Within and Without Eternity

Book excerpt: William Blake's literary works are characterized by a ceaseless dynamics constituted in the fierce interactions of the language, thought, and narrative of his myth. Highlighting the critical problems facing the linear approach that the study of Blake has adopted from the traditional methodology of Newtonian science, Jules van Lieshout argues that nonlinearity is the key to understanding Blake's prophecies. Throughout his discussions, Van Lieshout focuses on the relation of Blake's Generation and Eternity, which he identifies as Bakhtinian 'world views'. In Generation, existence is finalized as a hierarchy of geometric 'dark globes', each assuming the character of universal whole to the exclusion of all others. Eternity, on the other hand, is Blake's fractal 'human form' of existence that is continuously organized and reorganized in the dynamic interaction of whole and parts. Blake represents these world views as interinvolved. Their dynamic interaction reflects and refracts his conceptual thought, mythological narrative, and poetic language. Hence, his visionary epic self-organizes into a self-similar complex system whose patterns of behaviour are not merely remarkably like those that modern applications of nonlinear dynamics are revealing in the physical world, but are indeed inherent in the processes of writing and reading his individual works.