The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

One of William Blake's (1757-1827) most influential early works, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) has had an immense cultural influence, influencing novelists and philosophers like Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) to musicians and songwriters such as Jim Morrison (1943-1971) of the American rock band The Doors. The short book consisted of 27 plates engraved in copper before being inked, pressed, and colored in Blake's innovative style. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell uses a mixture of prose, free verse poetry, proverbs, and illustrations to satirize 18th-century philosophical and religious beliefs while presenting the poet's own unique moral and spiritual vision.

William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Summary

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a short book comprised of 27 engraved plates. Some plates are filled with illustrations, while others are mainly text. William Blake explores the relationship between good and evil, and how they are necessary for each other's existence. Blake challenges traditional ideas of morality and religion and presents a vision of a world where the human spirit is free from the constraints of societal norms. Through a series of proverbs, aphorisms, and paradoxical statements, Blake argues that the marriage of opposites is necessary for spiritual growth and creativity.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is split into ten sections that can be seen as chapters:

1. "The Argument"
2. "The Voice of the Devil"
3. "A Memorable Fancy" (1)
4. "Proverbs of Hell"
5. "A Memorable Fancy" (2)
6. "A Memorable Fancy" (3)
7. "A Memorable Fancy" (4)
8. "A Memorable Fancy" (5)
9. "A Song of Liberty"
10. "Chorus"

Book Cover: Plate 1

The title page shows an above and below-ground image of the earth, signifying heaven and hell. Two naked figures embrace in the flames while human spirits shoot upwards to the sky. In a single image, William Blake visually introduces his idea of blurring the lines between good and evil, which is the premise of his book.

Fig. 1 - This is one of several versions of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — though copies of the text were made using the same copper plates, each was watercolored by hand differently.

"The Argument": Plates 2-3

Rintrah, an angry, wrathful figure who roars as clouds approach, is introduced without explanation. The story of the “just man” is contrasted with that of the “villain” (plate 2). The "just man" once bravely kept to a “perilous path” until driven off of it into a “path of ease” by the villain (2). Now the just man “rages in the wilds / Where lions roam” (2).

The speaker announces that a “new heaven” began 33 years ago (plate 3). This corresponds to the year 1757. This was the year of Blake’s birth but also, according to the Swedish religious mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the year that the Last Judgment had taken place.

The speaker then introduces the idea that “contraries” such as “Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate” are the cause of progression and are necessary for human existence (3). It then provides a radical redefinition of good and evil: “Good” is “the passive that obeys reason,” and “Evil” is only “the active springing from Energy” (3).

"The Voice of the Devil": Plates 4-7

The speaker proclaims “the Voice of the Devil” and explains that all religions have incorrectly divided body and soul and associated evil with bodily energy and good with reason and the soul (plate 4). Plate 4 states that “man has no Body distinct from his Soul,” both of them being different forms of “Energy,” which is itself defined as “Eternal Delight.”

The speaker elaborates on the argument that so-called evil is energy and good is passive obedience to reason. When desire loses to reason, it says, it is only because the desire is weak enough to be diminished into a “shadow of desire” (plate 5).

Fig. 2 - The devil's logic blurs the lines between good and evil.

Blake speaks of John Milton's messiah because, in Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), Satan is portrayed as more energetic and appealing than God and the other angels. Blake describes Milton as "of the Devil's party without knowing it" (plate 6).

"A Memorable Fancy" (1): Plates 6-7

The speaker recounts the book’s first “Memorable Fancy,” with the word "fancy" designating an imaginary experience.

When he was “walking among the fires of Hell,” the speaker collected some “Proverbs of Hell” to demonstrate Hell’s wisdom to the earthly world (plate 6). When the speaker returned to the world, he saw “a mighty Devil folded in black clouds” write the following words on the surface of a rock (6):

"Proverbs of Hell": Plates 7-11

“Proverbs of Hell” contains 70 proverbs and a paragraph about the nature of poetry and religion.

