42. Blake on Energy and Reason
42. This dysfunctional relationship was delineated by Blake in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1796), where the roosters are called energy (desire) and the owls, reason. Substituting the terms works well: “Indeed it appeared to Reason (the owls) as if Desire (the roosters) was cast out, but the Devil’s (rooster’s) account is that the Messiah (desire/rooster) fell & formed a heaven (the unintended consequences) of what he stole from the Abyss (ex post defectu).” plate 5f; The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David Erdman, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p.34.
