SOURCE: Murray, E. B. “Jerusalem Reversed.” Blake Studies 7, no. 1 (1974): 11-25.

In the following essay, Murray suggests that one method of understanding Blake's Jerusalem is to analyze the concepts and characters of the work as distorted mirror images of one another.

We often need the assurances we sometimes get about the admirable clarity and order of Blake's greatest poem. Not only can the poem seem a maze to us as we enter into it, but commentators we successively turn to for directions about the best route through it may lead us instead into the byways of their own outside readings and imposed insights. We may be charmed into accepting their rendition of order and clarity and still be left with a vaguely uncomfortable sense that we have, after all, missed the way we are looking for—that Jerusalem has somehow eluded us. I would suggest that the reason it...