blake's neo-platonic interpretation ofplato's atlantis myth

8/2/2019 Blake's Neo-platonic Interpretation Ofplato's Atlantis Myth

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BLAKE'S NEO-PLATONIC I N T E R P R E T A T I O N OFPLATO'S ATLANTIS M Y T H

OF ALL Plato's myths perhaps the best known and certainly the mostintriguing is the myth of the Lost Atlantis. Outlined in Plato'sTimaeus and carried on in the unfiulsnea-Critias, the Atlant is mythiSllsually thought of as a Illcre e x 1 e n s i ; ; ~ o r h '; Timaeus. Numerousreferences throughout Blake's works show t ha t he knew i t well; hissymbolical interpretation and his linking of the Atlant is myth with astriking cosmological theory from Plato's Phaedo indicate tha t Blake'ssource was the works of Thomas Taylor.

According to Taylor, his translation of the Atlantic his tory" wasthe first to appear in any Illodern language:It is a singular circumstance, tha t though there is not, perhaps, any thingamong the writings of the antients which has more generally attracted theattention of the learned in every age than the Atlantic history of Plato, yetno more than one single passage of about twenty or thir ty lines has, prior tomy translation of the Timaeus, appeared in any modern language. lTaylor'S translation of the Timaelis was first published in 1793;2Blake's America, probably etched the saine year, reveals in a symbolicusage of the Atlantis myth tha t i t was already an organic par t ofBlake's thought:

On those vast shady hills between America & Albion's shore,Now barr 'd out by the Atlantic sea, call'd Atlantean hills,Because from their br ight summits you m ay pass to the Golden world,An ancient palace, archetype of mighty Emperies,Rears i ts immortal pinnacles, buil t in the forest of GodBy Ariston, the king of beauty, for his stolen bride.3

Damon notes tha t " the Lost Atlantis was to Blake a pathway to~ E t e r n i t y which was overwhelIlled in the Deluge of Time and Space.'"

I Thomas Taylor, trans. Works of Plato {London, 1804),11,573 Cratylus, Phaeao, Parmenides, and Timaeus (London, 1793). In the same year alsoappeared Taylor's translation of Pausanias's Description of Greece, which containsespecially in the notes a t the end of the third volume, considerable information abouthe Atlantis myth.I Poelry and Prose of William Blake, cd. Geoffrey Keynes, 3rd ed. (New York andLondon: Nonesuch Press, 1932}, p. 222. Hereafter cited as Blake. Frederick E. Pierce(PJ,{LA, XLIII [1928J, 1135) conjectured that Blake's knowledge of the Atlantis mythmay have come from Taylor; but Pierce merely compared by quoting, without editoriacomment, two lines from Blake's Jerusalem and a brief passage from the introductionto Taylor's translation of Plato's Cratylus. Without explanation tbe comparison is unconvincing since the tw o passages have little verbal similarity. S. Foster Damon, l,yiUiam Blah: His PhilosoPhy ami Symbols (New York: PeteSmith, 1947), p. 336. Hereafter cited as Damon.

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Blake's Interpretation of Plato's Atlantis Myth 73The name Ariston, Damo n points out, means best in Greek; and thepalace of Ariston "is probably the one later called 'Los 's Halls ' (knownto Plato as the ' \Vorld of Ideas')."& Some lines from a poetic fragmentBlake left indicate t ha t Atlantis symbolized some golden age outsidethe flux and flow of t ime's troubled waters:For above Time's troubled FountainsOn the Great Atlantic Mountains,In my Golden House on high ,There they [Blake's designs] Shine Etemally.6Here again Blake apparently had Plato 's Theory of Ideas or Forms inmind. Blake's concept of the Atlantic Ocean as the sea of t ime--afid"space, symbolic of matter , apparent ly came from the Neo-Platonists.The symbolic equivalence is most clearly stated in Proclus's Commentaries on the Timaeus of Plato. "Bu t the Atlantic sea," ProcIus wrote,"must be arranged according to mat te r itself."7 And two pages la ter :"But we shall consider the deep, and the Atlantic sea, as analogous tomatter."s In Proclus also Taylor found the conception of the strugglebetween the Athenians and the Atlanteans as an allegorical representation of the struggle between the Olympian gods and the Titans andGiants.9 The story of this struggle "contributes in the greatest degreeto the consummation of the whole theory of the world";lO tha t is, asa symbolical signification of the struggle in every m an between the in -t ~ \ l e c t u a l ancC material sides of .his nature . The whole of this theoryBlake had little use for, because he disapproved of the Athenians; bu tthe story of Atlantis as a symbol of the degeneration of m an wastailored for his purpose. T he remaining l i t t le island of Inan, crownedby the mountains of intellect, surrounded by the sea of tiIne and space,was a fairly consistent cosmological concept throughout the later

