Themes of Rebellion in William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud

Author(s): Enid Rhodes Peschel

Source: The French Review, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Mar., 1973), pp. 750-761
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
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Vol. XLVI, No. 4, March, 1973 Printed in

THEFRENCH
REVIEW,
U.S.A.

Themes of Rebellion in William Blake

and Arthur Rimbaud
by Enid Rhodes Peschel
I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking
these ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and
acted from impulse, not from rules.
Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Je suis celui qui souffre et qui s'est revolte!
Rimbaud, "Le Juste restait droit ..."

"VIOLENCE ARISES not out of superfluity of power but out of

Rollo May writes in Power and Innocence.
powerlessness,"
According to him, violence "has its breeding ground in impotence
and apathy."' But this psychoanalyst further describes violence as a
positive and potentially creative force. In its sources, he alleges, we
may discern "the individual's struggle to establish and protect his
These fundamental aspects of violence-the
self-esteem."2
angry
the
feelings of frustration and the creative potential-characterize
poetic rebellions of William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud.
and Rimbaud (1854-1891)
were
Although Blake (1757-1827)
separated by time, nationality and native language, these two poets
provide many points for fruitful comparison.3 Thus, they treat many
'Rollo May, Power and Innocence (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 23.
May, p. 31.
3My article "Violence and Vision: A Study of William Blake and Arthur
Rimbaud," Revue de Litte'rature Comparee (forthcoming, winter 1972-73) is a
sequel to this study. Many scholars suggest comparisons between Blake and
Rimbaud, but no other critic, to my knowledge, has undertaken a detailed
comparative study of these two poets. See, for example: Henri Peyre, Shelley et
la France: Lyrisme anglais et lyrisme franqais au XIXe siecle (Paris: Droz, 1935),
pp. 157 and 326; Daniel-Rops, Rimbaud: Le Drame spirituel (Paris: Plon, 1936),
p. 249; Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, rpt.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), p. 432; Mark Schorer, William Blake: The Politics
of Vision (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), p. 387; and Harold Bloom, Blake's
Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument (1963; rpt. New York: Anchor Books,
1965), p. 99.
2

750

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BLAKE AND RIMBAUD

751

similar themes, including: revolt, poet-prophet-divinities,

poetic
ecstasy, dreams of a golden era which is now lost, the unity of
and for
and belief, the search for innocence
knowledge
transcendence. Since the French poet probably was not aware of the
English writer's work, it is especially interesting that these authors
treat so many things in common. Rather than providing a case of
simple literary influence, these poets offer a study of emotional,
moral and spiritual similarities.
During the years 1869-1874 when Rimbaud was writing his poetry,
Blake was almost unknown in France. A short article, "Le
Visionnaire Blake," did appear in 1862, but in it, Am6d6e Pichot,
who admires the English poet as a painter and poet of "spirits,"
criticizes Blake for creating a "pathological hallucination" in King
Edward the Third.4
Robert Browning's admirer Joseph Milsand published a more
sensitive study of Blake six years later.s In it, Milsand praises Blake's
reliance on intuition, inspiration, spiritual vision and creative energy.
Commending Blake's awareness of reason's limitations, Milsand sees
in this poet the "raw materials" for nineteenth-century ethics,
esthetics and philosophy. For these reasons, certainly, Blake and
Rimbaud present many affinities. Still, the opening phrase of
Milsand's essay is poignantly significant: "Qui, chez nous, sauf
quelques chercheurs a jamais entendu parler de l'anglais W. Blake? "
In certain biographical and spiritual ways, too, Blake and Rimbaud
resemble each other. Both were poor. Blake's father was a London
hosier; on his mother's side, Rimbaud belonged to the peasantry.
Rimbaud's father, an officer who rose through the ranks of the
French army, deserted the poet's family when Arthur was only six
years old. Perhaps because of their origins, both Blake and Rimbaud
are sympathetic toward society's oppressed classes.
Blake lived surrounded by the age of deified reason, the era of the
Industrial Revolution and the apotheosis of the bourgeoisie. Through
images of racks and wheels, and by means of figures linking war and
industry, Blake criticizes the newly mechanized, dehumanized
society around him. With the decline of the agricultural system in the
eighteenth century, families flocked to the cities, which were poorly
prepared to receive this vast influx. Little children were sold to work
Pichot, "Le Visionnaire Blake," Revue Britannique, Vol. V (1862),
4 Amedde
pp. 25-47.
sJoseph Milsand, "W. Blake" was first published in the Revue Moderne
(1868). My references are to its reprinted version in Joseph Milsand, Litterature
anglaise et philosophie (Paris, 1893), pp. 305-46.

