometimes below the comprehension of his fellow men” (Gilchrist;343)
One might think that obituaries would be more objective than these “of the cuff” comments, but there are two very contrasting opinions expressed as follows.
The first obituary published in The Literary Gazette includes the statement “When it is stated, that the pure minded artist Flaxman pointed out to an eminent literary man the obscurity of Blake as a melancholy proof of English apathy towards the grand, the philosophic, or the enthusiastically devotional painter; and that he, Blake, has been several times employed for that truly admirable judge of art Sir T,Lawrence any further testimony to his extraordinary powers in unnecessary.” Further on in the same obituary there is “(Blake) was active in mind and body, passing from one occupation to another, without an intervening minute of repose. Of an ardent, affectionate, and grateful temper, he was simple in manner and dress, and displayed an inbred courteousness of the most agreeable character.” Hardly a description of one suffering mental illness.(Bentley, 1975;165)
However, from an alternative obituary from The Literary Chronicle after referring to Blake as one of those “ingenious persons…. whose eccentricities were still more remarkable than their professional abilities” states “it is not our intention to speak of the aberrations of men of genius with levity, but would rather advert to them, with commiseration and pity. Yet, to dwell upon the pursuits, or to relate the opinions of such visionaries as the late Mr.Blake, with seriousness, would be an attempt beyond the extremist limits of our editorial gravity.” (Bentley,1975;167)
It is to be expected that the two biographers mentioned above would have given some analysis or at least intimation of their own views as to Blake’s sanity. Gilchrist devotes a chapter of his biography to the subject and following a detailed but subjective analysis concludes that “If for insane we read undisciplined, or ill balanced, I think we shall hit the truth.” (Gilchrist;337-350)
Apart from many comments from others distributed throughout the text (some of which have been quoted above), Bentley conducts a short analysis of the melancholy from which Blake himself admits he suffered, concluding that he possibly had a mild form of manic-depression (now called bi-polar disorder). “His mood swings, his unpredictability even to his closest acquaintances, and his sudden anger at earnest friends working for his worldly welfare, all suggest an unstable personality and help explain why friends like Hayley spoke of his “dangerously acute” sensibility, of his imagination utterly unfit to take due care of himself”. Blake himself admitted that he had a continual internal battle between his daemons and his demons. – between his periods of great imaginative creativity and his periods of frustration – his “War within my Members”.
Concluding Analysis
Blake was very unusual inasmuch as he possessed attributes of the mystic, poet, prophet, philosopher, engraver and painter. It is not surprising, therefore, that his images would be endeavouring to express deep spiritual or psychological experiences.
In his mysticism, Blake endeavoured to bring together aspects of both Eastern and Western traditions – a process that has now been developed and formalised by three American psychologists Jack Engler, Daniel Brown and Ken Wilbur in which the various psychological models offered by the West (Freudian, cognitive, linguistic, object relational etc.) are combined with the spiritual model of the East, arriving at a full spectrum model of human growth and development, a model that traces human growth from body to mind to soul to spirit. (Wilbur,2001;65) An earlier psychologist who completed much work in this area was Jung who studied both Eastern and Western philosophies as well as the importance of the symbol.
As G.W.Digby writes in his essay On the Understanding of Blake’s Art, “(Blake’s) art is entirely devoted to psychological and spiritual ends and so it constitutes a vast treasure house of potential life waiting to reveal itself to anyone who cares to look” (Digby,1957;96) . If the viewer is lacking in intuitive imagination then some images of Blake will appear “obscure, difficult and unaccountable” (Digby,1957;96).
His art expresses the living experience in terms of images and symbols. By this means the potential of meaning is retained in dynamic terms of life and energy. His myths and symbolic figures and personages are intent with implicit meaning, which is not reduced to the familiar word, or concept, or formula; he avoided the labels of conventional knowledge and left his images and symbols undetermined, but still in contact with the flux of life. (Digby,1957;95)
To emphasise, perhaps, the originality of his work Blake creates a new vocabulary. For examples (and this also indicates the Eastern links) there are the Four Zoars, expressing the four Jungian psychological functions of man – sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition – but also the four-fold divisions in some forms of Eastern meditation, and Albion, the Great Man equivalent to Adam Kadmon of the Kabbala and to Narayana, the Cosmic Man of Indian Mythology (Stevens,1994;66-7) (Digby,1957;120-1).
The psychological and spiritual nature of Blake’s work, with its special vocabulary and allusions to Eastern mythology would make it seem extraordinary, remote and unintelligible to many viewers or readers familiar only with the Western tradition in art and literature. Many would perhaps view his work superficially, not understand it or relate to it in any intuitive experiential way, and then decide that since they could not relate to it, then the artist must be mad. I would suspect that this might be the origin of many of the comments set out above at the beginning of this reflection.
However, Blake, having so many diverse attributes, is able to express himself – his mystical experiences – as he endeavours to convey the “inner-I” or the innermost Divinity of one’s being, in a language which is beyond that of many of his readers or viewers. That he is unable (or unwilling) to translate this language into the mundane or vernacular is not evidence of madness but only of a certain eccentricity.
If one looks at his daily life and dealings with those around him, and his very long and seemingly happy marriage, there is, again, no evidence of any real disorder or psychosis.
As mentioned at the beginning of these notes, it is possible, depending upon one’s definitions and questions, to come to the conclusion that many of us are suffering from, or have a tendency towards, some disorder or other but providing that this does not interfere with one’s ability to lead a normal life in a practical way, knowledge of this tendency remains of interest only in explaining certain behavioural characteristics of the individual concerned.
Blake may, as Bentley suggests (see above), have had a tendency towards bi-polar disorder, but if he did then it had no apparent effect on his ability to live his life to the full.
If he was not mad, was he a genius? If, by genius, one means an extraordinarily gifted person able to reveal to others aspects of worldly existence of which they would otherwise be unaware, then Blake was, indeed, a genius.
Bibliography:
Bentley,G.E. – William Blake – The Critical Heritage –London – Routledge and Kegan Paul – 1975
Bentley,G.E. – The Stranger from Paradise – New Haven – Yale University Press – 2001
Digby, G.W. – Symbol and Image in William Blake – Oxford – OUP – 1957
Gilchrist, A. – The Life of William Blake – London – John Lane, the Bodley Head – 1907
Porter, R. – Flesh in the Age of Reason – London – Penguin Books – 2003
Stevens,A. – Jung – Oxford – OUP -1994
Wilbur,K. – Grace and Grit – Dublin – Gateway – 2001 DMG 24/3/07
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