The central term for Brecht studies may well be "anti-illusionary." For Brecht, the bourgeois theater of his time created illusions on stage that perpetuated, intentionally or not, the illusions of daily life.[1] At the center of Brecht's drive toward reexamination of our world are several particular techniques, all aimed at "the setting forth of actions so as to call for a critical approach, so that they would not be taken for granted by the spectator and would arouse him to think."[2] As Jan Bruck puts it, Brecht both "aimed to shock the audience -- by interrupting the narrative flow and the identification with the characters -- so as to create a critical distance, a thinking attitude, and...hoped to change the audience's preconceptions about reality by turning them upside down."[3]

This description of Brecht's insistence on the formation of new attitudes through the manipulation of different and perhaps unfamiliar media calls to mind a similar tendency in William Blake. Blake often places his characters in a "vegetative state" (e.g., Milton 34 and Jerusalem 66)[4], one which we might consider analogous to the state of Brecht's passively empathetic bourgeois theater audience, which "hangs its brains up in the cloakroom along with its coat."[5] A consideration of Brecht's anti-illusionary techniques can help illuminate Blake's position on this passive state of mind and on his subversion of it.

Brecht's most widely known (and most widely misunderstood) technique was the Alienation Effect. He used this as an umbrella term to encompass a wide range of approaches, all used toward a common goal:

...the efforts in question were directed to playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane....Empathy alone may stimulate a wish to imitate the hero, but it can hardly create the capacity. If a feeling is to be an effective one, it must be acquired not merely impulsively but through the understanding. Before a correct attitude can be imitated it must first have been understood...[6]

The central intent of the Alienation Effect, then, can perhaps be understood as a push to make the audience act, rather than react, to impel the audience out of an empathetic stupor and into an understood action. This stupor was (according to Brecht) the inevitable end result of conventional, naturalistic theater, in which there is "a complete fusion of the actor with his role which leads to his making the character seem so natural, so impossible to conceive any other way, that the audience simply has to accept it as it stands, with the result that a completely sterile atmosphere...is engendered."[7]

In his article on Brecht, "`Illusion' and the Distrust of Theater," James Hamilton makes a helpful comparison between the sort of naturalistic acting targeted by Brecht and what he terms "illusionist" painting, something to which, as we will see, Blake was clearly opposed:

In each case, the means by which its effects are achieved are deliberately hidden. Like the viewer of `illusionist' painting, with its smoothed out brushstrokes, the viewer of naturalistic drama is not to see the effort of the players. We are not to be reminded of the weeks of careful preparation, in particular of the fact that this movement of the arm, this (perhaps very real) sense of shame, have been chosen for presentation. All that would interrupt the evocation of just these deep and disturbing reactions in the audience is masked.[8]

Particularly in A Descriptive Catalogue and Public Address, Blake decries much this same sort of "illusionism," these same smoothed out brushstrokes, this same camouflage of creative effort. In his Public Address, Blake contemptuously refers to the "Smears & Dawbs" of what he calls "False Art."[9] In A Descriptive Catalogue, Blake delineates with a bit more clarity what he considers good and bad art:

THE grand style of Art restored in FRESCO, or Water-colour Painting, and England protected from the too just imputation of being the Seat and Protectress of bad (that is blotting and blurring) Art. In this exhibition will be seen real Art, as it was left us by Raphael and Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, and Julio Romano; stripped from the Ignorances of Rubens and Rembrandt, Titian and Corregio...[10]

Assuming, as seems probable, that Blake meant to equate "bad Art" with "false Art," perhaps we can say that, for both Blake and Brecht, "bad" art blurs, while "good" (in Brechtian terms, anti-illusionary) art clarifies. Although this comparison may be interesting, how can it help us to understand Blake, or, for that matter, Brecht? What does "bad" art blur, and what does "good" art clarify?

Blake provides a clue when he asserts that he, a good artist, has "given the historical fact in its poetical vigor."[11] One might still ask, however, what is a poetically vigorous historical fact? According to Blake, reasons "and opinions concerning acts, are not history. Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please..."[12] History is made up of real acts performed by real people. History is most emphatically not the opinions of an elite class, any more than the Gospel of Jesus Christ is made up of the words that come from an Anglican bishop's mouth.

Sounding a similar note, Brecht criticizes the bourgeois naturalist theater for its treatment of history and the role of human beings within history. The main flaw in this naturalistic representation of history on the stage lies in the presentation of conditions and as eternal, by which Brecht means static and incapable of change:

This notion may allow that such a thing as history exists, but it is none the less unhistorical. A few circumstances vary, the environments are altered, but Man remains unchanged....The environment is remarkably unimportant, is treated simply as a pretext;... it exists in fact apart from Man, confronting him as a coherent whole, whereas he is a fixed quantity, eternally unchanged. The idea of man as a function of the environment and the environment as a function of man, i.e. the breaking up of the environment into relationships between men, corresponds to a new way of thinking, the historical way.[13]

Brecht clearly endorses this idea that people create and are responsible for their environment which, although they have created it, influences them in turn. This "historical" conception of environment is in fact a necessary prerequisite for change, for mutability. If we cannot change our environment, and our environment does not change us (as Brecht argues is the case with naturalistic theater), then how can we progress? While Blake may oppose Progress as a part of the middle-class establishment, Brecht advocates progress precisely to undermine the same middle-class establishment.