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752

FRENCH REVIEW

as chimney sweeps. The rich got richer, and the poor became more
impoverished. In this century of the French Revolution, the English
feared a workers' rebellion at home.
Rimbaud's century inherited a pompous and powerful bourgeoisie,
a dehumanized society and the unreasoned effects of the Age of
Reason. He matured as a poet during the tyrannical rule of Napoleon
III, the Franco-Prussian War, and the bloody conflict between the
bourgeois Versaillais and the poor people, the Paris Commune of
1871.
Alienated from the societies around them, frustrated, isolated and
misunderstood by most of their contemporaries, Blake and Rimbaud
turn the sources of their violence into creative energy, strength and
poetic vision. Both rebel against tyranny, established social and
religious authority, restraints on sexual expression; materialism,
corrupted cities, hypocrisy, war and oppression of the poor. Similar
images portray what these poets abhor: a life typified by disease,
blight, weakness and bondage. Actually, life becomes a symbolic
picture of hell for them, with figures of filfth, degradation, sickness
and tortures.
Violent rebellion for Blake and Rimbaud seeks to establish a
"sense of significance." "It is the lack of this sense... , and the
struggle for it, that underlies much violence,"6 Rollo May writes.
Blake and Rimbaud, who reject conventional social and religious
authority, actually re-create a new kind of religion which resembles
their art. The fallen worlds they reject are infernos flaming on the
verge of apocalyptic destruction, and their artistic reveries anticipate
liberation worthy of the Book of Revelation. For them, the 'free
expression of imagination, inspiration and prophetic vision will be
the guiding forces of the world. Sensuous expansion becomes the
gateway to a perception of the unknown and the infinite. These
poets' "life-destroying violence" also becomes what Rollo May calls a
"life-giving violence."'
Rebellion, for Blake and Rimbaud, is the first and necessary step
toward poetic vision.

The teeming, newly industrialized city, exemplified by the London

of Blake and the Paris of Rimbaud, becomes a symbol of oppressed
humanity. In "London," for example, men, streets and even the
Thames seem enslaved by the social and moral codes. "The
6 May,

7 May,

p. 37.
p. 96.

