Love is Stumbled on Through Loving

 

I did not feel like reading poetry this weekend. The world was not a loving place this week.

But I wanted to read. So I went to a French translation of Dante’s “La Divine Comédie” and started at the beginning with “L’enfer”.

But could not continue for long.

Then I recalled that the once forgotten English poet, William Blake, was also an engraver who was working on illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy as his last work before his death in 1827. So, I opted to read pages from Blake remembering a statement of him that had stayed with me during any creative process I spent my past 50 years in pursuit.

He said:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

Perception, consciousness and apprehension. Over the years, I have considered these dimensions as the three legs of the stool upon which an artist rest, and where a scientist aspires to distill all complex questions faced.

Yet, the doors of perception are often closed, locked tight, or turned opaque. But when cleansed or open, thinking that through these doors the infiniteness of everything can be experienced is perhaps what Béatrice showed to Dante after his descent to Inferno and passage through the terraces of Purgatorio.

So, I leafed through some of Blake’s poem. To my delight, given my initial inclination to read Dante, I found a poem I had not read before entitled “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. At first lecture, it seems an abstract poem or series of thoughts. Until one gets to the line

“Roses are planted where thorns grow”

I stopped for a while thinking about that line. Was Blake looking though the cleansed doors of perception? Or was he lamenting upon human nature?

Perhaps the answer is in the following stanzas:

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

These almost sound like what Virgil could have said to Dante during his descent to hell. And secretively, I found the short poem by Blake more to the point, faster. How delightful was his choice of the poem’s title!

 ... I did not feel like reading poetry this weekend, but I did. Perhaps in hope of that infinite Blake was urging us to discover.

October 15, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023