'Ibid., p. 337. Ariston, as Damon points out, was the name of a Spartan king whodeceitfully traded for his friend's wife. The story appears in Herodotus (VI, 61-66). andBlake may have found i t there, but the details in the lines I have quoted from Blakeare closer to Plato's story of N eplune's love for and isolation of his mortal bride on theAtlantic isle. Blake's Arislon may have come from Taylor'S works; the translation ofPausaruas mentions two Arislon's-one the Spartan king, the other Plato's father.'Blake, p. 127. See Northrop Frey, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 126, for an interesting comment about the golden age and therelationship between the Atlantis myth and Blake's Albion.r Thomas Taylor, trans. The Commentaries of ProelllS on the Timaetls of Plato(London, 1820), T, 147. First published in 1810. Ibid., I , 149. Ibid., I, 145. Proclus is on the side of the Athenians, of course; and since Minerva(an Olympian), thepatron goddess of Athens, is higher in the Neo-Platonic ladder ofessential being than Neptune (a Titan), the patron of Atlantis, i t is inevitable that theAthenians should win.1. Ibid., I , 173.

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74 HarperProphet ic Books. Finally, England herself, though degraded, came torepresent the "Atlant ic mo untains ," the last outpos t of the life of intellect:

The Atlantic Continent sunk round Albion's cliffy shore,And the Sea poured in amain upon the Giants of Albion . 11In a t least one instance Blake calls "Albion, our Ancestor ," the "pat riarch of the Atlantic Continent."l2

Blake 's allusions to the myth never mention the " los t is land" othe "lost A tlant is"; his references are almost a lways to the "goldenmountains ," the "Atlant ic Continent ," or the "Atlant ic l \ lountains"and the last was his favorite. Taylor 's terminology is similar: hespeaks of the "Atlant ic sea," " the Atlantics," and the "Atlant ic mountain." With him, as with Blake, the. last is the usual term for referencto the whole lost island. The pr imary reason for this choice was apparently the symbolical significance which the mounta in had for bothBlake and Taylor . The following passage from the int roduct ion to theTimaeus will i l lustrate Taylor 's conception:In some parts of the earth, therefore, there must be an expanded plain, andan interval extended on high. For, according to the saying of Heraclitus, hewho passes through a very profound region will arrive a t the Atlantic mountain, whose magnitude is such, according to the relation of the Aethopianhistorians, that it touches the aether, and casts a shadow of five thousandstadia in extent; for from the ninth hour of the day the sun is concealed by iteven to his perIect demersion under the earth.13This same passage, with all except the first sen tence in i talics, appearedin the notes to the Description of Greece, published, l ike the Timaeusin 1793. Following this passage on the Atlantic mou nta in , Taylor haa long discussion of ancient giants or heroes of the "much celebratedheroic age," followed almost imm ediately by a considerat ion of thtwelve gods, which Taylor names and divides according to their attributes into four groups of three's.14 A passage in Blake 's Jerusalem

( '1.Cfl.ects all th.re.e . TaYlor'5. d. iScuss ions- the Atlant ic mounta,i.:n., _!hanCient giants, and the twelve gods:- . T h ~ A t i ; : ~ t i c j . f ( ; u ~ t ~ i n s w h ~ r e Giants dwelt in Intellect,Now given to stony Druids and Allegoric Generation,To the Twelve Gods of Asia, the Spectres of those who SleepSway'd by a Providence oppos'd to the Divine Lord Jesus.15

11 Blake, p. 618. See also pp. 222, 304, 595, 598, 600, 635, 642, 643, 645, and 709.12 Ibid., p . 83 4.. Cratylus, Phaedo, Parmenides, and Tjmaeus, p. 399.14 Description of Greece, In, 264-76.15 Blake, p. 645.


