With Dreams upon my bed thou scarest me
The Demon and the Monster as the central motif, with the Serpent and the Dragon, and Fire in a secondary part. From The Book of Job.
What is happening
William Blake, 1825 “With Dreams upon my bed thou scarest me & affrightest me with Visions”
William Blake, 1825 “The triumphing of the wicked is short, the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment”
Symbolica, 2026 Plate 11 of twenty-two, and the turn of the whole series. Blake states in the margin what the picture shows and the Book of Job never says: the figure with God's face bending over the bed is not God.
Key · 3 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 2
The picture
Job lying back on his bed with his hands up; over him a bearded figure with a cloven hoof and a serpent wound round his body, one hand pointing down at Job and the other at stone tablets; flames along the whole lower edge and figures with chains reaching up out of them. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
This is the plate the whole series turns on, and Blake writes the turn into the margin rather than leaving it to be found.
A bearded figure is stretched over Job's bed with his arm across the top of the design. He has the face Blake has been drawing for God through ten plates. He points down at Job with one hand and at a pair of stone tablets with the other. And one of his feet is a cloven hoof. Cut across the head of the sheet, in Blake's own hand: ‘Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light & his Ministers into Ministers of Righteousness’. The God who has been condemning Job is not God, and never was.
A serpent is coiled round the figure's body and along his arm, its head coming down beside Job's own. Blake gives it no line. It is simply the thing worn by the figure with the wrong foot, and between the hoof and the serpent the picture is signed twice over.
Under the bed there is no floor, only flame running the width of the plate with hands and faces and a chain coming up out of it. The lines in the two top corners are Job's own words in fever: ‘My bones are pierced in me in the night season & my sinews take no rest’, and ‘My skin is black upon me & my bones are burned with heat’. He is not being shown hell. He is running a temperature.
The long block of text under the design is the answer, and Blake sets it in the smallest hand on the sheet: ‘For I know that my Redeemer liveth ... yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for Myself and mine eyes shall behold & not Another’. Not another. The whole argument of the twenty-two plates is in those two words, engraved at the bottom of the worst picture in the series.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
Almost always a composite and almost always subordinate. Note what it is made of and whether it is bound.
In plain words The figure filling the top of the design has a long beard and a face like the God of the earlier plates, and one of his feet is a cloven hoof. He points down at Job with one hand and at a pair of stone tablets with the other, which is to say he points at the man and at the law. Blake engraves the identification directly above the picture: Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light. The whole series turns here. Everything Job has been told about God has been coming from this.
William Blake, 1825 “Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light & his Ministers into Ministers of Righteousness”
William Blake, 1825 “Who opposeth & exalteth himself above all that is called God or is Worshipped”
A single creature doing two opposite jobs. Note whether it is bound, killed, or eating itself.
In plain words A scaled body is coiled round the figure's torso and along his arm, and its head comes down beside Job's. It is not attacking anything; it is worn. In this archive the serpent is usually the thing that turns or is turned, the ouroboros or the caduceus. Here it is the mark by which a figure claiming to be God can be told apart from God, and Blake draws it on the accuser rather than on the accused.
Symbolica, 2026 Read off the plate. Blake engraved no line naming the serpent. It is recorded as drawn, against the sentence about Satan transformed that runs directly above the picture.
A count, a catastrophe, or the visible part of something that has no body. Note whether the flames are arranged in a number, breaking something, or standing where a figure would be.
In plain words Flames run the whole width of the picture under the bed, and out of them come hands, faces and a length of chain, reaching up to take hold of Job. The two lines Blake sets in the top corners are the words of a man in a fever: his bones pierced in the night season, his skin black on him and his bones burned with heat. The fire is drawn where the bed should be, so what is under him is the thing he is dreaming.
William Blake, 1825 “My bones are pierced in me in the night season & my sinews take no rest”
William Blake, 1825 “My skin is black upon me & my bones are burned with heat”
Also carrying the Demon and the Monster
17 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Appone mulieri super mammas bufonem, ut ablactet eum, & moriatur mulier, sitque bufo grossus de lacte
Oedypus Sphynge superata & trucidato Lajo patre matrem ducit in uxorem
Lupus ab Oriente & Canis ab Occidente venientes se invicem momorderunt
Against the slanderers, by right of retort
The Devil (XV)
Where the detail is the subject
the Serpent and the Dragon · Fire
Each of these is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about each.
By the same hand
In the same series
Record
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