The collection is dedicated to the work of the English poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827). The publication is preceded by an essay by V. Zhirmunsky " William Blake". The collection includes works from the book "Poetic Sketches", "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience", poems different years, from the "Prophetic Books", aphorisms.

William Blake in translations by S. Marshak
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William Blake

The name of the remarkable English poet and artist William Blake has become known wide circles Soviet readers mainly since 1957, when the International Peace Council decided to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth. A number of translations from Blake by Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak appeared in our periodicals, some of which (14 issues) were reprinted in volume III of his collected works (1959). Articles and books about the English poet appeared.

Blake's name was almost unknown to his English contemporaries. A native of London, an engraver by profession, he lived his life on the verge of poverty, earning his bread by completing regular orders that were delivered to him from time to time by his few friends and patrons. Blake's paintings were almost never exhibited during his lifetime, and when they were exhibited, they went unnoticed. Due to the impossibility of finding a publisher for his poetry books, he himself engraved their text and illustrations on copper using a special technique he invented for this purpose (“convex etching”). He sold the few copies he painted by hand for next to nothing to his friends and admirers; they are now a rare asset art museums and private collections and are worth their weight in gold. As a poet, Blake actually stood outside the literature of his time. When he died, he was buried at public expense in an unmarked mass grave. Now his bust is placed in Westminster Abbey next to the monuments of the greatest poets of England.

Blake's "discovery" occurred in the second half of the 19th century, and in the 20th century his work, which received universal recognition, rightfully occupied an outstanding place in the rich heritage of English poetry.

The first collector, publisher and sympathetic interpreter of Blake's work was the head of the English "Pre-Raphaelites" Dante Gabriel Rossetti, just as Blake was a poet and artist. Rossetti was lucky enough to acquire an extensive collection of Blake's unpublished manuscripts and engravings, with which the acquaintance with his work began. With the direct participation of Dante Gabriel and his younger brother, the critic William Maikel Rossetti, the first two-volume biography of Blake was published, a lengthy life of the “great stranger” written by Alexander Gilchrist (1863), which simultaneously represented the first publication of some of his poetic and artistic heritage. Following Rossetti, his student, the then young poet A.-C. Swinbury, who later became one of the founders of English symbolism, dedicated a book of rapture and reverence to Blake (1868). The cult of Blake was further developed among the English Symbolists. Blake has been declared the "precursor of symbolism." Accordingly, at present, the dominant direction of English and American criticism views Blake primarily as a mystic and symbolist.

From this point of view, Blake was approached by his first Russian connoisseurs, who belonged to the same literary camp.

Meanwhile, in fact, as modern advanced criticism in England and America has convincingly proven, the mystic and “spiritual seer” Blake was at the same time, in his social outlook, a humanist and philanthropist with broad democratic sympathies, a fiery denouncer social evil and injustice. Although Blake, like his late contemporaries - the English romantics, considered the creative imagination of the poet-artist (Imagination) to be the greatest human ability, his own poetry, generated by a huge gift of artistic imagination, was never “art for art’s sake”: it is full of deep moral and social pathos , has a peculiar social tendency, embodied, however, in lyrically rich images, and not in abstract didactic reasoning. Through the delicate poetic fabric of his “songs,” as well as through the mythological themes of his “prophetic books,” modern and deeply relevant social content shines through in an artistically sublimated form. Despite the fact that few people knew him during his lifetime, Blake did not at all look at himself as a poet for the few; on the contrary, he felt himself the bearer of a high mission addressed to all humanity. About this mission he wrote: “Every honest man is a prophet; he expresses his opinion on public and private affairs. He says: “If you do this, the result will be such and such.” He never says: “How would you no matter what they do, this and that will still happen.”

