INTERVIEW
Blake’s explorers of the imagination: Valentin Gerlier interviewed by Gil Dekel
10 December 2024 – Vol 2, Issue 4.
Gil: How did Blake define the imagination?
Valentin: Blake’s definition of the imagination was not static. It was a lifelong concern for him. He explored it in different ways, through poetry and the arts. And that is the wonderful thing about Blake – you can’t systematize him, just as he asks us not to systematize ourselves. When you’re investigating imagination, according to Blake, you’re also investigating yourself… It is a mysterious concept, which may resist our conceptualization a little bit. Nonetheless, we can give it a go…
Blake views the imagination as the continuum of reality. It is not just a faculty of the mind or something merely interior and isolated, rather imagination is the way reality presents itself, and ultimately it is how the divine shows itself. Those of us who are awake to that are what Blake calls ‘artists’. To be in that conscious continuum, for Blake, is to be an artist and ultimately, to be co-creator of the real.
‘Sconfitta’ (1795, frontpiece illustration for Song of Los) by William Blake. Image in public domain.
Gil: When we think of imagination, we consider it as an internal faculty. Blake is saying that it is external, and that it is also the actual natural world?
Valentin: It is internal and external. Blake did not believe that only internal reality matters, in the sense of traditional idealism – the idea that being is perception. No. There’s something about imagination that grants existence to external things as well. But there’s also an interior power which not only sees external things, but also sees the essence of those external things, or the divine idea of the external world. Imagination is that through which we participate. The internal and the external participate in one another. It’s both.
Gil: And yet, he said that we do not see with our eyes…
Valentin: That’s right, but through them. The eyes are doorways or thresholds. What he’s saying is that visionary perception is not the purview of the privileged mystic. It’s a completely human ability. In fact, it is what makes us humans. He is calling us to our senses – to become deeply attentive to what we actually see, rather than what we think we see. When he says, ‘I see through my eye and not with it’, he suggests that he doesn’t let everyday discursive perception – which gives us ideas, concepts, and fixed images of things – take over. In a way, we need that for everyday things, but he’s saying that it is not what reality is. There’s a call to attention here; a call to radical and creative curiosity.
Gil: So, the ability to see via the faculty of imagination is a natural trait that all human beings have, yet we are actively preventing it.
Valentin: Yes, absolutely. And that’s where you enter the mythopoetic universe. The imagination is always at play, and if you’re not awakened to how you participate in that, someone else is doing the imagining for you. All cultures are forms of imagination that have become frozen into a sort of literalism.
In that sense, that kind of faculty of imagination is a world-making or world-transforming capability. But it first requires us to understand what are the ruling paradigms, stories, metaphors, or images that are running our society. There’s something liberatory there. There’s something about the freedom of the soul, isn’t there? You can really step into your own fully creative being.
Gil: Society doesn’t seem to acknowledge imagination as an authentic tool through which to observe life…
Valentin: Yes, exactly. I think that part of the difficulty is also with terminology. Samuel Coleridge made this famous distinction between fancy and imagination. In ‘Biographia Literaria’ (1817) he explains that ‘fancy’ rearranges existing ideas mechanically, while imagination creatively transforms and reshapes reality into something new. So, fancy is merely an associative faculty that does not bring transformation, while imagination creatively reshapes and unifies things.
There is a distracted fantasy in our minds, which sometimes we can direct toward certain images, and sometimes has its own movement. From a Blakean point of view, this distraction is seen as an escape from the real world, not an involvement with it. It’s not productive of newness. It relies on memory, the past, and unresolved issues, which keep on playing in our heads, perhaps as a reminder that they ought to be resolved.
To use Coleridge’s distinction, I would call that fancy. Modern society tends to see fancy as imagination, saying, ‘Oh, this is an escape. You’re escaping from the brute reality of things with this fabulous, nebulous daydreaming that you’re doing’. I acknowledge that there is that. But what modern society wants you to subscribe to is another paradigm. It says, ‘The real is what can be quantified, measured, or controlled’. But if you read philosophers in science studies, they take great pains to show you that producing scientific facts involves a great deal of creativity and imagination. The creative aspect of our perception is constantly at play. Modern society has it wrong because it thinks there’s this fabulous thing called imagination, and then there’s this naked reality. There isn’t. It’s just a different visionary or imaginative mode, in Blake’s view.
