William Blake (1757-1827) poet, painter and musician COMPOSITE ART
myth of an archetypal Romantic rebel
It is very true what you have said for these thirty two Years[.] I am Mad or Else you are So[;]
both of us cannot be right in our Senses[.] Posterity will judge by our Works. (William
Blake)
Armed with this two-edged sword, the art of Michelangelo and the revelations of Swedenborg
[Swedish philosopher, theologian, Christian mystic, scientist], Blake killed the dragon of experience and
natural wisdom, and, by minimizing space and time and denying the existence of memory and
the senses, he tried to paint his works on the void of the divine bosom.(James Joyce)
IF one follow Blake’s mind through the several stages of his poetic development it is
impossible to regard him as a naïf, a wild man, a wild pet for the supercultivated. The
strangeness is evaporated, the peculiarity is seen to be the peculiarity of all great poetry:
something which is found (not everywhere) in Homer and Æschylus and Dante and Villon,
and profound and concealed in the work of Shakespeare—and also in another form in
Montaigne and in Spinoza. It is merely a peculiar honesty, which, in a world too frightened to
be honest, is peculiarly terrifying. It is an honesty against which the whole world conspires,
because it is unpleasant. Blake’s poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry. (T.S.Eliot)
WILLIAM BLAKE: “one of the great pugilists [boxer] of intellectual history” (Morris
Eaves, editor of the Blake Quarterly and the Blake Archive)
'See how school shutters you,' she said. 'I'm drawing, painting, reading, looking. I'm feeling
the sun and the air on my skin. I'm listening to the blackbird's song. I'm opening my mind.
Ha! School!'
She picked up a book of poems from her blanket. 'Listen,' she said.
She sat up straight, coughed to clear her throat, held the opened book before her.
'To go to school in a summer morn, :
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.'
She closed the book,
'William Blake again. You've heard of William Blake?'
'No.'
'He painted pictures and wrote poems. Much of the time he wore no clothes. He saw angels in
his garden.'
She beckoned me. I stepped over the wall, sat on the blanket by her.
'Be quiet,' she whispered. 'Be very, very quiet. Listen.'
'Listen to what?'
'Just listen.'
[...]
(David Almond, Skellig) [1998]
Mock on Mock on Voltaire Rousseau
Mock on Mock on! tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind
And the wind blows it back again t
And every sand becomes a Gem
Reflected in the beams divine
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye t
But still in Israels paths they shine
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newtons Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore
Where Israels tents do shine so bright
(from the Rossetti Ms, cc 1800-1810)
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH
(Laocoön, c.1826)
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Urthona rises from the ruinous walls
In all his ancient strength to form the golden armour of science
For intellectual War The war of swords departed now
The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns
(The FourZoas cc.1796-1803)
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
I call upon you in the Name of Jesus! What is the Life of Man but Art & Science?
(Jerusalem, cc. 1804-1810)
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
(Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794, “London”)
Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man (1995)
best scholarly edition: www.blakearchive.org
resources for further research: http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/resources.html