202 Ideals in the Modern World
thinking of his overbearing patron William Hayley, but thinking
also of all the time- conscious, supreme administrators who domi-
nate the cultural- political world of Blake’s time and (Blake is a
prophet, or aspires to be) of our own.
The way to throw Satan off — the way to defeat the Self hood—is
to recognize him not only in the outer world, where he is priest and
preceptor and more, but also in oneself. In Milton Blake fi nds
everything in himself that is opposed to vision and that would rather
be safe than be true to his imaginative spirit. And layer by layer, mo-
ment by moment, he purges the haunting creature away. Everything
in Blake that is timid and conformist, jealous and repressive, must
be identifi ed, isolated, and burned away.
Critical in the metamorphoses of Blake and Blake’s hero Milton
from men who are only a part of what they might be to fully re-
deemed individuals, is the embrace of what Blake calls the Emana-
tion. Blake’s Emanation is a female fi gure— part muse, part image
of Blake’s devoted wife, Catherine, part trope for the emotional full-
ness that Blake feels he too often lacks. Joining with the Emanation
in a way that’s both carnal and spiritual propels Blake toward sec-
ular salvation.
At the climax of Blake’s brief, densely packed epic, Milton (who
is in certain ways a stand-in for Blake) manages to come together
with his Emanation, a fi gure Blake calls Ololon. Ololon embodies
the spirits of the six women in Milton’s life— she’s called occasion-
ally a “six- fold Emanation.” Milton was married three times and he
had three daughters and he treated both wives and daughters shab-
bily. But more than that, he aggressively built himself (as Blake
feared he was himself prone to do) into a man without much com-
passion, without mercy, without humane mildness. Blake believes
that the women in Milton’s life probably had these qualities— and
he also believes that Milton’s work is deeply fl awed for lacking them.
Milton’s God is a legalistic crank; his Christ is not a forgiver of sins,