‘Blake’s worlds of imagination’, by AI and Gil Dekel. 2024.
Gil: Albert Einstein talked about imagination in science. Imagination is as important as intelligence. Blake talks about imagination that is alive. What ‘more’ do we see when we look at reality through the eyes of imagination?
Valentin: There is a spiritual or theological answer to this. Ultimately, it’s the unfolding divine that we see. For Blake, the imagination is divine. It belongs to the essence of God that shows itself in images.
Blake belongs to the glorifying school, the via affirmativa (or kataphatic) school. This is the spiritual path emphasising the affirmation of God’s presence in the world, perceiving the divine through creation, beauty, and positive experiences. As opposed to perhaps another school, which would say, ‘No, no, you got to get rid of all images in order to see the divine’. Blake would tend towards image as being, perhaps simply because there is something about the divine, as he conceives of it, that longs to show itself. And so, there’s this mystical abundance of the divine, and therefore it can’t just stay in its own place, hiding from everyone. It has to reveal and express itself constantly in new and generative ways.
What we see when we become adventurers of the imagination is the unfolding relationship between the universal and the particular, between the essence and the individuality. You can never fall on either side of that paradox – things are completely individual and completely themselves, but they are also completely united in a ground that exceeds them. That, for Blake, is something that reason can’t understand, but the imagination can… The imagination thinks symbolically, metaphorically, and obscurely. It manages shadows and light in a way that reason, or what Blake calls ‘single vision’ or ‘Newton’s sleep’, cannot. That’s what we see through imagination – we see with God’s eyes, in a way.
All things are products of the imagination. It seems to be a particular human ability to give all things their place in the imagination. So, there is a strange role that humanity seems to play. The human, in Blake’s point of view, is both active and passive being. In a way, your activity, which is creative, also means that, paradoxically, you’ve got to be passive and let the imagination come through the mind, rather than reside in it. The mind is a really good place for it. It has been nurtured to be its dwelling place, but nonetheless, imagination comes through the door and goes out that door.
The brain is a magnificent tool for logic and rationality. I think Blake would agree with that. As Iain McGilchrist in his book ‘The Master and His Emissary’ argues, the problem comes when logic, which is essentially a servant to a greater vision, is made the master. That is not its place. It does not know how to act there. As a master, it becomes a dictator because it doesn’t understand the subtleties of rulership. You need the imagination for that.
Gil: According to Judaism, man was created in the ‘image’ of God. Yet this ‘image’ is not the physical shape, but rather an attribute – the intellect of God.
Valentin: Yes, and likewise there’s a sense in which forms and shapes are not finished products, but they’re thresholds. They’re invitations. Every shape, every form, is also somehow more than itself. So, if you see something for what it truly is, you see past its shape, rather than just its shape.
Gil: How can we attune to the faculty of imagination, according to Blake?
Valentin: Children are a good example. They are already attuned, intimately familiar with eternity, which is the home of the imagination. They grasp it intuitively, without needing a detailed conceptual map. As we grow and navigate the complexities of adulthood, there’s a process of rediscovering that childlike state of imagination – what Blake might call a transformed innocence. It’s not about retreating to a naive state, but rather about holding onto that serious playfulness, while also integrating the conflicts, suffering, and contradictions we’ve encountered along the way. We don’t simply dismiss those experiences; we embody and transform them, and this transformation allows for a new innocence.
This is no easy task, though. It involves breaking through the systems we’ve inherited – conceptual frameworks, and oppressive ideas. And this is as much an interior process as an exterior one. The inner work involves confronting and dismantling the false images and idols we carry within ourselves. It’s a mental, spiritual, and emotional journey, and it’s deeply connected to the artistic process. The goal is to open ourselves up, to become vessels through which the light can shine. In this sense, Blake’s instruction to us is to become artists – not just in the literal sense, but as a way of life, constantly creating and reshaping ourselves.
