Sheila A. Spector. "Glorious Incomprehensible": the Development of Blake's Kabbalistic Language, and "Wonders Divine": the Development of Blake's Kabbalistic Myth.(Book Review)

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-DEC-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Boston University

Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press/London: Associated University Presses, 2001. Pp. 202 ("Glorious")/213 ("Wonders"). $59.50 each.

Sheila Spector's reputation is based on her--gloriously comprehensible work on Hebrew and kabbalistic influences on British romantic literature. Now in these two volumes she expands from this base into William Blake's universe. The putative link between Blake and kabbalism is not new. The idea that he may have recruited kabbalism to give shape to his poetic figure of Albion as a version of the kabbalistic Adam Kadmon was first suggested by S. Foster Damon in 1924. But Spector's well-grounded knowledge of Hebrew and kabbalistic aspects of language theory takes this idea further and generates many interesting questions for academic speculation. Spector's research into the impact of kabbalism on British romantic literature has sometimes been viewed with scepticism by historians disquieted by what they see as factual evidence arranged to fit preliminary hypotheses, but it should also appeal to anyone with a passing interest in Blake who has ever puzzled over the derivation and pronunciation of his Pantheon of characters--for instance, Los being an anagram for the Latin word Sol, or more importantly the name of Blake's creator figure Urizen, which is usually interpreted as a "combination of the Greek for 'horizon,' and the Hebrew for 'curse/light' of the 'counsellor,' and the English pun, 'your reason'" ("Glorious Incomprehensible" 116).

Starting with "Glorious Incomprehensible"--because Spector's observations on Blake's language prefigure some of her interpretations of his myth in Wonders Divine--Spector persuasively makes the case that the development of Blake's language and grammar is determined by a shift from the empirical to the mystical. It is, in other words, a mystical journey or, as she puts it--a return to "God's essential reality" ("Glorious Incomprehensible" 127). In a letter Blake himself claims to have begun learning Hebrew in 1803, but Spector argues that he had a sound knowledge of the language as early as 1789 when he "first began experimenting with Hebrew." Spector argues for 1789 but does not give a source ("Glorious Incomprehensible" 167). Glossing over this crucial discrepancy Spector ahgns her interpretation of Blake's illuminated books to the kabbalistic...

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