Nebuchadnezzar (Blake) - Critical Response

Critical Response

Alexander Gilchrist, Blake's early biographer, believed that "The metallic tinting of the moss-grown crags is rendered almost as successfully as in 'Newton,' and the printing throughout the picture is well carried out, with none of the opaque oily surfaces which occur in some others of the series." Dante Gabriel Rossetti commented: "Crawling on all fours in his shaggy insanity. The tawny beard trails across the left hand: the nails are literally "like birds' claws", and the flesh tints very red and "beefy." The glaring eyes, too, have almost lost their human character. The background represents a thick jungle. A fine wild conception." The image inspired a passage in the poem City of Dreadful Night (1870s) by James Thomson (1834–1882):

After a hundred steps I grew aware

Of something crawling in the lane below;

It seemed a wounded creature prostrate there

That sobbed with pangs in making progress slow,

The hind limbs stretched to push, the fore limbs then

To drag; for it would die in its own den.

But coming level with it I discerned

That it had been a man; for at my tread

It stopped in its sore travail and half-turned,

Leaning upon its right, and raised its head,

And with the left hand twitched back as in ire

Long grey unreverend locks befouled with mire.

A haggard filthy face with bloodshot eyes,

An infamy for manhood to behold. -