William Blake:

An experiment in understanding poetry

 
 
Blake etchings
Blake etchings
When you consider Blake as a poet, you must also consider his art.  Explore the site linked above to see how his etchings reflect his world vision.  Take your time and see just how he envisions both the profane and the holy in his vision.

Your exploration of the etchings has led you to viewing Blake's images in his major works, The Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.    Look at the poems from these works, especially finding pairs that seem to reflect deliberate parallels, such as "The Lamb" and "The Tyger,"  "Holy Thursday" (each work), "TheDivine Image" and "The Human Abstract,"
and other poems you can match up.
 

 Songs of Innocence
 Songs of Experience
 from Proverbs of Hell

Read about Blake's life from the following sources:

Encarta Encyclopedia:
 
 Blake, William (1757-1827), English poet, painter, and engraver, who created a unique form of illustrated verse; his poetry, inspired by mystical vision, is among the most original lyric and prophetic in the language.

Blake, the son of a hosier, was born November 28, 1757, in London, where he lived most of his life. Largely self-taught, he was, however, widely read, and his poetry shows the influence of the German mystic Jakob Boehme, for example, and of Swedenborgianism (see Swedenborg, Emanuel). As a child, Blake wanted to become a painter. He was sent to drawing school and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to James Basire (1730-1802), an engraver. After his 7-year term was over, he studied briefly at the Royal Academy, but he rebelled against the aesthetic doctrines of its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Blake did, however, later establish friendships with such academicians as John Flaxman and Henry Fuseli, whose work may have influenced him. In 1784 he set up a printshop; although it failed after a few years, for the rest of his life Blake eked out a living as an engraver and illustrator. His wife helped him print the illuminated poetry for which he is remembered today.
 
Early Poetry
 
Blake began writing poetry at the age of 12, and his first printed work, Poetical Sketches (1783), is a collection of youthful verse.  Blake's most popular poems have always been Songs of Innocence (1789). These lyrics—fresh, direct observations—are notable for their eloquence. In 1794, disillusioned with the possibility of human perfection, Blake issued Songs of Experience, employing the same lyric style and much of the same subject matter as in Songs of Innocence. Both series of poems take on deeper resonances when read in conjunction. Innocence and Experience, "the two contrary states of the human soul," are contrasted in such companion pieces as "The Lamb" and "The Tyger." Blake's subsequent poetry develops the implication that true innocence is impossible without experience, transformed by the creative force of the human imagination.
 
Blake as Artist
 
As was to be Blake's custom, he illustrated the Songs with designs that demand an imaginative reading of the complicated dialogue between word and picture. His method of illuminated printing is not completely understood. The most likely explanation is that he wrote the words and drew the pictures for each poem on a copper plate, using some liquid impervious to acid, which when applied left text and illustration in relief. Ink or a color wash was then applied, and the printed picture was finished by hand in watercolors.
 
Blake has been called a preromantic because he rejected neoclassical literary style and modes of thought. His graphic art too defied 18th-century conventions. Always stressing imagination over reason, he felt that ideal forms should be constructed not from observations of nature but from inner visions. 
 
Much of Blake's painting was on religious subjects: illustrations for the work of John Milton, his favorite poet (although he rejected Milton's Puritanism), for John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and for the Bible, including 21 illustrations to the Book of Job. Among his secular illustrations were those for an edition of Thomas Gray's poems and the 537 watercolors for Edward Young's Night Thoughts—only 43 of which were published.
 
The Prophetic Books

In his so-called Prophetic Books, a series of longer poems written from 1789 on, Blake created a complex personal mythology and invented his own symbolic characters to reflect his social concerns. Among the Prophetic Books is a prose work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93), which develops Blake's idea that "without Contraries is no progression." It includes the "Proverbs of Hell," such as "The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."
 
In 1800 Blake moved to the seacoast town of Felpham, where he lived and worked until 1803 under the patronage of William Hayley (1745-1820). There he experienced profound spiritual insights that prepared him for his mature work, the great visionary epics .
 
Blake's final years, spent in great poverty, were cheered by the admiring friendship of a group of younger artists. He died in London, August 12, 1827, leaving uncompleted a cycle of drawings inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy.
 
Biographic entry: B1291

"Blake, William," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation
 
 

The Blake Webpage:
William Blake
(b. Nov. 28, 1757, London--d. Aug. 12, 1827, London) was the first of the great English Romantic poets, as well as a painter, engraver and printer. Largely self-taught, he began writing poetry when he was twelve and was apprenticed to a London engraver at the age of fourteen. His poetry and visual art are inextricably linked. To fully appreciate one you must see it in context with the other.

Blake is frequently referred to as a mystic, but this is not really accurate. He deliberately wrote in the style of the Hebrew prophets and envisioned his works as expressions of prophecy, following in the footsteps (or, more precisely strapping on the sandals) of Elijah and Milton.

Most of Blake's paintings (such as "The Ancient of Days", the frontispiece to "Europe: a Prophecy") are actually prints made from copper plates, which he etched in a method he claimed was revealed to him in a dream. He and his wife colored these prints with water colors. Thus each print is itself a unique work of art.