ABSTRACT
Jerusalem is the summation of Blake’s work in the form of the illuminated book. It is the drawing together of his poetry and painting’s lifelong exultation (as he put it) in immortal thought. Blake stresses this drawing together by quoting in Jerusalem from earlier works, The Four Zoas and Milton, but also The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the Songs of Experience, and by naming as the places of Jerusalem’s conception, gestation and creation Felpham, South Molton Street and Lambeth. Lambeth, where Blake lived from 1791 to 1800, is mentioned in Jerusalem more than anywhere else although nothing specifically written for Jerusalem was even conceived there. But by his work in Lambeth Blake was attempting to do what Los is praised for, keep the divine vision in time of trouble. It was in Lambeth that Blake created Oothoon’s palace which sheltered Jerusalem from those who would destroy her (37.17). By invoking the Lambeth books as part of his preparation for Jerusalem Blake makes the same point about continuity that he makes in quoting The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. When he finished engraving Jerusalem in about 1818 Blake was still in some ways carrying forward a project begun with his earliest experiments in illuminated printing thirty years earlier.