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BLAKE AND RIMBAUD

753

mind-forg'd manacles" bind the first, while the street and the river
are called "charter'd."8 Many of the miseries of "London" also
appear in "L'Orgie parisienne," a poem Rimbaud wrote about the
return of the royalist bourgeois Versaillais after the Paris Commune
of 1871. Misery, war, prostitution, sickness and death pervade each
metropolis. In "every face" he sees, Blake encounters "marks of
War in
woe"; Rimbaud personifies Paris as the "cite douloureuse."9
the English poem is portrayed through an image of suffering: "And
the hapless Soldier's sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls." Bombs
burst red in the French night, and Paris is "La rouge courtisane aux
seins gros de batailles. .. ." In the two capitals, love is blighted by
physical and moral death: venereal disease and spiritual sickness. As
Blake declares in "London":
But most thro' midnightstreets I hear
How the youthful Harlot'scurse
Blaststhe new born Infant'stear
And blightswith plaguesthe Marriagehearse.
Rimbaud presents Paris as the "whore"; she is the "most foul ulcer"
in all of Nature; and, in fact, is "almost dead."
In such corrupt societies, poverty-stricken children like Blake's
chimney sweeps of The Songs of Innocence and of Experience and
Rimbaud's "poor, little ones" of "Les Effares" become symbols of
unconscionable suffering. Even in The Songs of Innocence, the mood
of "The Chimney Sweeper" is far from happy. Little Tom Dacre
"cried when his head, / That curl'd like a lamb's back, was
shav'd ... ." Shorn of a symbol of his innocence, since his fleece-like
hair calls for a comparison with Jesus as the Lamb, Tom Dacre finds
he must content himself with dreams. He imagines an existence, the
antithesis of his present deathlike one, in which he will not have to
climb chimneys nor sleep on a bag of soot.'
"The Chimney
Nonesuch Press,
8William Blake, "London" Poetry and Prose (London:
1961), p. 75. Future references are to this edition and are incorporated in my
text.
SArthur Rimbaud, "L'Orgie parisienne," (Euvres completes (Paris: Pldiade,
1963), p. 82. Future references are to this edition. Translations of Rimbaud are
my own. See my Arthur Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell" and "Illuminations":
Translation and Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming
1973).
of the real situation of London's chimney sweeps and
10 For a discussion
Blake's portrayal of them, see Martin K. Nurmi, "Fact and Symbol in 'The
in Northrop Frye, ed.,
Chimney Sweeper' of Blake's Songs of Innocence,"
Blake: A Collection
of Critical Essays (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 15-22.

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FRENCH REVIEW

Sweeper" of The Songs of Experience is openly bitter, for as the

young boy says, both church and state in that society batten on
children's suffering: ". . . God & his Priest & King, / . . . make a
heaven of our misery." This boy, "A little black thing among the
snow," immediately calls to mind Rimbaud's frightened children of
"Les Effares," who are described as black spots against the snow:
"Noirs dans la neige et dans la brume."
Both poets indict tyranny of any kind, be it mental, emotional,
political, social or religious. In "The Grey Monk," for example, Blake
satirizes a political oppressor who, with his "iron hand," overthrows
the reigning tyrant only to become ". . . a Tyrant in his stead." For
Blake, in fact, any act of oppression, no matter how seemingly
insignificant, is reprehensible and may disturb the entire universe. "A
Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage," he declares
in the "Auguries of Innocence," beginning a series of couplets
which reveal his outrage at any show of constraining power.
The church as it functions in society may provide another form of
tyranny. As Blake queries in Jerusalem: "Are not Religion & Politics
the Same Thing? " (p. 505). Thus, in the "fallen" world of everyday
existence, Vala mingles figures of social, political and religious
oppression in her lament to Urizen (Your reason, perhaps), Blake's
god of abstract reason. Since Urizen is a god blind to the spiritual
needs of men, he instills feelings of guilt in his subjects and is deaf to
Vala's pleas for forgiveness. Here is Vala's cry:
"O Lord, wilt thou not look upon our sore afflictions
Among these flames incessantlabouring? our hardmasterslaugh
At all our sorrow.Weare made to turn the wheel for water,
To carrythe heavy basket on our scorchedshoulders,to sift
The sand & ashes, & to mix the clay with tears& repentance.
Ourbeauty is cover'dover with clay & ashes, & our backs
Furrow'dwith whips....
Forgiveus, O thou piteous one whom we haveoffended! forgive
The weak remainingshadowof Vala that returnsin sorrow to thee."
(The Four Zoas, p 273)
In some ways this complaint resembles the blacksmith's address to
the tyrant king, Louis XVI, in Rimbaud's "Le Forgeron." This
peasant also denounces the inhumanity of his masters who beat him;
their insensitivity; their dehumanization of men (".... H b ts
comme des yeux de vache, i Nos yeux ne pleuraient plus.. ."); and
the overwhelming union of secular and religious power. The canon
and the seigneur pass by, the one with gold-strung rosaries, the other

