Reading Response: Blake's "The Four Zoas"

William Blake’s works have had centuries to be studied and taken apart piece by piece. Articles and even entire books have been written in study to many single poems by Blake. In the 1996 edition of the article, “The Review of English Studies,” Phillips Cox writes about Blake’s poem, “The Four Zoas,” and says “Of William Blake's three epic poems, The Four Zoas is inevitably the one which presents the reader with the most obvious and enduring problems.” My interpretation of what he means here is that “Zoas” brings up the hardest problem for us to take care of, that it brings up something we don’t want to change in ourselves. Later in the review, Cox goes on to discuss how the poem has not only Blake’s normal level of prophetic style, it also bears marks of being revised and edited over many years, making “The Four Zoas” one of his hardest to interpret pieces. Much of the remaining article is spent both criticizing and approving of other reviews of “The Zoas.” Cox especially goes over a book on the poem by George Anthony Rosso. Phillips Cox starts out his review of Rosso’s book quite critically, and continues his disapproval while saying things like: “he started out with a good idea here, but then his back up is faulting in many ways.” As a review, it is sometimes hard to follow, but the general idea was taken easily enough, Rosso didn’t have a full grasp of the poem, and neither do I.


My original thoughts after reading “The Four Zoas” went entirely along with Cox’s starting ideas that this poem is even more confusing than other Blake poems. Only after I had read the poem a few times did I start to see a personal meaning that I could apply. The first section especially I can understand the easiest, that wisdom is not something that is bought, it is found through experience. Blake’s next two paragraphs are also relatively easy to understand, if you take the meaning at a face value, that is. Blake gives many examples of how it is easy to sit back and laugh at another’s pain, as long as you yourself are fine. One major example that he gave in the poem stuck out to me: “It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements… To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house; To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children, While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.” The reason this had more of an impact on me than the other things he mentions, is because I really do not care for my neighbors, so when I look at it truthfully, I might be just like what he describes here, and that made me realize how Cox’s opening statement was truthful that “The Four Zoas” presented the reader with obvious and enduring problems. Towards the end, Blake says this: “It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity: Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.” The italicized part of this really only struck me the second time through, as I realized that for once, Blake was speaking of himself and it almost felt like a promise, a promise that he will stand up in a time when others do not. We as a people would do well to learn from Blake in this “promise” especially since these days we live in rejoicing in other’s loss and our gain is even more of a problem than it was in Blake’s day. Maybe Blake did have some foresight after all.

Sources:

Cox, Philip. "Blake's Prophetic Workshop: A Study of 'The Four Zoas'." The Review of English Studies 47.187 (1996): 425+. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Jan. 2011.