Some of the most memorable proverbs from this section include:

"A Memorable Fancy" (2): Plates 12-14

In the second “Memorable Fancy,” the speaker converses with the Biblical Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. The speaker asks the prophets how they knew that God spoke to them. They agree that “a firm persuasion that a thing is so” makes it true (plate 12). They also agree that “Poetic Genius” is the most important way of accessing the truth (plate 13).

The speaker goes on to state that the world “will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years” but that this will make everything “infinite and holy” whereas it is now “finite and corrupt” (plate 14). This will be accomplished further through an “improvement of sensual enjoyment” (14).

The speaker then repeats the need to destroy false beliefs, such as that body and soul are separate. He concludes with the famous statement:

"A Memorable Fancy" (3): Plates 15-17

In the third “Memorable Fancy,” the speaker visits a printing house in hell containing six chambers. Each chamber contains different creatures: dragons, vipers, eagles, lions, and eventually men. These represent the progressive improvement of humankind’s ability to perceive the world.

Fig. 3 - Plate 16 illustrates the sadness of the chained "Giants" Blake writes about.

Plate 16 has a picture of five sad-looking men huddled together on the floor. The first line of text explains that these are the “Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence” (plate 16). Plate 16 divides people into two categories: the “Prolific” or creative, and the “Devourers” or consumers. These two types of people are enemies, though religion tries to bring them together.

"A Memorable Fancy" (4): Plates 17-22

In the fourth “Memorable Fancy,” an angel warns the speaker that they are doomed to a “hot burning dungeon” (plate 17). The speaker asks the angel to show him his fate, and they descend in stages from a stable, to a church, to a tomb, to a mill, and finally into an Abyss. They see warring black and white spiders in the Abyss, and the angel informs the speaker that his place is between them.

Suddenly Leviathan, an enormous sea creature, arrives. The angel is scared away, but when he leaves, the whole Abyss disappears, and the speaker finds himself next to a river with a man singing:

Realizing that hell was just a creation of the angel, the speaker then finds the angel and forcibly shows him his own future, with a series of monkey-like figures fighting and devouring each other. The speaker grabs the skeleton of one of the dead figures before fleeing and later discovers that it contains a copy of a work of Aristotle’s philosophy. He dismisses the angel as a useless philosopher.

Fig. 4 - At the top of plate 21, the nude man sitting by the river and gazing at the sky refers to the speaker's escape from the angel's abyss.

The speaker notes that angels insolently believe themselves the sole possessors of knowledge because of their over-reliance on “systematic reasoning” (plate 21). He then criticizes the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg for only relying on an unoriginal conversation with angels, never bothering to speak to devils. He claims that the writings of Dante and Shakespeare are infinitely better.

"A Memorable Fancy" (5): Plates 22-24

In the fifth “Memorable Fancy,” an angel and devil confront each other. The devil shocks the angel by stating:

The angel responds that Christ alone should be worshiped, but the devil points out that Christ himself broke all of the Ten Commandments in one way or another. The angel is eventually convinced that this is true, and a note informs us that the angel has become a devil and is now a good friend of the speaker and that they often read “The Bible of Hell” together (plate 24).

Fig. 5 - The naked man crawling is likely King Nebuchadnezzar, a biblical king who destroyed Jerusalem and went crazy, beginning to eat grass.

"A Song of Liberty": Plates 25-27

"A Song of Liberty” is a triumphant declaration of the superiority of Blake’s devils over angels, linking them to the American and French Revolutions and declaring:

"Chorus": Plate 27

The chorus then zeroes in on religious authorities as a force of oppression. The book concludes with a simple but powerful declaration:

Symbolism in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake's work is rich in complex and often idiosyncratic symbolism, which is just as often visual as textual. Some even argue that Blake's writing is "fundamentally symbolic."²

A full explanation of Blake's symbolism in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell would fill a book. This article will only note some of the work's more critical symbolic qualities: its use of traditional religious symbols, animal symbolism, and the beginnings of Blake's symbolic universe.

