William Blake / Daughters of Memory

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Cocteau: A work of art must satisfy all the Muses–that is what I call "Proof by nine."

2nd c Roman Mosaic, Trier:

The Nine Muses, Daughters of Memory (Mnemosyne)

The Nine Muses mythological home on Mount Parnassus, Greece:

Cocteau's Montparnasse, Paris:

William Blake (another "Jack-of-all-Arts")

Blake: "the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration" *.
–Preface to Milton

The Four Daughters of Inspiration:

A Vision of the Last Judgement

Blake: The Last Judgment is not fable, or allegory, but vision. Fable, or allegory, is a totally distinct and inferior kind of poetry. Vision, or imagination, is a representation of what actually exists, really and unchangeably. Fable, or allegory, is formed by the daughters of Memory. Imagination is surrounded by the daughters of inspiration, who, in the aggregate, are called Jerusalem. 

William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgement, 1808 sketch:

 "whenever any Individual Rejects Error; Embraces Truth a Last Judgement passes upon that Individual."

WJT Mitchell on Blake:

"I. What did Blake mean by "A Vision of the Last Judgment"?

Perhaps we should begin by asking what he meant by a Vision, distinguishing it from such things as hallucination, vivid visual memory, or Platonic "form." What is the ontological status of a Vision? How can Blake claim that it reveals "Permanent Realities"  at the same time he admits that "to different People it appears differently"? Can we arrive at psychological definition that will correspond with Blake's literary definition ("The Last Judgment is not Fable or Allegory but Vision Allegory & Vision ought to be known as Two Distinct Things" E544)? Is it sufficient to explain this distinction by referring it to the distinction between imagination and memory? ("Fable or Allegory is Formd by the daughters of Memory. Imagination is Surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration.") Are memory, allegory, and fable simple antitheses of inspiration, vision, and imagination, or are they constituents of these "higher" mental and literary processes?"

Mitchell: "Albert S. Roe, in his ground-breaking study of Blake's Last Judgment pictures, argues that "it is important to remember that Blake had no belief in any eternal damnation of the individual," and that it is only the casting out of mental "error" that he represented in his Last Judgment drawings."

Mitchell: "If all these unanswered questions do not prove sufficiently irritating, perhaps the following summary hypothesis will stir debate. The key to Blake's structural conception of the Last Judgment is his remark on the organization of the groups in the lost tempera: "when distant they appear as One Man but as you approach they appear Multitudes of Nations" (E546). The early versions of the Last Judgment are organized around a portion or organ of the human form--probably the skull--and the cyclic movement of the figures within that form represents the cycle of consciousness casting off error and embracing truth. The figures are, as Blake claimed, not "Persons" but mental "States" which exist inside persons. As Blake developed his notion of the "Human Form Divine" and the myth of a Universal Man (Albion) in his prophetic books, so also his concept of the Last Judgment as an event in the consciousness of this Universal Man began to develop, an event which can be seen at the individual, microcosmic level as "a" Last Judgment or epiphany, at the collective, macrocosmic level as "the" Last Judgment. The cyclical quality of his compositions, their mirror-like symmetry, the even-handed posture of the Messiah, the absence of the warrior angel Michael, all these features are Blake's way of saying that the divisive, judgmental aspects of the Last Judgment have been subordinated to a Vision of the Last Judgment as a continuing process, a recurrent event in the life of consciousness, a moment of welcoming and awakening into the total life of the imagination."

see WJT Mitchell: https://bq.blakearchive.org/pdfs/issues/9.2b.pdf

Cocteau:
"Inspiration is not a thing that descends upon us from heaven. It might better be called expiration. It is something that rises from our depths, from the world of our night."

Blake in his notes: "The Greeks represented Chronos or Time as a very Aged Man; this is Fable, but the Real Vision of Time is in Eternal Youth"