Notes on The Gates of Paradise by William Blake

By James Cox, Student

Study notes on techniques used and meaning of The Gates of Paradise by Blake.

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

Blake Tutorial: Prologue of The Gates of Paradise
By James Cox
FORM
This poem appears to be a description about religion; almost an analysis as the speaking voice goes through aspects of Old Testament Christianity and finally expresses disbelief at the Christians from belonging to such a institution.

STRUCTURE
This poem consists of a single Stanza of ten lines. It is constructed of five rhyming couplets, which makes each section almost discrete from those preceding and following it, as demonstrated in the notes where each couplet has its own footnote, bar one.

PERSONA
There is no persona in the poem: the word ‘I’ is not used and the narrator is unidentifiable.

VISUAL IMAGERY
The visual imagery in this poem is very much Old Testament:
The Gates of Paradise - Heaven
Stones of Fire - Hell
Hostile God: Jehovah, ‘Accuser’
Mt Sinai, the desert where they received the 10 Commandments and they made the Ark of the Covenant.
High Altar - on of the signs of worship made by Old Testament figures was to construct altars in various places. (Moses, Abraham, etc.)

AURAL IMAGERY
The words of this poem have been carefully chosen by Blake, who was known for his perfectionist attempts to get his poems as artistically correct as possible. The poem has a highly dramatic and almost ominous tone, to keep with the subject that is presented.

figurative LANGUAGE
Many of the words in the poem have deeper connotations, such as the Gates of Paradise, the Stones of Fire, the Accuser, and the Dead Corpse (which signifies the deaths of many, compressed into one body.)

CONSTRUCTED MEANING
It is an attempt to point out some of the things wrong with the God of Christians.

OVERALL IMPACT
A prophetic poem: which writes about the Old Testament and in particular, Exodus, from an ironic point of view.
THE MEANING OF PROLOGUE OF THE GATES OF PARADISE
Blake was against almost every institution which existed at his time, and that included the religion of Christianity; his belief of the things wrong with this religion forms the basis of this poem. He had, in fact, invented his own theology, the principle belief that God was an inherent part of Man, and in turn Man was also a part of God. He surmised that evil was only constructed from the tenets of organised religion, and that heaven and hell were linked. (One of his works, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, is about this belief and was the equivalent of the Bible for Blake.) In this poem, the factor that stands out is his belief that the God who created the world, the wonderful and beautiful nature that fills it, and man who has brilliant artistic capability, could not possibly be as terrible as the Old Testament made him out to be, smiting cities, flooding the world, and ignoring the suffering of ‘the people of God’ for their sins. While the person speaking in the poem is not Blake, it seems to show Blake’s ideals and expresses bewilderment at how the Christians can worship this God.