This enigmatic quote from the English mystic William Blakes’s  (1757-1827) Marriage of Heaven and Hell (published 1794) does not seem to come out of the Christian tradition as it is usually presented.

 

It is, however, comforted by another quote from the Sufi, Hafez (c.1317-1390, born and died in Shiraz).

 

There are moments
in moist love
when heaven
is jealous of what
we on earth
can do.

 

 

The Demidoff Table, marble, 1845

Sculpted for Count Anatoly Nikolaevitch Demidoff (1812-1870) by Lorenzo Bartolini, 1777-1850, Italian (Florence).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

As to to what these quotes allude:

this table may illustrate one possible meaning.

Here is Cupid.  He is pointing to the authority for the scene displayed around him: the Olympians.

He does not want any arguments.

 

 

 

His quiver and his bow and a torch are behind him on the table.  He is not here as the archer, the instigator of trouble in love.

 

 

He is here to remind mortals that the Immortals are not concerned with the morality of mortals.

 

 

He cradles a young, dissolute lad, gorged with food and drink;  unashamedly naked and fast asleep.

 

The Immortals are very admiring of mortals who break the norms of their own societies; who fling themselves at life, regarding nobody and nothing but their own talents, impulses and satisfactions.

 

 

For the Immortals, all things are possible. 

They know that, for mortals, many things are not possible;  

 but only a few mortals stretch for possibilities which are beyond the norms of their societies.

Because in mortal society there are laws, and rules, and conventions. 

Mortals go either into pariah status; or to prison or to hell for violating these. 

 

The Immortals love those who risk prison and thumb their noses at hell.

 

They love them because they wish that they themselves had constraints against which to push; rules to contain them; bars over which to jump.

Sometimes.   That is, they wish for these sometimes.

 

Instead, they have nothing but wide open skies and whole worlds to do whatever they want to do. And mortals to play with.

It is tedious. 

That there is nothing to challenge their godliness.  It verges on an insult to the very idea of godly power.

 

 

Cupid loves this young dissolute.  This ogre who is his own creator. And intends to protect him. 

He is the embodiment of a production of Time: self-made, insouciant, shameless and fearless; always on the verge of defying fate. Insulting the gods with his blasphemies often.

 

 

The Immortals are not rejecting the earnest, clothed young man, asleep, clutching his calipers on the edge of this table.

 

 

But they are not interested in him.  He is dutiful. He is following rules.  He risks little.  He is a goody-two shoes.

Anyone can be dutiful, the Immortals think.

 

Very few people break norms, hiding nothing, justifying nothing, explaining nothing.  And expecting everyone, if not to applaud, then to cede the ground and watch and wonder.  

 

Nor are these exploits always negative.  There is  Alexander the Great. Michelangelo.  The Montgolfier Brothers.  So many others.

 

The Immortals are jealous of this aptitude.  They have no norms.  Nobody is amazed at what they do. 

What they crave – sometimes – are conditions which only exist in Time: constraints; risk-taking;  courage; beginning points; endings. Most of all: the possibility of action in which mortals risk their own deaths. Immortals never face this final risk.

 

Those attributes define a life in Time; and can make each moment in the life of ‘ordinary mortals’ a wonder to be relished.

 

The Immortals do not know what a moment is.