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Blake's Interpretation of Plato's Atlantis J.fyth 75Here, with Taylor and Proclus, Blake is agreeing tha t the glory of theheroic age is gone, for "Neptune presides over generation.l6 I t seems\;erY- Ull1ikely"that Blake's listing of the mountains , the giants, andthe twelve gods in the same order as Tay lor 's should be a mere coincidence. Here, a t least, Taylor 's comment tha t " the Atlantic w ar corresponds to generation, which subsists through contrar iety and mutation"17 se.ems very close to Blake's meaning. Blake, of course, disapproves of the "Gods of Asia." D a m o n mainta ins t ha t by the twelvegods Blake meant "all the old, false mythologies" and tha t "each isfourfold."18 This doctrine of their fourfold nature was probably already a part of Blake's thinking; bu t the fact t ha t these false gods areconceived of as fourfold m ay have sprung f rom Taylor 's division ofthe gods into four t r iads: demiurgic, defensive, vivific, and harmonic.Also, although the direct relat ionship is not imIDediately obvious,Blake's Four Zoas m ay owe something to Taylor ' s division.Blake's concept of the early inhabi tants of the "At lant ic ::\Iountains" as "Giants .. . in Intel lect" obviously owes much to Taylor .As descendants of Neptune, they belonged to the race of Titans orGiants: "The giant Albion, '"was Patr iarch of the Atlantic; h e is theAtlas of t h e ~ G r e " e k S , one of those the Greeks called Titans."19 Taylorhad pointed out tha t Atlas, as the s trongest of the ten sons of Neptune, was leader of the Atlanteans in their heroic age.20 Taylor, then,is perhaps the source for the origin of Albion's ancestry. Another debtis even more striking: the idea tha t these Gj;,tnts existed not only hefore the flood but before the creation. In the J..arriage oj Heat'eil andllelC:Slake described the Giants as " the Antedi luvians who are ourEnergies," and declared t ha t " the Giants who formed this world intoits sensual existence, and now seem to live in i t in chains, are in t ruththe causes of its life & the sources of all activity."21 Years later, in theDescriptive Catalogue, Blake was still writing of " ~ l b i o n , our A n c e ~ t o r , patriarch of the Atlantic Cont inent , \vhose History Preceded tha t ofthe Hebrews & in whose Sleep, or Chaos, Creation began."22 B u t thisllood referred to occurred far too early to be the Biblical flood, forupon the creation of " the world of vegetat ion and generation" the"Atlantic Mountains where Giants dwelt in Intel lect" \vas "given to

1.0 Commentaries on tire Timaeus, I , 145.17 era/ylus, Phaedo, Parmenides, and Timaeus, p . 372.18 Damon, pp. 426-27." Blake, p. 797. . See Works of Plato, I I , 583-84.I I Blake, p. 198.=lnd., pp. 834-35.


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76 Harperstony Druids and Allegoric Generation."23 And Blake declared tha"Adam was a Druid. and Noah."24 This flood, obviously connectedwith generation, is perhaps symbolic. But Blake found authori ty foan actual pre-Biblical flood in Taylor 's translation of the CritiasH malzy altd mighty deluges happened in that period of nine thousandyears (for so many years have elapsed from that to the present time)."25 Andthe one which destroyed A thens was "PR IOR to the deluge of the Deucal ion." which was the flood "mentioned by I\.loses" and the only one.:< , the Jews had any knowledge of.26

So far as Taylor was concerned the pr imary importance of theAtlantic mountain was the proof i t offered of what he considered asignificant cosmological conception. Concerned with the shape andsize of the ear th and related by Socrates in the Phaedo, the theory maybe summarized briefly in Taylor 's words from the introduction to thePhaedo:Likewise that the orb of the earth is far different from what i t is generallysupposed to be; that its summit is ethereal, and reaches as far as to the moonthat it is every where perforated with holes; and that we reside a t the bottomof certain of these hollows, while a t the same time we vainly imagine that wedwell on the summit of the earth.2TThe earth is "cavernous like a pumice stone," and we dwell a t the"centre of a mighty orb which every way reaches to the heavens." Thehuman race we know exists "a t the bottom of four [representing foucontinents, we shall sec] of these perforations" and knows nothing othe "other numerous cavities which the earth contains."28 The reasoning behind this concept Taylor explained by a quotat ion from Produsin the introduction to the Timaeus:For indeed if the earth be naturally spherical, it is necessary that it should besuch according to its greatest part. But the parts which we inhabit, both internally and externally, exhibit great inequality_ In some parts of the earththerefore, there must be an expanded plain, and an interval extending onhigh.2IAt least one such interval or plain, Taylor explains, is the Atlanticmountain; and its inhabitants are perhaps direct descendants of a.};. . long-lost race from the mythical golden age