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with a whip, while the peasant is forced to labor for their profit in
the fields.
Rimbaud attacks different forms of social and religious oppression
in many poems. He assails the nobility in "Les Mains de
Jeanne-Marie"; the cruel and complacent Versaillais after the Paris
Commune in the satiric "Lettre du Baron Petdechevre"; the concept
of Christian guilt in "Soleil et chair" and "Les Premieres
Communions"; and even woman's "bondage" in the letter of 15 May
1871, to Paul Demeny.
Perhaps the best image of the oppressive power that results when
church and state are joined in a coercive union is Blake's description
in Europe of how the religion of Urizen is established. A "serpent
temple" is formed; the infinite is "Shut up in finite revolutions," and
"God . . . [becomes] a tyrant crown'd" (p. 216). A similar shutting
out of the infinite by "reasonable" religion, a product of the
eighteenth-century "Age of Reason," may also be seen in "Soleil et
chair": "Notre pile raison nous cache l'infini! " Thus, both poets
rebel against the same type of religion, a religion which condemns
natural urges and teaches guilt. The fact that one writer is a
Protestant and the other, a Catholic, is not significant here. Urizen's
religion, like the religion Rimbaud presents in several of his poems, is
the conventional, established religion of complacent, restraining,
hypocritical morality. It is the religion where "Over the doors 'Thou
shalt not,' & over the chimneys 'Fear' is written..."
(Europe, p.
217). "... Listen to the Words of Wisdom, / So shall [youj govern
over all. . . ," Urizen proclaims in The Four Zoas, thus commencing
a sermon on how to dominate one's fellow men by hypocrisy. The
rewards of such a religion are predominantly materialistic: the
practitioner who treats other men as curs will be rich and powerful.
Through such devices, a moral coward may dominate the world:
"... let MoralDuty tune your tongue,
But be your heartsharderthan the nether millstone.
Compell[sic] the poor to live upon a Crustof bread,by soft mild arts.
Smile when they frown, frown when they smile;& when a man looks pale
Withlabour& abstinence,say he looks healthy & happy;
And when his childrensicken, let them die; there are enough
Born ....
...

reducethe man to want a gift, & then give with pomp.

... Flatter his wife, pity his children,till we can

Reduce all to our will, as spanielsare taughtwith art."

(p. 312))

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FRENCH REVIEW

Although no god openly preaches such a religion in Rimbaud's

work, the French poet's description of society reveals a similar kind
of moral cowardice. The priest Tartufe prays out loud: "Oremus,"
but goes naked under his "chaste black habit" ("Le Chatiment de
Tartufe"); the nobles in "Le Forgeron" exploit their peasants,
dehumanize them and burn their children. In "Le Mal," a god like
Urizen ignores all the suffering around him, the war, the hundred
thousand dead; he laughs in church, goes to sleep to a hosannah, and
wakes up only at the sound of a large coin being dropped before his
altar.
Conventionalized charity provides a ready target for these rebel
poets. Christian charity is by definition transcendent love; one loves
his fellow man for the sake of God. Blake calls such charity
"Brotherhood" in his description of eternity. But in social practice,
charity turns out to be Urizen's law of "Moral Duty," that is, just
another form of hypocrisy. In America, "Boston's Angel" denounces
the Urizenic system, where emotions are commercialized instead of
spiritualized, where "pity" is merely a "trade," and "... generosity a
science / That men get rich by. . ." (p. 205). Rimbaud also derides
hypocrisy, which seeks to mask a lack of charity. Describing living
people in "L'Impossible" as "the damned souls down here,"
Rimbaud slips subtly into the first person plural, perhaps to bring his
readers closer to him. Then he assails society with the full force of
his sarcasm:
"Wealwaysrecognizeone another;we disgustone
another.Charityis unknownto us. But we are polite;
our relationswith people are most proper."
In the fourth "Memorable Fancy" of The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, Blake employs a wonderful image of hypocritical charity. After
the Angel, who here voices Urizen's morality, has shown Blake his
"eternal lot," Blake volunteers to do the same for his guide. The poet
then directs the Angel's attention to a vision of monkeys and
baboons "chain'd by the middle, grinning and snatching at one
another" (pp. 189-90). In this universe, which the Angel will inhabit
for eternity and which is strangely reminiscent of the Urizenic one,
might makes right. The weak are caught by the strong who,
consummate hypocrites, first grin and then dismember their fellow
creatures; "after grinning & kissing...
[the helpless trunk], they
devour'd...
[it] too." Thus, hypocritical men who live by Urizen's
narrow-minded laws are portrayed as primates by Blake. Men shut

