Word and Image in The Book of Job

This is a somewhat belated blog post, but when we went to look at the Blake engravings of the Book of Job last Tuesday, I was very taken with the innovative way in which he treated the relationship between the word and image. From my experience with this somewhat charged relationship in the 19th century, it seems that while the two were heavily integrated--as they have been since...well, forever--oftentimes an artist or writer gave precedence to one medium over the other in his or her work. However, while looking at Blake's engravings, I was intrigued at how Blake obtains a complete marriage of the two art forms in his engravings of the Book of Job.

It does not appear to me that Blake gives supremacy to one or the other in his work, as is apparent in Thus did Job Continually. The picture here takes the central place; however, he uses the words almost as a kind of border--an inversion of the traditional illuminated manuscript, in which the border was second to the word, despite being the ornamentation and visual beauty of the work. While the traditional illuminated manuscript the border compliments the word and renders it more visually appealing; here, in Blake's inversion of this medieval tradition, the word appears to illuminate intellectually and visually the picture, while not assuming a secondary position. Visually, it acts as the frame, the context within which we view the picture, but Blake also gives it an image-like quality. The diagonal placement of "Our Father which art in Heaven" and "hallowed be thy Name", coupled with the varying sizes of text and their purposeful separation makes them more challenging to read than the average text, and means that they cannot be read simply from left to right, just as a painting cannot.

This use of visual elements in the text as well as Blake's clear interest in reinventing the illuminated manuscript indicates his desire to marry word and image. To me, it also indicates Blake's higher realm, one in which two arts traditionally in constant conflict with one another come together in perfect harmony--a perfect harmony he is striving to achieve in his Book of Job engravings.