Religious Symbolism

Blake's inversion of traditional religious symbols is already clear from the image on the book's title page: the flames of hell, traditionally used to symbolize evil and eternal suffering, seem to give rise to trees and living human beings. At the same time, angels, who typically symbolize the divine and are god's messengers or helpers for humanity, are depicted as closed-minded, insolent, and inactive.

Animal Symbolism

Animals also make a number of appearances in the work. The "tigers of wrath" and the "horses of instruction" from the "Proverbs of Hell" are two of the most notable examples. Here the raw energy of the tiger is opposed to the relentless forward-plodding of the horse. The proverbs state that the tiger is the wiser of the two, which is another way of expressing Blake's preference for evil, re-conceived as creative energy, to good, which is passive reason.

Fig. 6 - The tiger is an alluring, fearsome, and powerful creature representative of the appeal of evil.

Blake's Symbolic Universe

The unexplained Rintrah from the second plate of the book represents wrath, particularly the revolutionary wrath evident in the violence of the American and French Revolutions. Rintrah would eventually become just one of a number of characters that Blake invented to symbolize various qualities, such as Urizen for reason or Palambron for pity.³

Themes in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Blake's deep interests in religion, philosophy, and politics are evident in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The following themes of morality and religion, liberty and revolution, and hypocrisy show that the work is not a literal treatise on marriage, but a metaphorical exploration of the dynamic tension between opposing forces in the universe.

Morality and Religion

The work's central message is that heaven, hell, good, and evil have all been misrepresented by traditional religious beliefs (Christianity in particular). Hell and evil, especially, have gotten an undeservedly bad reputation. The work characterizes evil as a font of creative energy that good and its representatives have always tried to keep under control. Blake's moral vision, as expressed in this book, is the re-unification of heaven with hell, good with evil, and body with soul. Only after such a unification takes place will human beings be able to live fully.

Liberty and Revolution

Blake was keenly aware of the political developments of his time, notably the French Revolution, which was underway as he wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Conservatives in Blake's time interpreted the people's rebellion against their king as analogous to Satan's rebellion against God. Both were a result of the sin of pride and were doomed to failure.²

Blake, of course, saw things differently: Satan was right to rebel, and the creation of hell was not a failure but a triumph of creative energy and delight. Blake celebrates the overthrow of the monarchy and the end of empire (prematurely, as it turns out) as worldly manifestations of his call for the marriage of heaven and hell.

Hypocrisy

Blake's moral and political vision also addresses those who claim to be on the side of good and reason. These are specifically identified as priests and angels but could be any authority figures who promote the good of prudence and reason while condemning the evil of desire and creation. They are the targets of biting satire in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which laughs at the idea of hell being a place of eternal torment while depicting heaven and angels as cowardly, boring, and pompous.³

Fig. 7 - Blake depicts angels and authority figures as hypocritical and boring.

William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Analysis

A medley of visual art and various literary forms, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a groundbreaking work touching on politics, psychology, and religion. Blake puts his unique engraving method and complex symbolism to work in his call for a dynamic union of opposites such as reason and passion, body and mind, good and evil, and heaven and hell. The driving force behind the work is the acknowledgment that these conflicting opposites can, if they are not suppressed, be a source of creative energy that is productive and moves humanity forwards.

Blake's inversion of traditional religious symbolism in the work amounts to a denial of heaven and hell in the traditional sense. We shouldn't think of passivity alone as good or of energy as demonic or evil. Blake invites us to explore the implications of this redefinition of good and evil in his open-ended, thought-provoking "Proverbs of Hell" while lampooning the upholders of traditional beliefs in his "Memorable Fancies." Blake's message failed to find a wide audience in his lifetime. Still, its revival in the 19th century would have enormous implications for both literature and pop culture, especially in the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s.