William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. During Blake's lifetime, and for half a century afterwards, his work was largely disregarded or even derided as the work of a madman, whereas today his work is considered seminal in the history of both poetry and the visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Born inside London, Blake spent the entire course of his life, save for three years, inside the city. His creative vision, however, engendered a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced 'imagination' as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself"
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The Poems - The Collector's Library of Famous Editions - 1995
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Romantic Poets From Blake To Poe - imitation leather - 1982
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Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, later criticism holds Blake in high regard for his expressiveness and creativity, as well as the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - he summarised his position in The Everlasting Gospel: "Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white" - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jacob Boehme and Emanuel Swedenborg.
Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."
Poet William Blake
Blake was born at 28 Broad Street, Golden Square, London into a middle-class family. His artistic talent was noticed and encouraged from an early age. At ten years old, he began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities, a practice that was then preferred to real-life drawing. Four years later he became apprenticed to an engraver, Henry Basire. After two years Basire sent him to copy art from the Gothic churches in London. At the age of twenty-one Blake finished his apprenticeship and set up as a professional engraver.
In 1779 he became a student at the Royal Academy, where he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens. He preferred the Classical exactness of Michelangelo and Raphael.
In 1782 Blake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron. In the same year he married a poor illiterate girl named Catherine Boucher, who was five years his junior. Catherine could neither read nor write and even signed her wedding contract with an X. Blake taught her reading and writing and even trained her as an engraver. At that time, George Cumberland, one of the founders of the National Gallery, became an admirer of Blake's work.
Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was published circa 1783. In 1788, at the age of thirty-one, Blake began to experiment with "relief etching", which was the method used to produce most of his books of poems. Blake wrote in a letter that the method was revealed to him in a dream of his dead brother, Robert. The process is also referred to as "illuminated printing," and final products as "illuminated books" or "prints". Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid in order to dissolve away the untreated copper and leave the design standing. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-colored in water colors and stiched together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for four of his works: the Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem. Each of his illuminated books was thus a unique work of art and a radical break with not only traditional book printing but the traditional means of presenting poetic and philosophical discourse. Blake seems to have believed, or rather hoped, that self-published books could liberate the artist and author from the tyranny of censorship by Church and State but its time-consuming nature meant that his most personal and prophetic works reached a minute audience in his lifetime.
Blake also became a friend of the painter John Henry Fuseli.
Religious and political visions
Blake had an idiosyncratic view of his Christian religion. In 1789 William and Catherine joined the Swedenborgian New Church. He believed that the truth was learned by personal revelation, not by teaching. What he called his 'visions' were perhaps hallucinations, experiences that he allowed to guide his life. It was these that gave him such a strong and uncompromising belief in his own artistic direction, but also led others to call him eccentric or even mad.
In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake began to develop his own mythology, which included a pantheon of characters such as Orc, a messiah and Urizen, a cruel Old Testament-style god. Blake loved Milton's work and tried, as Milton had, to create his own definitions of heaven and hell. This desire to recreate the cosmos is the heart of his work and his psychology. His myths often described the struggle between enlightenment and free love on the one hand, and restrictive education and morals on the other. Blake believed himself a prophet of a New Age, and his identification with free love and democracy has helped to make him a hero of many modern artists. The poet W. B. Yeats admired Blake's spiritualism and helped to popularise him in the 20th century.
The Last Judgement is a work in which Blake sums up and illustrates all the mythology that he has created.
Many attempts have been made to categorise Blake. Not least of them is the effort to dub him a 'Gnostic', based on several similarities between his mythology and that of the Christian Gnostics whose main period of proliferation ran through the first three centuries A.D. Blake himself was said to be aware of Gnostic mythology, and to have deliberately drawn on it in the creation of his personal myths. For example, Blake's figure 'Urizen' - who makes an appearance in his famous painting 'The Ancient of Days' - may be likened in many respects to the Gnostic demiurge. However, efforts to deem Blake a 'modern Gnostic' have been hampered by the complexities of Blake's own mythology, as well as the variety of Gnostic myths on offer.
Later life
Blake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. There were early problems, however, such as Catherine's illiteracy and the couple's failure to produce children. At one point, in accordance with the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society, Blake suggested bringing in a concubine. Catherine was distressed at the idea, and he dropped it. Later in life, the pair seem to have settled down, and their apparent domestic harmony in middle age is better documented than their early difficulties.