. . Ibid., p. 64S.2t Ibid., p. i96.ts lV",ks of Plato, I I , 580. . Ibid., I I , S8t.n Cralyills, Phaedo, Pormenldes, and Timaeus, p. 140. For Socrates' account sepp.223-33.to Ibid Ibid., p. 399. This quotation is repeated in the Description of Greece, I I I , 264.


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Blake's Interpretation of Plato's Atlantis Myth 77Several passages in Blake's Milton, which has a more completelyworked-out cosmography than any of his other poems, reveal thepoet's remembrance of Plato 's theory. The great , "natura l ly spherical" outer shell which Taylor described Blake called the "mundaneshell." In Blake's well-known, though difficult, description of the disunified universe on plate thir ty-eight of his Milton, he pictures thechaos in the "chasms" of this shell:Here in these Chaoses the sons of Ololon took their abode,In Chasms of the Mundane Shell which open on all sides r ound . . 30

Chasm is one of Taylor'S favorite descriptive terms for this cosmological theory; his "chasms of the earth"3l is very similar to Blake's"Chasms of the Mundane Shell." Compare also Blake 's "horr iblechasms into the vast unknown."32 D a m o n explains these chasms as"those spaces deserted by the shrunken soul of Man";33 bu t Blake indicates that he surely means the ear th , the chaotic world of generat ion:They stood in a dark land of death, of fiery corroding waters,'Vhere lie in evil death the Four Immorta ls pale and coldAnd the Eternal Man, even Albion, upon the Rock of Ages.M

Other passages in Milton reveal the same general conception of theworld of generation as mere chasms or holes in the universe. Som e lines ()6;'"c r j b j n g the l a b o r s ~ r u i l z e i i 's sons and the millsorTneo to rmon areinteresting, not only because they utilize the Phaedo myth , bu t because they also reflect the creat ion myth of the Timaeus:

Urizen's sons here labour also, & here are seen the MillsOf Theotormon on the verge of the Lake of Udan-Adan.These are the starry voids of night & the depths & caverns of earth.These Mills are oceans, clouds & waters ungovernable in their fury;Here are the stars created & the seeds of all things planted,And here the Sun & Moon redeve their fixed destinations.a5

Ca.vern is another word frequently used by Blake and Taylor to describe this concept. T he cavern or the cave is an old symbol for theearth, dating as far backce t ta in lyas th c 'fainous"d e"sc'i:iptlo'ri; ' iu 'BookVIrornie' Republic, of the unenlightened m an as one l iving in a cave,seeing only the reflections of reality. Milton contains a striking illustration:

'0 Blake, p. 533.. Craty11ls, Pltaer/o, Parmenides, M1-G Timaens, p. 233.: I Blake, p. 363. Compare p. 544: "So Milton / Labour 'd in Chasms of the MundaneShell"33 Damon, p. 425.14 Blake, p. 533."Ibid., p. 518. Oceans, clouds, and waters, as well as caverns, are material symbols.


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78 HarperLike the black storm, coming out of Chaos beyond the stars,I t issues thro' the dark & intricate caves of the Mundane Shell.... 6

One more passage mus t suffice. After speaking of t he "Ch aot ic Voidoutside of the s tars ," Blake describes the ear th in t e rms which he surely found in Taylor :

From Star to Star, Mountains & Valleys, terrible dimensionStretch'd out, compose the Mundane Shell, a mighty IncrustationOf Forty-eight deformed Human 'Vonders of the Almighty,\Vith Caverns whose remotest bottoms meet again beyondThe :i\fundane Shell in Golgonooza; but the Fires of Los rageIn the remotest bottOlTIS of the Caves, that none can passInto Eternity tha t way, but all descend to Los,To Bowlahoola & Allamanda & to Entuthon Benython.37T he "terrible dimension" of the "Mounta ins & Valleys" reflects Taylor 's "grea t inequal i ty" of SOIne par ts of the ear th . T he Atlantimountain , i t will be recalled, was one of these inequali t ies. T he lastwo lines have a ra ther complex b u t nevertheless direct relationship tone aspect of the Platonic theory of the ear th which we have jus t beediscussing.

