The English professor, London Times
columnist, and general cultural guru Mary Beard stated shortly
after 9/11 that, once “the shock had faded,” many people thought
“the United States had it coming,” and that “world bullies, even if
their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the
price.”
In a November 2007 interview, she stated that the
hostility which these comments provoked had still not subsided (I
wonder why?), although she believed it had become a standard
viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign
policy. Anyway, now she is upset.
She has just asked in the Times Literary
Supplement why, at the Royal Wedding: “How come the great and
the good of this country don’t appear to know the words of
‘Jerusalem’ without looking at their hymn sheets, and even then
don’t seem to be quite certain of how the words fit the
tune?”
She asked other questions, equally if not more stupid, but
this one, I think is, given “Jerusalem’s” popularity, and her own
opinions on international events, worth commenting on.
“Jerusalem,” which is in any case arguably not a hymn at
all, and not appropriate for a religious (or, I hope to show, any
other event) setting, was written by the 18th-century free-lance
kook William Blake, and later adopted as the semi official-hymn of
the Labour Party, whose members still sing it at Party gatherings,
though it is doubtful if even they understand it. It bears, as
George Bernard Shaw said of its rival the Internationale,
“all the panache of the funeral march of a fried eel.” Blake
himself had a weird idiosyncratic set of religious beliefs which
could be called Christian only by stretching the meaning of the
word to its limits.
“Jerusalem” goes as follows:
And did those [i.e. Christ’s] feet in ancient
times
Walk upon England’s
mountains green
And was
the Holy Lamb of God
In
England’s pleasant pastures seen?
The answer is, of course, to anyone with even an
elementary knowledge of history and archeology, is “No.” The fact
that it can be set to a catchy and attractive tune does not prevent
it from being rubbish. There is no evidence that Christ ever
visited England, and though it is just possible in the sense of not
being entirely impossible or conclusively disproved (see my
article on the Glastonbury Thorn,
TAS, Dec. 20, 2010), it is extremely unlikely. “Jerusalem”
continues:
And did the countenance
divine
Shine forth upon
our clouded hills?
And was
Jerusalem builded here.
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Well, we’ve already answered that. Scholars have debated
over what Blake meant (assuming that he had any clear idea himself)
by that line about “dark Satanic mills.” While it has long been
taken for granted by many that Blake was referring, literally, to
the mills of the industrial revolution, relatively few if these had
come on stream in 1808, when “Jerusalem” was written, while there
seems to be a case that he was actually referring to the hated (by
him) Universities of the Enlightenment, including that at which
Mary Beard is employed.
Sir Isaac Newton, Voltaire, and a mythical figure called
Urizon (“You reason,” geddit?) Blake saw as particular enemies of
humanity, spreading the poison of enlightenment and
reason.
Anyway, Britain’s problem is not now the spread of dark
Satanic mills (an abandoned industrial site, well overgrown, can
look strangely beautiful), but keeping what mills and other
factories it still has open, and, as far as universities go,
getting the students to take on hard subjects like chemistry or
engineering.
The poem goes on into the heights of paranoid grandiosity.
The late Osama bin Laden, now removed to warmer climes, would
particularly have liked that piece about “chariots of fire,” for
which he could surely have found a use.
Bring me by bow of burning
gold,
Bring me my arrows
of desire;
Bring me my
spear, Oh clouds, unfold,
Bring me my chariot of fire …
Yes, and head it for Ground Zero, maybe. This is the sort
of verse one can imagine Charlie Manson concocting if he was a
better hand at rhyme, and indeed Blake’s poetry was enormously
popular in the drug-addled '60s that also tried to make a hero out
of Manson..
I will not cease from Mental
Fight,
Nor shall my Sword
sleep in my hand:
Till we
have built Jerusalem,
In
England’s green & pleasant Land
Oh yeah, and just who is going to get the benefit of the
sword? We’ve seen attempts to build versions of the New Jerusalem,
with or without the sword, since Blake wrote, and we’ve seen what
they led to.
It is all very well claiming that poems like this are
simply lyrical, there will always be nut-jobs around who will take
them literally and act on them. The sooner “Jerusalem” is forgotten
the better, and while I lament the loss of many facets of Britain’s
historical memory and culture, this piece of it is something we can
well do without.
