ID-Cafe: Camera Lucida

Sun Oct 21 14:27:06 CEST 2001

Deborah:

>Keynes, writing in 1960, places Blake's "Ghost of a Flea" -- the
>painting, plus 1 of the drawings (the other's been lost) -- at the Tate
>Gallery in London.

It's in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery ('Tate Britain')
in London. It was shown in the Blake exhibition earlier this year,
but I think it isn't usually on display.

 From Kathleen Raine's 'William Blake':

'At last, in Varley, Blake had a friend who did not consider his
visions 'mad'. Varley was an astrologer, and apparently a highly
professional and successful one. Sceptical Gilchrist admits that his
predictions were astonishingly accurate. he was evidently a student
of other esoteric subjects, and it was under his encouragement and in
his company that Blake was encouraged to draw (in a light-hearted
spirit, as it seems) those strange 'spirit heads', authentic sketches
of some of his spiritual visitants. One is again reminded of
Swedenborg, who conversed with spirits of the departed almost as an
everyday matter. These drawings - less imaginatively inspired, be it
said, than Blake's more serious work - have a more-than-lifelike
quality which bears witness, at least, to his astonishing power of
visual fantasy. These heads illustrate his own assertion that 'He who
does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger
and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not
imagine at all. The painter of this work asserts that all his
imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely
organized than any thing seen by his mortal eye. Spirits are
organized men.

'The forms these beings take often seems to derive from Blake's
Gothic studies: many of the drawings are of kings and queens: Wallace
and Edward the First, and other historical personages, vividly
characterised. The ghost of a flea is one horribly memorable
bloodthirsty demon. Linnell made a copy of Blake's drawing of this
monster (and other of Blake's 'visions') for 'Zodiacal Physiognomy',
as a type of the sign Gemini. Alan Cunningham remembered how Varley
(who probably believed in Blake's visions in a more literal sense
than did Blake himself) described the conception of that 'naked
figure with a strong body and short neck - with burning eyes which
long for moisture, and a face worthy of a murderer, holding a bloody
cup in its clawed hands, out of which it seems eager to drink. I
never saw any shape so strange, nor did I see any colouring so
curiously splendid - a kind of glistening green and dusky gold,
beautifully varnished. "But what in the world is it?" "It is a ghost,
sir, - the ghost of a flea - a spiritualization of the thing!" "He
saw this in a vision then," I said. "I'll tell you about it, sir. I
called on him one evening, and found Blake more than usually excited.
He told me he had seen a wonderful thing - the ghost of a flea! 'And
did you make a drawing of him?' I inquired. 'No, indeed,' said he, 'I
wish I had, but I shall, if he appears again!' He looked earnestly
into the corner of the room, and said, 'there he is - reach me my
things - I shall keep my eye on him. There he comes! his eager tongue
whisking out of his mouth, a cup in his hand to hold blood and
covered with a scaly skin of gold and green;' - as he described him
so he drew him."

James