Los, Bowlahoola, Allamanda, and ,En tu thon Benython representhe Four Zoas in every man: Ur thona , Tharmas , Luvah, and Urizen.T he y also represent , among ma ny other things, all somehow related" four universes" or " four intersect ing globes."311 These globes corespond to the four compass points and are represented by foucont inents : Europe (north) , America (west) , Asia (east), and Afric(south). In the la ter Prophet ic Books -Four Zoas, Milton, and Jei-'l/,sl e m - t h i s fourfold s tructure was worked into an amazingly elaborapsychology based upon the old microcosm-macrocosIn theory; in iearly stages, however, Blake 's theory was a poetic exposit ion ofmyth which originated in Pla to and was elaborated b y the Neo-pla

/ lonis ts . One of Taylor 's notes to the TimaeltS explains this fourfol! concept of the ear th as well as i ts relationship, in the minds of th, N e o - l ~ l a t o n i s t s , to the Phaedo m yt h :The latter Platonists appear to have been perfectly convinced that the earcontains two quarters in an opposite direction to Europe and Asia; and Olympiorlorus even considers Plato as of the same opinion, as the following pa

M Ibid., p. 506.IT Ibid., pp. 539-40U Sec Damon, p. 427 Blake, p. 532. For a. better understanding of Blake's meaning see the pictorrepresentation on this page of his poetic conception of the universe.


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Blake's Interpretation oj Plato's Atlantis Myth 79sage from his commentary on this par t of the Phaedo clcarly evinces. "Pla to(says he) directs his attention to four parts of the globe, as there are two par tswhich we inhabit, i.e. Europe and Asia; so tha t there mus t be two others, inconsequence of the antipodes. . . . " Now in consequence of this , as they wereacquainted with Africa., the remaining fourth quar ter mus t be t ha t which wecall America. At the same t ime let i t be carefully remembered, tha t thesefour quarters are nothing m ore than four holes with respect to the whole ear th ,which contains many such parts; and tha t consequently they are no t quar tersof the earth itself, but only of a small par t of the ear th in which they arecontained, like a small globe in one of a prodigious extent.40Three of Blake's earIy Prophetic Books deal with these four continents: America (1793), El,ropc (1794), and The Song of Los (1795). Thelast includes hoth Africa and Asia. These four cont inents represent thesea of generation, life on earth, t ha t is. They are the four perforationsn h e bottom of which, according to Taylor , "w e dwell a t the centre of

atnighty orb which every ,vay reaches to the heavens."41. . The Neo-Platonists apparent ly considered the Lost Atlantis the

fourth continent, since they knew only Asia, Africa, and Europe. Taylor's discussion of the "four holes with respect to the whole" appearsas a footnote to his discussion of the Lost Atlantis myth . Consciouslyor unconsciously this relationship to the Atlant is myth mus t have beenin Blake's mind when he composed his SOIZg of Los: the s trange appearance of Ariston in line four can be accounted for only be recalling tha the appears in A.merica (which replaces Atlantis as the fourth ,continent) as the "king of beauty" who rules an "ancient palace" on the':f\tlalltean hills." Both Blake and Taylor opposed the idea, held bysome, Bacon especially, " tha t America is the A tlant ic island of Pla to" :Taylor declared this "obviously erroneous,"42 and Blake was carefulto locate "those vast shady hills between America & Albion's shore."43

In his intimate acquaintanceship with the Atlantis myth and thetheory of the earth which the Neo-Platonists associated with i t, then,as well as in his symbolic use of the myth ' s main outlines, Blake reveals that the source of his knowledge is ' 1 ; h . o m ~ ; ; : r ~ " y l o r . l\foreover,the meaning of many lines basic to the understanding of the PropheticBooks can be explained only in the l ight of Taylor 's Neo-Platonicexegesis of Plato's myth.

GEORGE l\fILLS HARPERUniversity of North Carolina Cratylus, Phaedo. Parmenides. alld Timaeus, pp. 398-99.. Ibid., p. 140.a: Works of Plato, n,573.I I Blake, p. 222 .

blake's neo-platonic interpretation ofplato's atlantis myth

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