TH E O TH ER S I D E
William Blake � The City of The Imagination BY BEATRIZ FIORE ILLUSTRATED BY KATIE HARDCASTLE
William Blake’s City in ‘Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion.’
T
o map out William Blake’s city of Golgonooza, present a systematic structure of his cosmology and make a coherent and linear summary of the plot of the poet’s prophetic book ‘Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion,’ would be a near impossible task and one which Blake himself would have likely disputed. This essay, while having to make an attempt at grasping and visualizing the world of ‘Jerusalem,’ will instead explore Golgonooza by diving into the mystic city, contemplating it through an imaginative lens, like as readers we assimilate its chaos and beauty through the senses for it does not pretend to appeal to rational comprehension or any orderly manner of cognitive thought. Trying to visualise Blake’s city through concrete images in our mind becomes problematic, rather it must be conceived through abstract values and ideas while simultaneously embracing the plausibility of the setting, the familiar names of well-known streets in the heart of London. Golgonooza is alive with contradictions and contrasting elements, while ever-moving towards the common goal: the unification, or salvation of Albion. It is a living, breathing, pulsating human city and at the same time a place of mystical, spiritual and imaginative experience; an amalgamation of blood and stone, of sacrifice and rebirth, of men and women separated and of the fusion of the sexes, a city of intuition and feeling and a city of brick and cement. As it is city of
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