Example Of Proverbs Of Hell Themes And Ideas Essay

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, poet William Blake dichotomises the one sided view of hell describing the need for its existence as seen through the innate behaviours of human being. Proverbs of Hell serves as a central part of this work where the poet explains how a human should be in accordance with the nature of hell. Where heaven is seen as a place of static peace and balance, hell, according to Blake is a place where the extremes are witnessed and doing so is as good as progressing on the spiritual path. Some of the proverbs are clearly against the standard religious beliefs pertaining to Christianity (Blake’s work often made biblical references) and other contemporary literature, whereas others take a different view point not too far away from the original perception of a certain subject. For eg., change and freedom are some of the themes expressed, but change is described through aversion for stagnation and freedom is expressed through the dismissal of bondage to religion and societal beliefs. The emphasis on the negatives, glorification of the animals like the tiger, lion and the eagle all talk of extremist point of view in perceiving various philosophical subjects.
In this essay, we shall discuss three of the Proverbs of Hell and compare them for a similarity in concept. Several of Blake’s Proverbs of Hell resemble each other in one way or the other as far as ideology is concerned, which makes them all the more interesting as they seem to throw light from different angles on to an illusory prism.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. Blake attempts to identify with the reader’s experiences at this point as any person would have experienced this personally in their own life. In a real life instance, when one feel so sad that one has to laugh, it means they understand the sorrow perfectly and are boggled by the enormity of its existence. It’s almost as if one can look at sorrow objectively from the outside and can find humour in its ugly, sordid, immovable presence. In the same way, when one feels so much joy that one has to weep, it is a reflection on the duality of emotion. In that moment, one understands the sorrow that coexists with happiness and gives heartfelt expression to it by crying. The idea portrayed in this proverb is not just one of irony or duality, but that of true wisdom one can gain only through experience.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. This proverb is an attempt to embrace excesses (which is Blake’s perception of hell) as a vital part of life’s meaning. We see it often in Proverbs of Hell that the poet pushes the idea of the ‘excess’ as something to learn or to derive joy from. The idea behind this proverb rebels against that of self-assessed contentment. It is to say that there is no such thing as enough or too much (as Blake says in the last proverb) unless you experience it for yourself and decide what is the right amount based on individual perception. Perception is also one of the concepts that is given much emphasis in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Here more than enough is not indulgence as much as it is an experiment. And one can see the paradoxically progressive quality of the meaning delivered here. Let’s take for instance ‘success’ as a parameter. How much success can one deem enough unless one hasn’t experienced such a thing as too much success?
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. In this proverb, Blake succinctly portrays his version of hell as the place that gives birth to wisdom, itself having arisen from the excesses in life. The phrase ‘palace of wisdom’ seems to be chosen with care in order to denote a place to be in. The idea that the poet is trying to put forth through this proverb is that, although excess, by definition is a negative term, going through this alone will lead to wisdom. After all wisdom is the trait of using knowledge and experience together and by experiencing the negatives of excess, one finds the positives of what is enough and therefore wisdom is born.
The three proverbs chosen above portray the same concept that the experience of ‘excess’ shall lead to wisdom. The intriguing part though, is in understanding why the poet chose ‘excess’ as the essential negative in the argument, especially when it is hell we are talking about and during Blake’s time period, contemporary literature rarely associated hell with excess anything except punishment or misery. The dualisms in almost each and every proverb are also misleading in the context of hell, making one wonder if there is indeed quite something else that the poet wants us to look at when he talks about hell. Like in the third proverb we have taken here, ‘the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom’. Isn’t it but striking that although the truth of the statement is exacting, the very knowledge of such a thing would make one indulge in excess only more. What then is the point of acknowledging the fact that would only lengthen this road to wisdom when the palace isn’t really getting any bigger? In the first proverb, ‘Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps,’ there is an allusion to the momentary nature of feelings in a deeper sense, while on the outset it seems like a deconstruction of their reliability in meaning anything. Finally, in the second proverb, ‘You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough,’ there too is a tangential dichotomy. One assumes that an excess or ‘more than enough’ will automatically come to one’s attention through the senses or cognition. This maybe so, but then again, logically speaking the reference is only made to things that bring pleasure. There is a deliberate drift from reason here as not everything that a man comes in contact with is supposed to bring him pleasure or even pain. Even if it does, there is no reason not to assume that irrationality (that causes indulgence in excess) is caused by simply failing to apply reason or logic by choice (considering the dualist approach Blake took), in which case ‘enough’ and ‘more than enough’ are simply parameters that one had always been aware of.
Maybe in Blake’s view, hell is about confusion. If one considers Proverbs of Hell as a standalone piece, the dichotomies plainly visible throw not the light of darkness and hell, but of a state where everything that makes sense also does not.