This study will examine pantheism in the poetry of William Blake. The study will investigate Blake's religious faith in its relationship with the concepts of pantheism.
In "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," as Lindsay writes, Blake expresses his powerful and mystical views through the filter of pantheism: "Blake merges his persons with natural forces such as fire, wind, cloud, water, light. Man's relation to nature is also his relation to his fellows and to himself. Hunger and filth are 'pestilent fogs round cities of men.' The spectres of religious men are driven out of the abbeys 'by the fiery cloud of Voltaire, and thunderous rocks of Rousseau.' . . . Clouds play a large role in the symbolism. They represent power, they are high and immaterial, emblems of transcendence. But they are also the source and site of storm and darkness. Shadowing the earth, they are the barrier of the brooding dead that obscures the sight of the living. Yet as they ascend and grow luminous, fading into the sun, they represent true vision" (57).
Here we see Blake's reliance on pantheistic concepts as a source of both power and significance in his poetry. Pantheism is, simply, the belief that God is in all things and all things are in God. God and the physical universe, in that respect, can be understood as a single entity. There are wide-ranging variations in pantheistic belief, from the religious mysticism of Hinduism, for example, to Blake's poetic appreciation of nature, to the philosophy of Spinoza, to more ancient modes of thought.
Blake's own pantheism was a complex, unique and highly personal religious system which he used both as poetry and as philosophy of life.
As Van Sinderen writes, "Like most men of genius (Blake) was assertive and dogmatic as to his own beliefs though spiritual and gentle in manner and of great dignity . . . As a young man he began to write poetry, first in the more simple form found in the 'Songs o...