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BLAKE AND RIMBAUD

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out from the infinite by their reason and their guilt-inspiring religion
are called "apes of men" by Rimbaud: "Singes d'hommes tombes de
la vulve des meres" ("Soleil et chair"). Hypocrisy in some way
dehumanizes men, both writers seem to say, for even if Rimbaud's
people are "polite" in "L'Impossible," they "disgust" one another.
And the hypocritical
"righteous man" in "Le Juste restait
to
droit...
Rimbaud, "stupider and more disgusting
," is, according
than hound bitches! "
The type of society Blake and Rimbaud condemn imposes moral
sanctions on love and uninhibited sexual expression. Neither poet
calls for mere sexual promiscuity; rather, each one tries to
disassociate the sexual act from feelings of guilt.
In "The Garden of Love," Blake accuses the clergy of creating a
religion which restricts love, for in that garden, he says: ". . Priests
in black gowns were walking their rounds, / And binding with briars
my joys & desires." But, as he declares in "In a Mirtle [sic] Shade,"
"Love, free love, cannot be bound / To any tree that grows on
ground." In fact, love, for Blake, is the antithesis of Urizen's
restraining religion: it is a liberating force. Instead of "binding" with
"briars," as in the poem just mentioned, or with "an iron chain," as
in "A Little Boy Lost," "Love," according to Blake, ". . . breaks all
chains from every mind" ("Love to faults. . . ," p. 96). In Jerusalem,
he contrasts true love with Urizen's perverted picture of it. While
Urizen's version is a mercantile proposition, "A Religion of Chastity,
forming a Commerce to sell Loves," in Blake's vision of Eden,
"Embraces are Cominglings [sic] from the Head even to the Feet, /
And not a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place" (p. 526).
Rimbaud also revolts against religious restrictions placed upon
sexual freedom. In "Soleil et chair" he contrasts a mythical pagan
[was] the great Faith" with the present
past when "Love...
repressive era in which man, claiming he "knows" things, goes about
with "his eyes and ears closed." This situation, according to
Rimbaud, is Christ's fault, for as the poet laments in an apostrophe
to Venus, goddess of love: ". . . Oh! la route est amere / Depuis que
l'autre Dieu nous attelle a sa croix .... " Thus, Rimbaud insinuates
that we, and not Christ, are really the crucified ones.
Actually, Rimbaud's picture of Christ is often like Blake's
portrayal of Urizen: both deities bind, rather than liberate. Like
Blake, Rimbaud accuses priests of ruining love. In "Les Premieres
Communions," for instance, the girl communicant grown older calls
madmen / Whose divine work still deforms
priests "dirty

