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WILLIAM BLAKE
Public
domain, via
Wikimedia Commons.
Portrait of William Blake by Thomas Phillips, 1807 |
- William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker.
- Largely unrecogniszd during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age.
- What he called his 'prophetic works' were said by the 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form
'what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the [English] language,'
- While he lived in London his entire life, except for 3 years
spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as
'the body of God' or 'human existence itself.'
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Although Blake was considered mad by
contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he came to
be highly regarded by later critics and readers for
his expressiveness and creativity, and for the
philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his
work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised
as part of the Romantic movement and as
"Pre-Romantic". He was hostile to the Church of
England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised
religion), and was influenced by the ideals and
ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.
(Wikipedia)
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William Blake
hands |
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Although later he rejected many of hix political beliefs about
the American Revolution, he maintained an amicable
relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was
also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg.
- Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.
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I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never
had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I
used to play on the green. And the gates of this
Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not. writ over the
door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many
sweet flowers bore. (William
Blake)
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.jpg)
Public
domain, via
Wikimedia Commons.
Catherine Blake, c. 1805, by William Blake |
- Modern writers talk about his ollaboration with his wife, Catherine Boucher,
who was instrumental in the creation of many of his books.
- Although Blake was never married to Boucher, she was a
destitute woman and he was very kind and took her in and
supported her, he never married.
- Boucher worked as a printmaker and colourist for his works
and for almost 45 years she was the person who lived and worked most closely with Blake, enabling him to realize numerous projects, impossible without her assistance.
- Catherine was an artist and printer in her own right,
Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night
And twofold Always.
May God us keep
From Single vision & Newton’s sleep!
(William Blake, The Letters of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes,
1968)
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- 'When the doors of perception are cleansed, all things will appear as they really are'
(Jim Morrison).
- William Blake used the term doors of perception.
- So Jim Morrison read William Blake
and a book called The Door's Of Perception by Aldous Huxley.
- This book is credited with influencing the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s and its exploration of altered states of consciousness.
- In gematria, W is a crown and O is a crown.
- We have WOO
here.
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