Plate 1 [Frontispiece] (Illustration III a)
- [Top of page and dividing over archway:]
- <There is a Void outside of Existence, which if enterd into
Englobes itself & becomes a Womb, such was Albions Couch A
pleasant
Shadow of Repose calld Albions lovely Land
-
His Sublime & Pathos become
His Reason his Spectrous
Jerusalem his Emanation
<O A[ ] * [?behold]
|
Two Rocks fixd in the Earth
Power. covers them above
is a Stone laying beneath
[?Pitying]> behold the [7]
Vision of Albion>
|
- [On right side of archway:]
- <Half Friendship * is the bitterest Enmity said Los
As he enterd the Door of Death for Albions sake Inspired
The long sufferings of God are not for ever there is a
Judgment>
- [On left side of archway, in reversed
writing:]
- <Every Thing
has its
Vermin O Spectre of the Sleeping Dead!>
All the writing on this page, designed not as a part of the text of the
poem but as inscriptions on a large illustration, was applied not in etched
masses but in line engraving which was so thin that Blake could easily
delete it if he wished by an over-all inking of the plate. He did so in all
copies of Jerusalem, but Sir Geoffrey Keynes has been able
to
recover the text (except for the erasures in line 7) from a proof copy in
which the letters have been made visible by outlining "in black with a fine
pen"
against the light brown printing of the plate.
[9] (Text as punctuated above derives
from
this copy.)
Even in that proof, line 7 contains an erasure made by a gouging of
the plate that left only the tops and bottoms of what I conjecture to be the
b, h, l, d of
"behold" and
the y and g of "Pitying" (but the whole
P is visible). These elements are fairly discernible in
enlargements of the Rosenbloom copy and may be faintly seen in the brown
and black collotype of Sir Geoffrey's proof (published with the Rinder
facsimile).
From the posthumous copies it is apparent that Blake considered the
whole text canceled, however, and not to be brought back by careful
inking; at least all copies are from the same state of the plate, slightly but
significantly modified from that used for the proof. Except for the early
erasure in line 7 (perhaps a correction before canceling) Blake did not
scratch out any words, but he incised lines of texture for the stone of the
arch and lines marking the bricks of the wall — right across his
lettering.
Inking could do the rest.
Joseph Wicksteed suggested that the obliteration of the text from Plate
1 "was done intentionally to fit the design to function as a Frontispiece,
which in Blake's Prophetic Books . . . never have any text"[10] — a rather circular
argument,
presenting Blake as a self-conformist who caught himself in an
inconsistency. A more important consistency is that which he achieved by
the tone and placing and silence of Plates 1, 26, 51, 76, and 100 —
with
the minor inconsistency that the lettering that remains on Plate 26 had been
too broadly chiseled to be inked over. The names of "Albion" and "Jesus"
on 76 could be hidden easily, and usually were. Was the original plan, after
four chapters were decided upon, to have a spaced series of inscribed
frontispieces? Did the idea of opacity only gradually gain ground, too late
for 26? (See also the comment on Plates 51 and 76, below.)
Clues to possible reasons for deletion may be found in the content of
the inscriptions. The text condemning "Half Friendship" implies a plea for
whole friendship and may have been jettisoned along with the words of
"love and friendship" on Plate 3. The lines on the Englobing Womb are a
variant of similar lines in Blake's Milton which are among
the
few deleted passages in that work.[11]
And a drawing of the phallic altar stones
alluded to here is deleted in
Jerusalem 69, though only in the
Rinder copy. (Noted by Wicksteed, p. 216, n.3.)
The lines in reversed writing were, of course, secretive from the
beginning: a direct rebuke to any verminous fiend who deciphered them in
his mirror.