In sum, then, this ahistorical quality of naturalistic theater takes the wind out of a revolutionary's sails. It necessarily limits the range of human possibilities: "The `historical conditions' must of course not be imagined (nor will they so be constructed) as mysterious Powers (in the background); on the contrary, they are created and maintained by men (and will in due course be altered by them): it is the actions taking place before us that allow us to see what they [the `historical conditions'] are."[14]

Human beings, then, are once again the subject at hand, at the heart of the matter. Both Brecht and Blake insist on the essential importance and power of human beings and of their actions, within the context of Christianity or of Marxism (perhaps less radically opposed than one might initially think).

At this point, any reader familiar with Blake's prophetic works may inquire, with just cause, how it is that Milton or Visions of the Daughters of Albion or The Book of Urizen emphasize this understanding of human importance. When initially faced with these poems, it is a not uncommon response to wonder, with more or less distress, what the point of these fantasies possibly could be. Again, a helpful clue, if not necessarily an answer, may be found in Brecht.

In his "Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht addresses some of the practical and theoretical advantages of the anti-illusionary approach to drama. One approach that bears particular relevance to Blake concerns the set designer, who "gets considerable freedom as soon as he no longer has to give the illusion of a room or a locality when building his sets. It is enough for him to give hints, though these must make statements of greater historical or social interest than does the real setting."[15] The "real setting" would contribute to the lulling of the audience members' imaginations. With the removal of this "real setting" (in coordination with other techniques of anti-illusionary theater) the illusion of naturalistic theater becomes increasingly difficult, to maintain. When no longer restricted to producing some visual semblance of reality on stage, the designer becomes somewhat more free to create the visuals of the production, to give reign to an artistic imagination.

Few of Blake's critics would accuse him of being mundanely reality bound in his visual or poetical arts: Who, for example, would publicly admit to having seen anything like the frontispiece to Europe or Plate 6 of Jerusalem? Well, Blake would (and apparently did).[16] While it would be excessively reductive and somewhat misleading to declare Blake a pre-Brechtian practitioner of anti-illusionary arts, some of what we have said about Brecht may help us progress towards an understanding of Blake's own project.

Blake's poetry and visual creations both rely on a mixture of the alien with the familiar. We encounter familiar, which is not to say apparent, symbols and names from the Bible (such as "the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel"[17]), but we are kept off balance by the presence of new and strange names like Ahania, Enitharmon and Los. Even solely within the context of his own works, we repeatedly encounter similar faces (Is that Urizen? Maybe Los?) and imagery, but, alienatingly enough, placed in apparently different contexts.

To put it directly, Blake seems to employ a multiplicity of techniques which, with a modicum of tinkering, could come under the heading of Alienation Effects. According to Terence Allan Hoagwood, Jerusalem, certainly one of Blake's more dense texts, is

difficult because its author wishes to exercise his readers' minds, to rouse their faculties to activity. Such arousal is common to all prophecies; Blake calls it mental war. Visionary aestheticians had supplied specific strategies for achieving this goal, and Blake adopts these strategies as well. One is calculated obscurity, and so Blake has locked his vision in dense and difficult form. Another strategy is multiplicity of perspectives, and so Blake supplements texts with designs, presents dramatic encounters, and recasts episodes in different parts of his poem. A third strategy is `multifarious Allusiveness,' and almost every plate of Jerusalem alludes to the Bible -- most often the prophecies -- and also to British writers on mind and nature. This tangle of difficulties perplexes interpretation until we perceive the common aim of these strategies: the liberation of the human mind.[18]

Here we see something that Blake and Brecht clearly do have in common: an insistence on "the liberation of the human mind." This liberation was achieved through Blake's use of particular techniques, techniques which Brecht certainly would have recognized as variant forms of his own Alienation Effects. Perhaps we can say, loosely speaking, that Blake and Brecht are prophetic artists, and that their versions of Christianity and Marxism are prophetic ideologies.[19]

As Hoagwood states, Blake wanted to provoke his audiences into thought. Not without reason have both Blake and Brecht been referred to as artists specializing in irritation. This is not, however, irritation for irritation's sake, along the lines of Jarre's Ubu Roi. This brand of irritation has a very specific goal in mind. Minna Doskow, in her excellent essay on Blake and Marx, tells us that after "The French Revolution, in which he postulates renewal effected by political change, Blake recognizes that renovation requires a complete change in man's consciousness, activities, and institutions."[20] Revolution must be more than skin deep. Much like Brecht's Lehrstück "The Measures Taken," there is an insistence on revolutionary change, but on change that is understood. Although Blake may vilify excessive rationality in the form of Urizen, he still understands a need for reasoned thought in our world. Blake and Brecht would certainly agree that misunderstood "renovation" is no renovation at all. Perhaps, in this sense, we can say that Brecht and Blake share an "ideology of consciousness" or an "ideology of understanding," not to be confused with mere rationality.

