WILLIAM BLAKE (P. 266-267)
William Blake was born in London in 1757 and his origins were humble. He studied
at the Royal Academy of Arts and there he broke with the conventions of
perspective and proportions, creating a new kind of art which gives more
importance to imagination. He made illustrations for the work of John Milton and
for the Bible. He was a freethinker and he supported the French Revolution, as he
was radical; he saw personally the evil effects of industrial development on man’s
soul and came to believe that the artist should have a new role: he’s the guardian of
the spirit and imagination. Blake has a great sense of religion, in fact the most
important literary influence was the Bible, considered a complete vision of the
world and its history. His poetry is regarded as early Romantic because he rejected
neoclassical literary style and themes. He created the method of Illuminated
printing, which combined picture and poetic text. He published, also, prophetic
books, in which he created a complex mythology, as for example “The Marriage of
the Heaven and Hell”, where he represents liberty with Satan and Hell, and the
place of Lawgiving with the Heaven.
Blake died in London in 1827. He writes poetic collections:
Songs of Innocence: is written in the pastoral mode with simple imagery. It
deals with childhood as the symbol of innocence. The world of innocence is
full of joy and happiness the child becomes the object of Blake’s poetry
because he is closer than the adult to the original state of harmony with
nature;
Songs of Experience: is more complex and pessimistic. The world of
experience is full of cruelty and injustice and it’s all focused-on adulthood.
Blake considered imagination the means through which man could know the world.
Imagination means “see more, beyond the material reality” and only God, children
and poets have this power. The poet becomes a sort of prophet who can see
deeply. Blake believed in the reality of a spiritual world but he thought that
Christianity was responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness and the
dualism characterising man’s life. His Christianity wasn’t liturgical. So, he had a vision
made up of complementary opposites. He stated: “without Contraries there is no
Progression”. The possibility of progress is situated in the tension between
contraries: good and evil, male and female, reason and imagination. The two states
coexist in the human being and in the Creator. Furthermore, individuals move from a
state of innocence to the state of experience. Finally, for him contrary states exist
not in linear sequence but in parallel: they’re simultaneous.
Blake was concerned with the political and social problems of his time: he supported
the abolition of the slavery and he believed in revolution as purifying violence
necessary for the redemption of man. Later, he was disillusioned by the effects of
industrial revolution.
