The Poet 201
there. Rather, the energies that once infused sexual desire have to
be redirected (and subdued) in the quest for Truth. The Romantic
will not accept sublimation. He demands the intensities of deep
erotic attraction at all times, and when those intensities wane, it
is time to move on. The idea of passing beyond desire into tran-
quil wisdom— what Words worth calls “the philosophic mind”—
is anathema to the High Romantic.
The dangers of such a quest should be clear— and they are clear
to the most sophisticated Romantics. All too often erotic desire takes
place within the State of Self and never leaves it. The Romantics
would usurp Eros for the needs of Soul. But how easily then can
one be fooled! How readily might a questing lover mistake an ob-
ject of carnal desire pure and simple for a Soulmate? How disposed
might he be to ignore a potentially inspiring lover who does not
come with the right overt characteristics? The Romantic hopes
to enact a raid on the domains of the Self— the realm of desire—
bringing back energy and passion for the uses of Soul. But how
often will he or she be fooled? Can the Romantic ever capture the
fullness of being that the saint and the thinker and the warrior claim?
In Blake’s terms, the crucial human quest is to use love and the
power of imagination to burn away the Self. Blake’s Self— Blake’s
Satan in the later works—is not the fi ery fi gure who haunts the
orthodox mind. As we have seen, Blake is not entirely ill- disposed
to that fi gure. But in Blake’s compressed epic, Milton, Satan (also
known as the Self hood) is a highly sensitive, genuinely well-
intentioned man of letters and leisure. He’s bland, kind, and
helpful, not unlike the boy- narrator of “The Chimney Sweep,” who
tries to seal Tom off from the radical side of his vision. But Satan’s
so- called friendship will eventually do away with what is best in
one’s character— which is to say the willingness to live in the world
with the in de pen dence and compassion that Blake’s hero Jesus em-
bodied. “Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies,” (98) says Blake,