Disclaimer: William Blake died n 1782, and Sigmund Freud died in 1939. Therefore, I am not either of them, and I do not own their theories.

A/N: This is one of my old school assignments—slightly edited, of course. I’d have left out the bios, but they do pop up in the script itself, so I thought I should leave them in.

Freud Meets Blake: A Dialogue

William Blake (1757-1782) was, from the start, a very imaginative child. At the age of four, he was frightened by “seeing God look in through a window” (Margoliouth, 3.) A little later, he saw a tree full of angels (3). In 1782, he married Catherine Boucher, who had apparently fallen in love with him at first sight (7). The marriage was childless. He died on the twelfth of August, 1827; reportedly, he saw Heaven in his final moments, and died singing of it (27).

Blake was neither a very good nor a very consistent speller (Margoliouth, 4), and though he had immense natural talent for painting he could not do portraits without their subjects in front of him (4).

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), besides his better-known influence on the study of the human mind, had a profound influence on literature, critical practice, and literary theory (Adams, 711). His early aspirations were in fact for a career in law (Hayes, 1), but he decided later to study medicine (1). In 1899, he published The Interpretation of Dreams. In 1923, Freud was diagnosed as having cancer of the jaw; over the next sixteen years his interests broadened from psychoanalysis to certain cultural and philosophical matters (1). He died in London in 1939 (1).

Blake, as a critic, was extremely interested in details and in genius. His theory can be summed up in five simple quotations, taken from his “Annotations on Reynolds’ Discourses”:

“To generalize is to be an idiot.” (Adams, 402) Generalizations are not made by intelligent people; they are worse than useless.

“Without minute neatness of execution the sublime cannot exist! Grandeur of ideas is founded on precision of ideas.” (405) Unless ideas are precise, they are completely meaningless.

“Strictly speaking, all knowledge is particular.” (405) There is no such thing as “general knowledge”; either one knows something, or one does not know it.

“Genius has no error; it is ignorance that is error.” (407) Genius cannot make mistakes; it can only demonstrate creativity.

“Genius dies with its possessor and comes not again till another is born with it.” (407) Genius cannot be improved, but simply exists and is only present for as long as its possessor lives.

Likewise, literary criticism according to Freud can be summarized in five points.

Writers create fantasy worlds, which they take very seriously while still keeping them separate from reality (713)

Unhappy people fantasize more than happy ones (713)

There is a link between fantasy and dreams, which can be interpreted through analysis of the symbolic language of the dream (714)

Repressed anxieties and desires make themselves known through language and fantasies; dreams censor and distort the actual desires (714)

Wish-fulfilment through writing is important (715)

This dialogue takes the form of an argument. Given that Blake had a bit of a temper (Margoliouth, 8), this was practically inevitable. In this dialogue, Blake acts like a hot-tempered perfectionist, and Freud occasionally drifts off into his own world, speaking of his own theories and forgetting that Blake is even there; therefore, there is no clear winner or loser in the dispute. There is no real direction to this argument; one simply says something, to which the other responds.

However, there is some logic to the debate. Freud is continually trying to analyze Blake, and Blake consistently becomes annoyed with such efforts. Because this is not a formal debate, there can be no formal winner or loser, and in the end Freud simply wanders off, presumably because the entire conversation has become too absurd to be borne.

Blake Meets Freud: A Dialogue

Setting: Freud is walking down a street when he sees Blake staring at a tree, a look of pure contemplation on his face. Freud stops and waves a hand in front of Blake’s face. Blake doesn’t blink. Freud snaps his fingers in Blake’s ear. Still no response. Freud claps his hands and gives a loud yell. Finally, Blake turns to him and says, irritably,

Blake: Do you mind? I’m having a vision here!

Freud: Oh, is that what you were doing? I do beg your pardon. I thought you were deaf. Instead, I find that you were merely in a delusional state likely stemming from a complex formed in childhood. Do carry on.

Blake (irritably): It’s too late. You frightened the angels away with that infernal yelling of yours.

Freud: Interesting. Do the little angels tell you anything?

Blake: What business is it of yours? (Pause.) Who are you, anyway?

Freud: Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis. And you are?

Blake: Confused. Psycho—anna—what?

Freud: Psychoanalysis. Tell me, Mr Confused, have you any other name?

Blake: I’m William Blake, poet, critic, and engraver. And, incidentally, still very confused.

Freud: I must admit that I, too, am quite confused. You died twenty-nine years before I was even born. How is it that I am conversing with you? (Pause.) You must be a delusion.

Blake: I am not a delusion! And as for how we’re talking, well, that’s simple. We’re opening our mouths and making sounds in our throats. I would be more particular than this, because singular and particular detail is the foundation of the sublime, and strictly speaking, all knowledge is particular. However, I have not much knowledge of the workings of the human voice, and cannot give you more detail than I have already done.

Freud: It must be very frustrating to have such a general knowledge of such a commonplace thing. Tell me about your father.

Blake: What does my father have to do with anything? Besides, you weren’t listening. I said, ‘all knowledge is particular’! That means that you cannot know anything unless it is specific. You can’t know something ‘generally’ any more than you can ‘generally’ walk down the street.

