WILLIAM BLAKE�S: THE BOOK OF THEL. THE AESTHETIC VERSUS THE USEFUL?

In The Book of Thel (The Book of ????, that is The Book of the Female), Blake�s main preoccupation, in my opinion focuses on the juxtaposition between the aesthetic and the useful, their antithesis and their synthesis to produce and explain the female identity. Knowing that Blake�s thought always moves in oppositional and synthetical structures, the useful versus the aesthetic is nothing more than the restless and perpetual fight of the dualisms of innocence and experience, energy and Urizen, imagination and reason. Taking into consideration that Blake�s dualisms are constructive rather than destructive, in The Book of Thel, he wonders and oscillates between the aesthetic and the useful. He attributes an indefinite, unclear kind of beauty to Thel, which is a progression of his thought since The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where he associated the organs of reproduction with beauty, �the genitals Beauty�, the sublime and the beautiful together, that is the head and the genitals, a confirmation that �Man has no Body distinct from his Soul ��. This progression of his thought relates to the formation of what is commonly called beauty (aesthetic value), an ethical feminine development in contradistinction to use value the necessity of survival: �� without a use this shining woman liv�d, / Or did she live. to be at death the food of worms.� Nevertheless, the issue seems problematic. Thel, �the daughter of beauty,� finally is the �� beauty of the vales of Har.� (Har in Greek mythology, that is ????? is the ferryman who carried the dead to the underworld and the etymology of the word Har (X??-??) is an euphemism of the verb ?????, meaning enjoy, take pleasure in), thus signifying quite the opposite; that is the death of the aesthetic possibly in favour of the useful. Thel lives in a world of uselessness, depression, and oblivion. Thus, Blake�s Har and the Greek Har introduce death as Thel�s ultimate refuge. The question is: is Thel after having rejected the (her) use value, a mere aesthetic value belonging to Har? Or her aesthetic value in the real world, the world of experience equals death?