William Blacke

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Data:	24.04.2001
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WILLIAM BLAKE
Life
Blake was born in London and his family, neither rich nor poor, were trades people. He appears to have received no formal education, but demonstrates a knowledge of English literature, particularly Milton and the Bible. At the age of 14 he became an apprentice engraver and so he had to spend long months in Westminster Abbey, from which derived his love of the Gothic style. Later, he studied at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, the illiterate daughter of a market gardener. He taught her to read, write and help him in his work as an engraver. In 1788 Blake developed a particular process of printing called “Illuminated Printing”. Blake spent the rest of his life in poverty and obscurity and began to attract a small group of friends and admirers of the originality of his work only in his last years. He died in 1827.
Main works: Songs of Innocence(1789), dealing with childhood as the symbol of innocence, a state of soul connected with happiness, freedom and imagination. Songs of Experience, where a more pessimistic view of life emerges in the powerful symbolism used by Blake. These songs are intended to be read together with the Songs of Innocence. Experience, identified with adulthood, coexists with and completes Innocence. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), a prose work, is a mixture of aphorisms, anecdotes, proverbs.
Influence on Blake’s works
His production was a reaction against the values and cultural patterns of the Age of the Enlightenment. His rebellious attitude was the result of several influences like Paine and Godwin. He followed the claims of free thinkers like Voltaire or Diderot. Finally, he embraced the theories of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish philosopher and mystic.

He regarded Christianity, and the Church especially, as responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness and the dualism characterizing man’s life. To this view he substituted a vision made up of “contraries”. He stated:”Without Contraries there is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human Existence”. The possibility of progress lies in the tension between opposite states of mind. The two states coexist not only in the human being but also in the figure of the Creator.
Imagination and the poet
Blake considered imagination as the means through which Man could know the world. God, the child and the poet share this power of creating things. The poet therefore becomes a sort of prophet who can see more deeply into reality and who also tries to warm man of the evils of society.
Blake’s interest in social problems
He supported the abolition of slavery and believed in revolution as purifying violence necessary for the redemption of man. Later, disillusioned, he focused his attention on the evil consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
Symbolism
In the choice of his themes, Blake anticipated the great Romantic poets. His poems present a very simple structure and a highly individual use of symbols. The child, the father, and Christ, representing the states of innocence, experience, and a higher innocence.