I've been living with this image for some time now. At first because I really liked it as a composition (though what it references is kind of creepy), and then when the unblogging days became weeks, I had to keep living with it (though some days I replaced it with other wallpapers on my computer).
The aforementioned reference is to Dante's Inferno, Canto XXXIII, which tells the story of Count Ugolino, who plotted with Archbishop Ruggieri to overthrow the government of Pisa but then was betrayed and imprisoned, along with two of his sons and two of his grandsons, in the "hunger tower." When they realized they were being starved, Ugolino's sons offered themselves to the count to eat. The count refused but two days after they had starved to death, he ate their flesh. It is not for this that Dante places him in Hell--rather for his treachery in attempting to overthrow the government. For his punishment, he spends eternity gnawing on Archbishop Ruggieri's head, another instance of Dante's brilliant enacting of "poetic justice."
Blake, long before his brilliant engravings of Dante later in life, uses this plate to make an anti-Catholic statement (which he also does in 1794's Europe: A Prophecy). His inscription makes this clear: "Does thy God, O Priest, take such vengeance as this?" It could equally be a statement about the French Revolutionaries beginning of the process (with the September massacres of 1793) of their political cannibalization and destruction.
I raise my usual point: this is hardly a fit subject for an emblem book, especially one, in its original incarnation, meant for children. It's enough to invoke nightmares, especially if the reader is a child who knows the story from Dante. But as a statement about the abuses of state-sponsored religion, directed to the eyes of adults, it makes more sense.
And I must also raise my OTHER usual question. Does it work as a computer wall-paper icon invoking spiritual reflection? For "recovering Catholics" with a social conscience maybe. Since I fit into that category, it worked for me. Though I can see how other folks (and many of Blake's readers) would be appalled.
All that to one side, I think this image is one of the more brilliantly executed images in the Gates of Paradise. Maybe because I'm a sucker for symmetry, but the central figure, surrounded by his progeny, staring out at the viewer with despairing eyes, is very affecting. I'm sure the triangular-trinity shape of the tableaux is no accident. It is also appropriately claustrophobic.
I do think, after a couple months, I'm ready to let this image go. But then does such an image ever let you go?
To access the Canto from Dante (and view another artist's rendition), follow this link.
Posted by jeb at May 19, 2005 5:07 PM | TrackBack