CHAPTER 124
GREG ENTERED THE QUEEN'S CABINET. She was, as many said..., an example of self-control. But even a person in his condition, seeing his son in danger, lets the emotion show.
— Mr. Evans, how likely is my son to be found alive?
— It is impossible to answer that precisely to Her Majesty. This group is firm with the purpose of creating a new state.
— Like this?
— I think you've heard of William Blake.
— Certainly, he is one of our greatest geniuses, a pride for our country.
— This group studied tirelessly about this artist and found a philosophical direction that points to the destruction of the monarchy.
The monarch's expression remained impassive.
— And what should we do?
— I believe we're on a nine — night countdown, we're entering the eighth night, and it seems to us that the next sacrifice has to do with the prince.
She sat up, took a deep breath and tried to relax. In view of the above, for the first time, he showed himself to be fragile.
— Are we looking for information that might indicate how they might have escaped the palace?
— Like every palace, Buckingham is full of secret passages, which only royalty and people of the most restricted trust have access to. It would be impossible to tell you which one they could have used.
Greg nodded, he knew there was nothing he could do, he needed clues and at first they left none.
A second later, one of the Queen's private guard officers wanted to speak with Greg, right away.
He excused himself, bowed to Her Majesty and whispered looking at the policeman;
— They used the ticket to the Duke's Hotel.
— It would be the most logical thing to do, it's a discreet way.
— Was there something in the tunnel? — Igor Zumerick asked.
The policeman thought for a moment and said:
— There was a drawing of a compass on the exit door.
Igor immediately turned to the facts.
— Two of Blake's most important works are 'The Ancient of Days' and 'Newton', both of which are portrayed as men holding a compass.
'And how can this help us?' — Greg came forward:
— They use figures related to William Blake, to sacrifice people for the sake of an apocalypse, based on the book Zoas.
— I've never seen nonsense like this.
'It may be silly, but they broke into Westminster and murdered Abbot Joel Nielsen, then murdered Major Charlene Midleton...'
Greg was going to continue, but the officer cut him off.
— You mean all these deaths were linked?
— Exactly, your ideas were to destabilize the government and create a new order.
— The Theory of Chaos — completed Igor Zumerick.
— And how do you intend to find them?
— Following the clues...
— In this case, a compass?
Igor nodded.
— I've never seen such bullshit, do you really believe that? — He replied ironically.
The queen returned to Greg and said:
— Please continue, if this is the only lead we have to find my son, let's trust you.
— Your Majesty... these men killed Adam Stillton and...
She looked at her secretary officer.
— This man was appointed by the President of the United States, the president himself called me to inform me of this, he is here as our ally, and if they killed Adam Stillton, they must have their reasons, because that old man was not a flower to smell. Anyway, you did us a favor. Or do you want me to list everything he's ever done to us?
He was silent.
— Go ahead, Mr. Evans.
Greg looked at Igor who continued:
— The engravings presented here, works by the artist William Blake, represent two very different images of the constitution of the world in its relations with geometry.
— In the first one, an old man bending over himself uses a compass with his fingers, from the ends of which rays of light emanate. The elder, evidently, is God and the act represented there is that of the Creation of the world. "God as an Architect".
— But what does that symbolically mean? — asked the monarch.
— The ancient of Days, is a design by William Blake, originally published as the frontispiece to the 1794 work Europe the Prophecy. He takes his name from one of God's titles in the Book of Daniel and shows Urizen, crouching in a circular design with a cloud— like background. His outstretched hand holds a compass over the darkest void below. Related images appear in Blake's Newton, completed the following year. As noted in Alexander Gilchrist's 1863 book Life of William Blake, The Ancient of Days ' design was:
"A singular favorite of Blake's, and as such it was always a joy for him to copy…"
— Of existing work, including one completed for Frederick Tatham, just weeks before Blake's death. The British Museum notes that a copy, accessed in 1885, was excluded from Martin Butlin's 1982 Raisonné catalog of Blake's paintings and drawings, suggesting that the author doubted this attribution.
Everyone was absolutely silent and Igor continued.
— Blake's early critics noted the work as one of the best and a favorite of the artist himself. A description by Richard Thompson in John Thomas Smith's Nollekens and His Times was as follows:
"... an exceptionally fine specimen of art, and approaching almost the sublimity of Raffaelle or Michel Angelo. — And as representing the event given in the Book of Proverbs viii. 27 (KJV), — when he set a compass upon the face of the earth."