Freud: But we generalize all the time.

Blake (snorts): To generalize is to be an idiot!

Freud (slyly): Always?

Blake: Yes, al—wait a second!

Freud: You know, I have a word for people like you. It’s “anal-retentive”.

Blake: That’s two words.

Freud: Case in point. Now, back to that hallucination which you were experiencing. Have you always had these delusions?

Blake (annoyed): Yes. No. I mean, they’re visions, not delusions. When I was a child, God frightened me by peeking in a window.

Freud: Interesting. Well, obviously you’ve got an inability to separate your dream world from reality. You must be very unhappy—the unhappiest people fantasize far more than the happiest people do. There’s a link between fantasy and dreams, you know. Both of them use symbols, which in their own way are a form of language. (Sighs dreamily.) Symbols as a language—how elegant! We need not know what we’re really thinking if our brains change our actual thoughts into a symbolic language that even we cannot understand. But languages can be decoded, and thus language can be the key to analysis of the unconscious. (Snaps out of his reverie.) Where were we? Oh, yes. You seem to fantasize more than most people do, and therefore you must be extremely unhappy.

Blake (curiously): So, what does that make me?

Freud: A writer.

Blake: I could have told you that.

Freud: But you didn’t.

Blake: Yes, I did. (He takes out a copy of the script, then points to part of one page.) See?

Freud: Hold on a sec. What did you just do?

Blake: I took out a copy of the script. (Pauses as he realizes what he’s just done.) Oops.

Freud: Oops? You pull out a bit of paper from a place where no paper should be, and it tells you what we’ve been saying, and all that you can say in explanation is oops?

Blake: Well, it does explain how I can be talking to you if I died before I was born. I mean, if I died before you was born. I mean, if I died before you were born. (Pauses, then smiles.) My genius, at least, has been resurrected—in a way, at least.

Freud: What do you mean by that?

Blake: I possessed a form of genius when I was alive. Genius dies with its possessor and comes not again till another is born with it. If I’m talking to you, and we’re in a script, then my genius has been resurrected, if only in an incomplete and imperfect form. (Pauses.) I hate to break it to you, Freud, but you’re probably dead by now, too.

Freud: Hmm. There may be some truth in what you say. If so, then whoever is writing this must have one hell of a complex.

Blake: What?

Freud: It’s completely irrational to throw together two people who lived in completely different times and expect them to have a logical conversation. I don’t think I ever spoke English in my life!

Blake: Whoa. Calm down!

Freud: I can’t calm down! He’s not letting me!

Blake: Who’s not letting you calm down?

Freud: The writer!

Blake (ironically): So much for rational thought. By the way, Freud, that’s she.

Freud: What?

Blake: The writer is a she. Look at the front of the script. Oh, look—it’s got a biography! Good, good—hey! What’s this about being a poor speller?

Freud: What does it say about me?

Blake: You’re going to die of jaw cancer.

Freud: Am not!

Blake: Are too!

Freud: Am not!

Blake: Are too!

Freud: I’m not sure if I ever came up with this idea, but I think we’re getting a little too involved in reclaiming our inner children here. (Shudders) I never want to go through that anal phase again.

Blake: You mean you actually finished with it?

Freud: Shut up! Who died and turned you into Freud?

Blake: Do you really want me to answer that?

Freud: Er, probably not. So, what else does the script say?

Blake: Well, apparently I’m a hot-tempered perfectionist and you’re a flaky weirdo who drifts off into his own world.

Freud: And she doesn’t even know us! How presumptuous. Ah, well. Thus dries the well of inspiration. You know, lady, you’ve got some very strange wish-fulfilment going on here.

(Freud exits, leaving Blake as a statue onstage.)

FIN

A Note On References:

Although some of the humour may be slightly reminiscent of Terry Pratchett (for example, the “That’s two words” in response to Freud telling Blake that he has a word for people like Blake, “anal-retentive”), nothing in this script has actually been taken from any book by Pratchett, Discworld or otherwise. However, several quotes from Blake are used; in the text, they have been put in bold print. (An attempt was made to incorporate quotations from Freud as well; unfortunately, this caused more than a little awkwardness, and it was necessary to resort to paraphrasing.) As well, the script contains a reference to the film Robin Hood: Men In Tights, when Blake pulls out the script. The ideas which Freud and Blake end up arguing about come from Freud and Blake themselves.

Also, for certain reasons—i.e. Not Wanting To Plagiarize—I have decided to include my original Works Cited page (the MLA-style equivalent of a bibliography).

Works Cited

Adams, Hazard. “Sigmund Freud”. Critical Theory Since Plato. Heinle & Heinle, 1992. 711-716.

- - -. “William Blake”. Critical Theory Since Plato. Heinle & Heinle, 1992. 400-414.

Hayes, Brian J. “Sigmund Freud: An Outline Biography”. The Wisdom of the Ages.

[http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/freud.html]

Margoliouth, H. M. William Blake. Archon Books, 1967.