Dr. Valentin Gerlier and DR. Gil Dekel. Two screenshots. 2024.
Gil: Blake also spoke of his inspirations, referring to them as angels.
Valentin: Yes, he did occasionally depict them that way. In Blake’s view, the imagination is the landscape where these divine messengers appear. As a child, Blake had visions of angels and divinities, and it puzzled him that others didn’t see them. He came to believe that we all do, in fact, perceive these visions – our eyes have just grown sleepy. Blake believed that this ability to see beyond the physical world could be reawakened in all of us. He even taught his wife, Catherine, how to see in this way. His first biographer suggests that she learned to share in his visions and creative process. Blake, as an artist, was perhaps more attuned to these visions than most, but he believed this imaginative power was a common gift that all humans could recover.
Gil: Perhaps in Blake’s time, with less distraction and more isolation, it was easier to attune to that imaginative vision?
Valentin: It was a time of political upheaval, though. There was anxiety about the revolution in France, and uncertainty about whether it might spread to England. Blake lived most of his life in London, except for a few years. He witnessed London’s transformation from a relatively rural town with green spaces and farms to the beginnings of the industrial age. He saw what we might call the birth of the industrial imagination, or perhaps the death of imagination in favour of mechanization. This new way of thinking – of viewing the world as something to be controlled, commodified, and consumed – was starting to take hold.
Blake was aware of how this industrial society was dulling people’s senses and their imaginative capacities. He saw it as a threat to the human soul. London, for him, became a kind of testing ground, where he observed the tension between the creative, imaginative potential of humanity and the deadening effects of industrialization.
Gil: Blake often referenced the city of Jerusalem.
Valentin: For Blake, Jerusalem symbolized the city of the imagination, a mental or intellectual city. It is a place of harmony and peace but also of divine creativity. He saw the Bible as a work of art, with every word carrying symbolic meaning. So, while he didn’t completely detach Jerusalem from earthly realities, he envisioned it as the ultimate goal of human creation, both spiritually and artistically.
Blake believed that every city aspired to be Jerusalem, but often failed due to the dominant ideologies and doctrines of the time. Cities, after all, are the product of the collective imagination, whether we realise it or not. For Blake, Jerusalem was like a compass for the soul, a symbol of the harmonious, creative potential within each of us to create cities, communities. It’s a matter of recognizing and responding to that inner compass.
Gil: Poets often feel lonely in their insights and imaginative visions. Blake, as both a poet and engraver, must have been quite isolated. Did he have any colleagues who shared his vision during his lifetime?
Valentin: For much of his life, Blake was largely ignored. Some thought he was mad, while others saw him as arrogant or confusing. But toward the end of his life, a group of young artists began to take notice of him. They saw him as a prophetic figure, even if they didn’t fully understand his work. They venerated him and saw in his art something profound.
So, while Blake didn’t have many contemporaries who fully shared his vision, he did find a group of admirers later on. After his death, his work began to gain more recognition, and today, there’s a large community of people who find inspiration in his ideas. Blake brings together people from all sorts of fields – radicals, conservatives, artists, musicians, even those interested in AI. He has become a unifying figure because, just as he spoke of the creative necessity for contraries in his life, his work continues to draw together people from diverse backgrounds and beliefs.
At a Glance:
Artwork = Union (Imagination + External reality) → Transformed Reality.
Art is created in the union of imagination and the external reality, transforming and reshaping reality into the sublime.
© Journal of Creativity and Inspiration.
Image by Blake in public domain.
Image by AI/Gil Dekel © Journal of Creativity and Inspiration.
Valentin Gerlier holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge. He is a scholar, writer and musician, and Senior Lecturer in Poetics of Imagination at Dartington Arts School. His latest publication is Shakespeare and the Grace of Words (Routledge, 2022). He is a member of the Academic Board of the Temenos Academy.
Gil Dekel is a doctor in Art, Design and Media, specialising in processes of creativity and inspiration. He is a scholar, designer, visionary artist, Reiki Master/Teacher, and co-author of the ‘Energy Book’. Dr. Dekel is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. In 2022 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Coin, in recognition of his dedication and commitment to pastoral work in the UK.
