204 Ideals in the Modern World
therapeutic pro cess is in large mea sure the attempt to pry the indi-
vidual away from his errors about who he is and what truly can give
him satisfaction in life. Yet even at its most successful, psychoanal-
ysis will change the patient by only a few degrees. Freud thinks that
the past is so potent in us that even a modest shift in identity must
come gradually and be painfully won.
Blake too believes that spiritual gains are arduously achieved, that
is for certain. Images of strife proliferate throughout Milton. In the
most memorable, Milton, acting as a stand-in for Blake, wrestles
with Urizen, one of Blake’s images for the Self hood. Urizen is the
Self as reductive reasoner: he wants to enclose experience in his
empirical grip and, by doing so, control it. As the two strug gle
together, Urizen pours ice water onto the head of Milton (and
Blake), trying to baptize him in the name of cold reductionism. At
the same time Milton, emulating the creator Yahweh, slaps red
clay onto Urizen’s frigid bones, trying to help him return to his
mortal state:
But Milton took of the red clay of Succoth, moulding it with care
Between his palms; and fi lling up the furrows of many years
Beginning at the feet of Urizen, and on his bones
Creating new fl esh on the Demon cold, and building him,
As with new clay a Human form in the Valley of Beth Peor.
(112)Blake is struggling to deliver himself from what is coldest and
harshest in his own makeup by becoming conscious of it and cre-
ating an image— the wrestling match— that imaginatively dramatizes
the contention within. If you can imagine an internal victory, the
poem suggests, and render it with honesty and conviction, then
y o u m i g h t a c t u a l l y a c h i e v e t h a t v i c t o r y. T h i s i s s e l f - t r a n s f o r m a t i o n
through the work of imagination.