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FRENCH REVIEW

worlds." The "putrid kiss of Jesus," she says, has forever soiled her
breaths, has prevented her from knowing love, and has, in fact, made
her feel like a prostitute. In "Nuit de l'enfer," Rimbaud reprimands
his parents for having made him a Christian, since because of that
religion, he has learned of guilt and of hell. After all, he says, "hell
cannot assail pagans." But he, like a "slave," is bound by his baptism.
For the French poet, as for Blake, the social system which permits
restrictive religion to define "sin," "guilt" and "morality" is just as
reprehensible as that religion. Such is his cry, it seems, in two of the
sonnets called "Les Stupra," for despite the title given them, which
means "Defilements,"
these poems are not mere exercises in
shock-techniques.
They reveal an important preoccupation of
Rimbaud: his desire that love and sex should be open and free from
feelings of repression. In the sonnet beginning "Les anciens animaux
saillissaient ... ," Rimbaud complains that no one now feels free to
display his genital organs. And in "Nos fesses ne sont pas les
leurs... ," he wishes he could go around naked, as people did in
some past era, and could openly "seek joy and repose" through
sexual intercourse. Blake, too, celebrates the beauty and holiness of
the body when he writes: "The nakedness of woman is the work of
God." For him, the "genitals [represent] beauty." Still another
poem by Rimbaud, "Remembrances du vieillard idiot," reveals a
boy's fears, shame and guilt-crazed feelings about sex in a society
where that topic is taboo. Love must be freed from such repressions,
Rimbaud implies later in "Delires I": "L'amour est a reinventer, on
le sait."
In societies where love is symbolically "bound," weakness rather
than strength ensues. "Those who restrain desire, do so because
theirs is weak enough to be restrained," Blake announces through the
"voice of the devil," which is the voice of inspiration, in The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell. And what does Blake encounter on
people's faces in "London" but "Marks of weakness, marks of
woe"? For Rimbaud, restrictive "morality" as defined by the social
and religious systems is nothing other than "the weakness of the
brain." Christ in "Les Premieres Communions" is, after all, the
"eternal thief of energies."
As a result of all the above, life in the "fallen" world of experience
for Blake and in the "real" world for Rimbaud is often represented
as a symbolic picture of hell. The tortures below are worthy of
Dante's inferno, but they occur in Blake's portrayal of Urizen's
constricted universe:

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The Howlings,gnashings,groanings,shriekings,shudderings,sobbings,burstings
Mingletogether ...
For Urizenbeheld the terrorsof the Abyss, wanderingamong
The horridshapes& sightsof torment in burningdungeons& in
Fetters of red hot iron;some with crownsof serpents,& some
Withmonstersgirdinground their bosoms;some lying on beds of sulphur,
On racks& wheels; he beheld women marchingo'er burningwastes
Of Sand ....
. . swift flew the King of Light
Overthe burningdesarts[sic] ....

(The Four Zoas, pp. 302-03)

Rimbaud's description of suffering involves a more personal and
less universal vision of hell, and, at times, he seems to delight in his
very torments. "Later, the delights of damnation will be deeper," he
declares in "Nuit de l'enfer." His "Season in Hell" is, to a large
extent, the account of his anguish as a result of his poetic method,
outlined briefly in the "Lettre du voyant"; his Catholic rearing,
which instilled the fear of hell in him; and his liaison with Verlaine.
Many of the traditional tortures of the underworld recur throughout
Rimbaud's work to describe the life he is then experiencing. As he
says towards the end of Une Saison en enfer, what he has just lived
through "assuredly was hell; the old one, the one whose gates the son
of man opened" ("Matin"). Like Blake's tortures, Rimbaud's
sufferings include groanings, gnashings and fire: "Les grincements de
les
sifflements
de
les
dents,
feu,
soupirs
empestes"
("Adieu"); monsters ("Delires II"); tortures ("Nuit de l'enfer");
deserts and burning-"le desert, les vergers brCil's" ("Delires II").
Just as in some circles of Dante's hell, a stench is present, so in
Urizen's universe and in Rimbaud's description of life, foul smells,
both literal and figurative, along with images of disease, at times
pervade the atmosphere. The "tenderness of the soul" in Urizen's
world is "cast forth as filth & mire" (Jerusalem, p. 471). The
tyranny of the clergy and of the state causes the king and the
landscape in The French Revolution to suffer from illness: ". . Sick,
sick, the Prince on his couch...
/Sick the mountains,
/........
and all their vineyards weep. . ." (p. 166). Rimbaud's life-hell also
presents figures of filth, disease and degradation. Paris in "L'Orgie
parisienne," like Blake's London, is a city of "syphilitics"; the
inhabitants of the French metropolis have "mouths of foul smells"
and "hearts of filth"; "superb nauseas" pervade the city. In "Delires
II," the poet drags himself through "stinking alleys," while in

