ABSTRACT
Johann Caspar Lavater desires to know how the soul imprints itself in the human body. In this view the body is a text which can be represented and edited to display divine likeness. The problem was that Lavater excluded pathognomy, that is, the non-permanent aspects of human identity. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg challenged Lavater by querying whether the body could ever give expression to the soul's inherent richness. The eighteenth-century debate about physiognomy provides an international context for William Blake's work, in particular his creation myth, and more generally the construction of identity through the body. In his creation myth, Blake explores how body and soul come to relate to each under the conditions of likeness-making. He focuses on the attempts to achieve what seems beyond not only his own abilities but those of his creator figures as well: creating a body or book in the image of perfection.
