Plate 28 ("Chap: 2.") (Illustrations IV a, b)
This plate is described in such a way in the Keynes-Wolf
Census (p. 106) as to suggest that there were four states of
the
copper. I find only two states, one represented by the proof on 1802 paper
which is tipped into the Morgan copy, the other represented by the adjacent
page in the Morgan copy itself and by all other copies including the
posthumous ones, in which the exact condition of the copper plate may be
seen. The "states" noted in the Census are variants of
coloring
and inking; they establish no sequence of issue.
Unhappily the Census descriptions of each "state" are
erroneous in major details. A correction of these is of importance both
bibliographically — this being the only plate in
Jerusalem
thought to contain evidence establishing priorities among more than two
groups of copies — and, in a sense, semantically or textually: for
although the actual text is unchanged, the picture which fills the top half of
the plate and announces a new chapter is radically changed in its second
state. Most of the implications of this change do not fall within the present
discussion, but one of them is potentially chronological. To put it simply,
the primary change Blake made in this plate, picturing female and male
figures embracing in the center of a "lilly of Havilah", involved turning the
legs of the two nude figures from a position in which they can be assumed
to be copulating to one in which they cannot. The change was made by
extensive additional engraving of the etched and
engraved plate. The secondary changes, both in the engraving and in the
retouching in the British Museum, Mellon, and Morgan copies, are largely
consequent upon it.
Joseph Wicksteed in his Commentary (pp. 159-160 and
204) is extravagantly impressionistic in his interpretation and in his details
but appears to have grasped the primary change correctly. The
Census, while reporting the degrees of clearness with which
certain (to me invisible) "genitals" appear in various "states" of the plate,
assigns to the male and female figures a position in the first state which
would be as essentially chaste as their position in the later.
Confusion of left and right may cause some of the difficulty, and
confusion of references to the "woman" (presumably the smooth-faced
figure on the left) and the "man" (the short-haired figure on the right, on
whom Wicksteed sees a beard, and whose back muscles are knotted in the
first state). In the 1802 proof, according to the compilers of the
Census, "the woman's right thigh [is] visible parallel to and
underneath her left; the man's left leg encircles her body; the moulding of
the man's back is clear; a caterpillar is below the figures on the
leaf."
Correction: Only in the second state does the woman have two visible
thighs, parallel. In the first state only her right thigh is visible — not
underneath but above and parallel to the left thigh of the man. His leg does
not encircle her but is bent back at the knee so that his foot is, quite
visibly, beneath his left buttock. It is his right arm that
encircles
her waist, for we see what must be his right hand resting on her right hip.
No right leg for the man or left leg for the woman is in the picture. The
caterpillar, on the petal ("leaf") below the man, is not attached to him,
though grossly phallic if you will.
Census: "In the second state . . . the woman's right
thigh
and the man's left leg have been removed; only ineffective cross-hatching
remains on the man's back; the caterpillar has been removed; the man's
genitals are defined."
Correction: In the second (and final) state of the plate the woman has
two visible thighs, for the first time, a left thigh having been created for her
out of what was the man's left thigh, so that she now appears to sit
side-saddle on the petal. The man's left leg below the knee has been
removed by an upward spread of the petals he rests upon; he has been
given a right thigh, and his buttocks have been (ineffectively) moved round
to the left, so that he is now sitting side-saddle and turned the other way
from the woman. His back muscles are flattened (and his spine surely
broken). The caterpillar has been (almost) removed by additional engraving
of all the petals. In neither state can any genitals be seen on either figure;
curiously enough even the compilers of the Census see that
the
man has his back to the viewer in either state.
They cite "copy D" (the Harvard) for this "second state" (skipping
the Rinder) and find a "third state . . . in copy F" (the Morgan), with "the
genitals less clearly shown; the leaf below Chap. 2 . . . lightened, and the
white lines increased on the lower part of the leaf on which the woman's
leg extends." Laborious comparison of photographic copies with each other
and with the originals in turn has failed to disclose the slightest difference
in any part of the picture except for ink lines added in a few places in the
British Museum and the Morgan copies and more elaborate drawing in the
Mellon copy. The posthumous copies make it clear that no lines were added
to the plate or subtracted from it. (Patchy inking in the Harvard copy does
give a vaguely phallic appearance to a portion of the female's right leg, but
comparison with other copies makes evident the accidental nature of this
effect.)
Keynes and Wolf discern, nevertheless, a "final state" in the colored
(Mellon) copy "and all the posthumous ones": "all indications of the
genitals removed; the man's right hand . . . eliminated." Here theory
supplants observation, for the right hand is painted over in the Mellon copy
— but reappears in the posthumous plates.
Wicksteed's Commentary makes out a tremendous
difference between the Rinder and Stirling (Mellon) copies, defining the
male and female as "almost completely mingled" in the first state and as
"distinct individuals,
whose bond is expressed by the embrace of their arms and not by
amalgamation" in the later: a distinction implying that intercourse destroys
individuality. Graphically, from the waist up, the two figures are just as
much "distinct individuals" in one state as in another, even if we include
"states" made by supplementary coloring.
[16]
As for the bibliographical deduction that seems possible the drastic
change implies, I should think, a revised attitude toward copulation (or
increased sensitivity to moral disapproval from dear Readers) which in turn
may imply the passage of years rather than days. Though admitting of more
than one explanation or interpretation — as does the early date,
"Edmead
& Pine 1802", of the paper of the proofs of Plates 28, 45, and 56
—
the point is worth bearing in mind. Some day enough biographical, stylistic,
and graphic evidence may accumulate to make it useful.