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"Adieu," images of pestilence and mud describe the physical,

emotional and moral inferno through which he has just traveled: "Je
me revois la peau rongee par la boue et la peste, des vers pleins les
cheveux et les aisselles et encore de plus gros vers dans le coeur
.... ."
For both of these writers, as for Dante, some of the greatest
sinners in their hellish universes are often clerics. Priests in Blake try
to prevent men from knowing love. The Archbishop of Paris in The
French Revolution has a decidedly infernal aura about him. When he
rises to speak: "In the rushing of scales and hissing of flames and
rolling of sulphurous smoke" (p. 172), the repetition of the /r/ and
/s/ sounds emphasizes his serpentine qualities as well as the
movement of the foul fumes which swirl around him. Rimbaud's
unspiritual priests are ridiculed, as has been seen before, in such
poems as "Le Chaitiment de Tartufe" and "Les Premieres
Communions."
But clergymen for Blake and Rimbaud are not alone to blame for
the hellish state of life. Both poets attack the deities as well. Urizen,
the god of "Moral laws" and "cruel punishments" (Milton, p. 385), is
also called the "mistaken Demon of heaven! " (Visions of the
Daughters of Albion, p. 197). This "Prince of Light" (p. 316),
another Lucifer, actually declares in The Four Zoas: "Lo, I am God,
the terrible destroyer, & not the Saviour" (p. 260). His temple "is
the Synagogue of Satan" (p. 332), and indeed, in Milton, Blake
proclaims: "Satan is Urizen" (p. 385). Thus, it is not surprising that
Urizen's universe should resemble Dante's hell. Rimbaud's Christ or
God, although not equated with Satan, is sometimes just as repellent
a figure as Blake's Urizen. As has already been pointed out, he is an
oppressor who "harnesses" men to his cross; a materialist, who sleeps
through prayers and wakes up only for money; and a "thief of
energies." Furthermore, he is the one, Rimbaud asserts, who makes
poor people suffer ("Les Pauvres 'i l'eglise"). In what is called the
"Suite Johannique," the passages Rimbaud began in the margin of
Chapters 2, 3 and 5 of the Gospel according to Saint John, the poet
makes Jesus sound extremely unspiritual with his "childish and
feminine pride." Indeed, according to Rimbaud, Christianity is the
cause of man's complacent self-deception. He says: ". . . since that
declaration of knowledge, Christianity, man deceives himself, proves
obvious ideas to himself, puffs himself with the pleasure of repeating
these proofs, and lives only like that! " ("L'Impossible").
At other times, however, the Christian religion awakens feelings of
in
"Morts
de
in
it
does
as
tenderness
Rimbaud,

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BLAKE AND RIMBAUD

761

where the men, "ecstatic and great in their

quatre-vingt-douze...,"
torment," appear to Rimbaud like a "million Christs with somber
and gentle eyes." Moreover, in several of his "Derniers Vers,"
Rimbaud seems almost preoccupied with some kinds of religious
longings. The sky is beautiful "as an angel" in "Bannieres de mai,"
and the Virgin Mary and eternity are evoked in "Chanson de la plus
haute tour" and "L'Eternite." The "vexing child" calls on God for
"some prayer" at the end of "Honte." From this it may be seen that
unlike Blake, who defines one God, Urizen in his fallen state, as
Satan, and who defines Jesus as the liberator, Rimbaud expresses
ambivalent emotions, attraction and repulsion, for his vision of
Christ, God and the Christian religion.
Both poets, therefore, revolt against similar repressive institutions
in society: corrupted cities, political and religious oppression,
hypocrisy, false charity, reason as the sole guiding force in life,
material rather than spiritual concerns. It is also interesting that both
men employ similar symbols to describe the situations which inspire
them to rebel: the oppression of children; gods, clerics and rulers
who tyrannize; weakness, sickness, filth and servitude in a life which
is like hell. Rebellion for them is a positive force, the active and
energetic defiance of what they see as social and moral evils. Such
rebellion, as Rollo May indicates, is highly constructive. For these
poets, it is the beginning of visionary creation.
YALE UNIVERSITY

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