Later in his life Blake sold a great number of works, particularly his Bible illustrations, to Thomas Butts, a patron who saw Blake more as a friend in need than an artist. Geoffrey Keynes, a biographer, described Butts as 'a dumb admirer of genius, which he could see but not quite understand.' Dumb or not, we have him to thank for eliciting and preserving so many works.
About 1800 Blake moved to a cottage at Felpham in Sussex (now West Sussex) to take up a job illustrating the works of William Hayley, a mediocre poet. It was in this cottage that Blake wrote Milton: a Poem (which was published later between 1804 and 1808). The preface to this book included the poem And did those feet in ancient time, which Blake decided to discard for later editions. This is ironic, because as the words to the hymn Jerusalem, this is now one of Blake's most well-known if not well-understood poems.
Blake returned to London in 1802 and began to write and illustrate Jerusalem (1804-1820). He was introduced by George Cumberland to a young artist named John Linnell. Through Linnell he met Samuel Palmer, who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves the 'Shoreham Ancients'. This group shared Blake's rejection of modern trends and his belief in a spiritual and artistic New Age. Blake benefited from this group technically, by sharing in their advances in watercolour painting, and personally, by finding a receptive audience for his ideas.
At the age of sixty-five Blake began work on illustrations for the Book of Job. These works were later admired by John Ruskin, who compared Blake favourably to Rembrandt.
Death
William Blake died in 1827 and was buried in an unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields, London. In recent years, a proper memorial was erected for him and his wife. He died while still hard at work. His last work was said to be a sketch of his wife. Perhaps Blake's life is summed up by his statement that "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."
The Lamb by William Blake
The
Lamb is a poem by the English poet and artist William Blake. It was
published as part of his collection titled Songs of Innocence in 1789.
The poem is notable for its gentle and pastoral imagery, portraying the
lamb as a symbol of innocence and purity. The speaker addresses the lamb
directly, asking about its creator and then identifying the creator as
someone who is meek and mild, ultimately connecting the lamb to the
divine. The repetition of the question Little Lamb, who made thee?
emphasizes the theme of creation and the relationship between the
created and the Creator.
Despite his visionary contributions,
Blake's work was often overlooked during his lifetime. He faced
financial struggles and lived on the outskirts of mainstream
recognition. However, Blake's unwavering commitment to his artistic
vision never wavered.
In his later years, Blake continued to
produce remarkable works, such as Jerusalem (1804-1820), a poetic and
artistic exploration of a utopian vision. Blake's artistic endeavors
extended to commissioned engravings and illustrations for others,
including his well-known illustrations for John Milton's Paradise Lost.
William Blake passed away on August 12, 1827, largely unrecognized by
the wider public. However, his influence grew in the following
centuries, as later generations recognized the depth and brilliance of
his visionary art and poetry. Today, William Blake is regarded as a key
figure in Romantic literature and art, with his innovative approach
continuing to inspire artists and thinkers across disciplines.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
This
book appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and
illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound
these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of
Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human
Soul.
The work compiles two contrasting but directly related
books of poetry by William Blake. Songs of Innocence honors and praises
the natural world, the natural innocence of children and their close
relationship to God. Songs of Experience contains much darker,
disillusioned poems, which deal with serious, often political themes. It
is believed that the disastrous end to the French Revolution produced
this disillusionment in Blake. He does, however, maintain that true
innocence is achieved only through experience.
William Blake books
Poetical Sketches (1769–1777)
An Island in the Moon (1784)
All Religions are One, There is No Natural Religion (c.1788)
Songs of Innocence, The Book of Thel (1789)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-1793)
The French Revolution (1791)
A Song of Liberty (1792)
The Gates of Paradise (1793)
Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America: a Prophecy (1793)
America a Prophecy (1793)
Europe a Prophecy (1794–1821)
The Song of Los (1795)
Europe: a Prophecy, The First Book of Urizen, Songs of Experience (The sequel to Songs of Innocence - 1794)
The Book of Los (1795)
The Book of Ahania (1795)
Vala, or The Four Zoas (1797–1807)
Milton: a Poem (c.1804-c.1811)
Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion (1804-1820)
Books illustrated by Blake
1797: Edward Young, Night Thoughts
1805-1808: Robert Blair, The Grave
1808: John Milton, Paradise Lost
1819-1820: John Varley, Visionary Heads
1821: R.J. Thornton, Virgil
1823-1826: The Book of Job
1825-1827: Dante, The Divine Comedy
Source and additional information: William Blake