Blake's prophetic aesthetics clearly work to interrupt the comfortable flow of our reading and force us to reconsider the material at hand. In doing so, these techniques, as applied in these and other works, qualify as Alienation Effects. Just as the "presentation" of multiple roles by one actor in "The Measures Taken" reinforces our awareness that the play is, literally, a presentation, and, through this awareness, forces our acceptance "or rejection of [the] actions and utterances...to take place on a conscious plane,"[21] so Blake's use of the techniques described by Hoagwood forces us to step back from his presentation (both text and illustration) and rouses "[our] faculties to activity."[22]

What this essay hopes to have shown is that an application of Brechtian anti-illusionary theories and aesthetics to the works of William Blake can provide the reader with a clearer understanding of what Blake was attempting. This is certainly not meant to imply that all of Blake's mystery was created solely for the purpose of mystifying his audience. Nonetheless, as a way to help get the reader over some of the initial shocks inherent in any encounter with Blake's work, we may be able to view some of Blake's prophetic or visionary techniques as related to Brecht's anti-illusionary Alienation Effects. Brecht does not provide us with a key to Blake, but he can provide us with an aid toward illuminating (pun intended) some of the more general aspects of Blake's project of prophecy.

It is readily apparent, then, that a great deal more should be considered and discussed about connections between Blake and Brecht. In writing this essay, I merely hope to have opened what I think is a new window on Blake, albeit a less than readily apparent one. After all, to return to one of Blake's more well known assertions, "Without Contraries is no progression."[23]

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Works Consulted

Aers, David. "Representations of Revolution: From The French Revolution to The four Zoas." Miller, Dan, Mark Bracher, and Donald Ault, eds. Blake and the Argument of Method. Durham: Duke UP, 1987. 244-270.

Barthes, Roland. Critical Essays. Trans. Richard Howard. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1972.

Benjamin, Walter. Understanding Brecht. Trans. Anna Bostock. London: Verso, 1988.

Bentley, Eric. The Brecht Commentaries 1943-1986. New York: Grove Press, 1987.

Blake, William. Blake's Poetry and Designs. Ed. Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant. New York: Norton, 1979.

---. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. David V. Erdman. Rev. ed. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre. Ed. and trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.

---. The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays. Trans. Eric Bentley. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992.

Bruck, Jan. "Brecht's and Kluge's Aesthetics of Realism." Poetics: International Review for the Theory of Literature 17:1-2 (1988 Apr.): 57-68.

Doskow, Minna. "The Humanized Universe of Blake and Marx." William Blake and the Moderns. Ed. Robert J. Bertholf and Annette S. Levitt. Albany: SUNY Press, 1982. 225-240.

Erdman, David. Blake: Prophet Against Empire. Rev. ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1969.

---. "Blake: The Historical Approach." English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. M.H. Abrams. 2nd ed. London: Oxford UP, 1975. 72-89.

Hamilton, James R. "`Illusion' and the Distrust of Theater." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41:1 (Fall 1982): 39-50.

Hoagwood, Terrence Allan. Prophecy and the Philosophy of Mind: Traditions of Blake and Shelley. N.p.: University of Alabama UP, 1985.

King, James. William Blake: His Life. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Krabiel, Klaus Dieter. "Rhetorik der Utopie -- Rhetorik der Komödie? Bemerkungen zu einer Untersuchung der Lehrstücke Brechts und ihrer Rezeption in der Fachkritik." Wirkendes Wort: Deutsche Sprache und Literatur in Forschung und Lehre 40:2 (July-Aug. 1990): 209-219.

Matthews, Susan. "Jerusalem and Nationalism." Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to Texts and Contexts 1780-1832. Ed. Stephen Copley and John Whale. New York: Routledge, 1992. 79-100.

Mueller, Roswitha. "Learning for a new society: the Lehrstück." The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thompson and Glendyr Sacks. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. 79-95.

Rose, Edward J. "Blake's Biblical Consciousness and the Problem of the Interpretation of Text and Design." Bucknell Review: A Scholarly Journal of Letters, Arts and Sciences 31:1 (1988): 113-123.

Schoeps, Karl Heinz. "From Distancing Alienation to Intuitive Naiveté: Bertolt Brecht's Establishment of a New Aesthetic Category." Monatshefte für Deutschen Unterricht, Deutsche Sprache und Deutsche Literatur 81:2 (Summer 1989): 186-198.

Smith, Mark Trevor. "Striving with Blake's Systems." Blake and His Bibles. Ed. David V. Erdman. West Cornwall: Locus Hill Press, 1990. 157-178.

Willett, John. Brecht in Context. New York: Methuen, 1983.