The following investigation began as an attempt to restore the
textually significant deletions in William Blake's Jerusalem,
notably the conspicuous deletions on Plate 3. It has gradually extended, in
the rather surprising absence of any thorough collation of all copies of the
work, into a critique of every discernible or alleged deletion or alteration
that might be of value in determining the chronology of copies or the order
of plates — or that might contribute significantly to our still scanty
knowledge of those aspects of Blake's etching process which limited his
control over his text. More or less valuable restorations of text and more
or less technical analyses of mended plates fall side by side in the following
plate-by-plate report, but this seems the most useful arrangement.[1]
Appended are a corrected List of Copies and some notes on
Catchwords, on Plate Sizes, on Blake's Numbering of the Plates,[2] and on the Dating of Blake's
Script.
Before Blake published his maturest Prophetic Book in "Illuminated
Printing," Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion,
at
least before he printed any of the copies now available for inspection (none
earlier than 1818-1820 according to dated watermarks), he had erased from
the copper plates from which he printed them a number of words and whole
lines, most conspicuously in the prose and verse of his prefatory third plate
addressed "To the Public". His method of erasure was to run a sharp tool
across the raised surfaces of the copper, the printing surfaces of his relief
etching. A vigorous gouging could level these surfaces beyond recovery, as
it did on Plate 84. But in many instances Blake did not carry his negating
beyond a few strokes, leaving a stubble of metal that would print broken
outlines of letters and ghosts of words when the plates were inked and
pressed.
On Plate 3 most of the single-word deletions remain fairly legible,
and Blake's modern editor has been able to indicate with italics his nearly
certain reconstructions of such passages as: "Therefore, dear
Reader, forgive what you do not approve, &
love
me for this energetic exertion of my talent."[3] Yet a large erasure of nearly four
lines in
the center of the first paragraph has remained undeciphered, and the
absolute blanks that show up in the excellent facsimiles of the Rinder and
Mellon copies recently published by the William Blake Trust confirm the
impression that this large deletion must forever defy reconstruction.
Whether as Blake's "Public" we think of ourselves as "Sheep" or "goats"
— words he added to Plate 3 with the same tool, perhaps with the
same
impulse, that deleted his expressions of love and friend-ship — it
would
seem we must resign ourselves to a less than perfect text.
Looking at the Morgan Library Jerusalem a few years
ago, however, I noticed that there were no complete lacunae on this plate
but visible crumbs of letters in every part of the erasure, from which a full
restoration was, theoretically, possible. The curators allowed me to examine
the page under their low-power microscope and under ultraviolet radiation.
Photostatic and photographic copies of this and other pages, positive and
negative, on high contrast and low contrast papers, enlarged by two and by
three and four diameters, were "bruized and knocked about without mercy,
to try all experiments," as Blake said of some of his "experiment Pictures."
Through the owner's courtesy I was able to borrow the Rosenbloom copy
for several weeks, collating it directly with the Morgan copy and keeping
it near at hand for
photographic comparison with other copies. This posthumously printed
copy, heavily inked and firmly impressed, is clearer in some plates than the
other copies and, like the other posthumous copies, lacks the obscuring
vines and washes that Blake applied to many of the deletions in the copies
he printed himself.
The upshot is the following report, which for a time I hoped to be
able to entitle "Jerusalem Restored." The major passage on
Plate 3 has yielded to ocular and photographic attack, and lesser but
significant and sometimes astonishing passages have been recovered on
other pages. There remain, however, several places where I have been
unable to go beyond conjecture, some where even conjecture must be
silent.