— The subject said may have been one of the 'visions' experienced by Blake and which he took special pleasure in producing the impressions. The copy commissioned by Tatham in the last days of Blake's life, for a sum of money in excess of any previous payment for his work, was painted by the artist while he was propped up on his bed. After his revisions, Blake with an air of elated triumph exclaimed:
"There, this will do! I can't fix it."
— There are thirteen known extant copies of Europe a Prophecy. Because of Blake's production process of hand— coloring each print, each image has its own unique qualities. The following images from The Ancient of Days, are available through the digital archiving project, at the William Blake Archive. First, it must be said that Blake, a mystic of great depth, dedicated himself to criticizing the nascent scientific tradition of his time. And his criticisms focused on the attempt to submit the real to a rational and abstract ideal.
— In a way — said the sensible secretary officer. — Blake transposed the classical opposition between Jerusalem and Athens to his day, only this time opposing Jerusalem to Newton.
— The second engraving, suggestively titled "Newton", shows a man, also bent over himself, focused on solving a geometric problem on a sheet of paper. In his hands, a compass. Now, given his notorious resistance to Newton and every conception of the world postulated by nascent science, the conclusion is imposed that, although God and Newton use geometry, it does not have the same meaning in both engravings. God using a compass, at the beginning of time, means the creative power exerting itself.
"God has arranged all things in measure, number and weight..."
— The book of Wisdom, chapter 11 and verse 20 says that — measure comes first because it is the primordial form implied in number and weight. To create is to impose measure, — the same again — pattern, order, logos, proportion, Eidos. All things have a measure, which is repeated in each copy, over and over again, without, however, having a mere numerical repetition. Two things, though apparently the same, are distinguished.
— To measure is to choose an arbitrary standard and impose it on something — Interrupted Greg — Therefore, different measures can be equivalent, in the sense that, through them, one discovers the same proportion between the parts and the whole of what is measured. In this case, the thing is always prior to the measure, it is already a given proportion.
Igor nodded.
— God, on the other hand — said Igor — does not impose an arbitrary standard on things. It creates the pattern. And this "measure" cannot be understood as mere geometry. This is not a question of a God who creates a world with exclusively quantitative aspects. The "measure" is a Logos, an "intrinsic proportionality" and encompasses all aspects of the thing considered, whether quantitative or qualitative. God, in Blake's engraving, is crouching over himself, which symbolically means that God draws all that is from his own infinite power, is unique, endowed with omnipotence, and has no one to do his work. The divine oneness is suggested in the engraving by the circle in which the divine figure appears to be contained.
Igor showed the figure to them.
— God's arm is coming out of that circle, breaking, in a way, that primordial unity. It is the symbol of the beginning of manifestation/creation, of the exit from the world of the undifferentiated, of "non-being". In turn, the symbol of the circle refers to solar symbolism. It represents the formative, limiting and creative principle that gives form to the principle of passive potentiality, represented by the blackness that surrounds the scene. And the clouds, located around God, show the divine transcendence, as well as that of the work that has not yet been manifested.
— But you still haven't explained the compass — said the indignant officer.
Igor smiled and continued to seem not to care about that.
— From the compass, two rays of light are projected forming a triangle that represents the emanation of things from the divine center. One can also see there a representation of the gradual withdrawal from the source. The compass serves to describe circles and these represent the natures of things, taken as units that reflect the primordial unity. In "Newton" we see a man crouching over himself, staring intently at the paper. He seems to imitate God, either in posture or in the use of the compass. Man seems to want to understand the world by his own strength, by his own understanding, applying his own measure. And so it does by focusing all its attention on what is geometric and abstract.
Igor shows the drawing again to see the detail.
— He points to the paper and seems to say 'this is the real'. He is sitting on a kind of rock whose appearance blends in with the ground. The man pretends to be seated in the real, but Blake makes the geometer's gaze and attention be in a position opposite to this colored ground. He ignores the most immediate real, color and life. Your mind focuses on the sheet where a triangle is inscribed. Was it not modern science that declared the subjectivity of qualities and a physical reality absolutely governed by the quantitative?
The prince nodded.
— Unlike the vertical triangle in the creator's engraving, the "Newton" triangle is horizontal. It only points to what is in the immanent sphere, what is within the reach of our human horizon. The geometer's finger points precisely to the base of the triangle, denoting the complete departure from the primordial source of all things and the nature of the era that was inaugurated there. The curled paper indicates that much remains to be discovered by the methods you are now concentrating so closely on, but darkness seems to grow around you. There is no doubt about Blake's choice of divine geometry.
— And that will take us where?
Igor smiled and said:
'96 Euston Road, the National Library.
— And what so interesting could we find there besides books?
— The statue of Newton, by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi.