William Blake

[deviadah]

A thread on Blake is what AF needs! :cool:

I hope all members that might want to discuss his ideas and concepts will take part in this thread.

For free texts go here: Blake Digital Text Project (http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/home1.html)

Let me kick-start this thread with a little insight of mine.

William Blake is all about perception, and not only because of that famous quote I am sure most of you have heard. Blake, as I am too, is interested in seeing not necessarily with the eyes alone.

"They told me that the night & day were all that I could see;
They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.
And they inclos'd my infinite brain into a narrow circle,
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red round globe hot burning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased." - from Visions of the Daughters of Albion (http://www.english.uga.edu/nhilton/Blake/blaketxt1/visions_of_the_daughters_of_albion.html)

http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/images/blake.jpg

[Apopheros]

Interesting...
I remember Aldous Huxley made a couple references to him
in his books, like Doors of Perception and Philosophia Perrenas too I believe...
He often cites Blakes this...Blake that...
I'll check that fellow out fo sho :twink:

[Kuroyagi]

Thank you for the practical link. I havent read Blake extensively but what I did read was good. I especially like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, from which I would like to quote here. It's very much up my alley since its not only philosophical but also "aphoristical" (Proverbs of Hell), in parts.
The voice of the Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a
Soul.
2 That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that
Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight

I have heard about "Jerusalem" that it allegedly has very many levels or layers that all work together: sociological, philosophical, mythological, personal, historical etc. and some say that it's the "most profound" work in the English language. I dont know, havent read it, but Blake's good, I also like his drawings.

[fr.novumorganum]

Blake 'saw' things all the time; he was a natural seer for whom the spiritual world was not an abstract concept....

Interesting influence: Allen Ginsberg claimed that the most important thing that happened in his life was his "Blake Vision":

In 1948 in an apartment in Harlem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem), Ginsberg had an auditory hallucination of William Blake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake) reading his poems "Ah, Sunflower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ah%2C_Sunflower)," "The Sick Rose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sick_Rose)," and "Little Girl Lost" (later referred to as his "Blake vision"). Ginsberg was reading these poems at the time, and he said he was very familiar with them; at one point he claimed he heard them being read by what sounded like the voice of God but what he interpreted as the voice of Blake. He had at that moment pivotal revelations that defined his understanding of the universe. He believed that he witnessed then the interconnectedness of the universe. He looked at lattice work on the fire escape and realized some hand had crafted that; he then looked at the sky and intuited that some hand had crafted that also, or rather that the sky was the hand that crafted itself. He explained that this hallucination was not inspired by drug use, but said he sought to recapture that feeling later with various drugs.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg#_note-1)