WILLIAM BLAKE’S URIZEN, ALLEN GINSBERG’S MOLOCH AND THE SHADOWY SLEEP OF DEATH
WILLIAM BLAKE’S URIZEN, ALLEN GINSBERG’S MOLOCH AND THE SHADOWY SLEEP OF DEATH

Summary/Abstract: The shadowy realms of William Blake’s Urizen (The Book of Urizen) and Allen Ginsberg’s Moloch (Howl) entail a conceptual reversal between life and death via ‘sleep’ imagery. The Biblical association of ‘sleep’ with ‘death’ is overturned in the prophetic poems of both Blake and Ginsberg towards a Gnostic and Hermetic perspective upon existence, according to which earthly life is led in forgetfulness and ignorance in relation to the true nature of reality. Consequently life becomes more akin to death. Since William Blake describes the universal man, Albion, as being asleep and Allen Ginsberg’s lyrical self is depicted being asleep as well, earthly life takes the shape of a mere shadow, a dream, an imitation of true or divine reality,rooted in a shadowy sleep of death that awaits awakening. This lack of awareness over which Urizen and Moloch (as parts of the human psyche) rule breeds aggression,cruelty and destructive urges so vicious that they can only take shelter underneath the ‘shadow’ of the mind or what Jung conceptualized to be the darkest corner of the unconscious. Last, but not least, the same obscurity of the mind can be interpreted through the lens of the alchemical process known as Nigredo, which is the necessary blackening step in the process of purification.

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