Blake's biography is not rich in outwardly remarkable events. He was born and lived all his life in London. His father was a small seller of haberdashery goods (a “stocker”), a poor man with a large family, a sectarian (“dissenter”), who was apparently keen on the preaching of the Swedish mystic Swedenborg, who settled in London. Among the broad democratic lower strata of the London petty bourgeoisie in the 18th century, the traditions of the left-wing “heretical” sects of the times of the English Revolution, which were in opposition to the dominant church, state and social system, at the same time mystical and revolutionary, were still alive. In their teachings, social utopias were embodied in biblical images that received mystical interpretation. Enlightenment rationalism and religious skepticism were seen as expressions of the “secular spirit” of the ruling classes.

Young Blake was brought up in this atmosphere, and it determined the uniqueness of his spiritual appearance as a mystic visionary and at the same time a fighter for social justice. Raised on the Bible and on the “prophetic” books that circulated in this environment, endowed with a vivid poetic imagination, the poet from childhood had “visions”, the reality of which he believed until the end of his life, earning himself the reputation of a madman and an eccentric. He did not receive any systematic education, but he read widely and randomly. From his childhood he was familiar with the writings of the mystics Swedenborg and Jacob Boehme, with Plato and the Neoplatonists (in Taylor's English translation), but also with the English philosophy of the Enlightenment, which he was prejudiced against; he read Shakespeare and especially Milton and in his youth was interested in the literature of the English “Gothic Revival” of the 18th century, the poetry of Ossian, Chatterton and English folk ballads; he knew Latin and Italian poets - Virgil, Ovid and Ariosto; As an adult, he learned Greek and Hebrew in order to read the Bible in the original, and at the end of his life, he learned Italian in order to better understand and illustrate Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

Blake's creative abilities manifested themselves very early. At the age of ten he began to study drawing; His first poems were written around this time. Four years later, at his own request, he was apprenticed to the engraver Bezayr, an experienced but mediocre master, with whom he worked for eight years as an apprentice. On behalf of his teacher and master, he made sketches of ancient Gothic paintings for him. tombstones Westminster Abbey and other London churches. “The Gothic form is a living form,” Blake later wrote. Gothic, Durer's engravings and Michelangelo's works were the artistic examples that determined the basis of Blake's original style as an engraver. This profession subsequently served as the main source of his existence. In addition to many small and random works, he completed large cycles of illustrations for the works of English poets of the 18th century - Jung's "Night Thoughts" and Blair's "Tomb", illustrated Virgil's eclogues, "The Book of Job" and Dante's "Divine Comedy". These orders were usually poorly paid. More than once, commercial publishers have deceived the gullible artist by commissioning a more fashionable professional to engrave his drawings or by selecting only a small part of them for reproduction. Original in concept and composition, extraordinary in expressiveness and power, Blake's artistic works were not noticed by his contemporaries and received recognition, like his poetry, only in modern times.

See the world in one grain of sand
And the whole cosmos is in a blade of forest grass,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And in a fleeting moment there is eternity...
William M Blake

“For forty years there was not a single day that I did not take up the copper board. Engraving is a craft that I studied; I should not have tried to live by any other labor. My heaven is brass, and my earth is iron." This is what the long-suffering William Blake wrote about himself at the beginning of the nineteenth century. One of the rooms served as a living room for him and Kate, the other as a bedroom, kitchen, office and workshop. There were almost no things. The wife wore a simple, stale dress. “Due to endless adversity, she has long lost her former beauty, except for that which gave her love and speaking eyes, sparkling and black.”

BookJob. WilliamBlake

Blake William (28.11.1757-12.08.1827), English painter, engraver, poet. He studied the art of painting and engraving in London with the engraver J. Bezaire (from 1771), attended the Academy of Arts (1778), and was influenced by J. Flaxman. In the work of Blake, who illustrated his own poems with watercolors and engravings (“Songs of Ignorance”, 1789; “Songs of Knowledge”, 1794; “The Book of Job”, 1818-1825; “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, 1825-1827 and other works), the trends of romanticism in English art of the late 18th - first quarter of the 19th centuries were clearly reflected: the master’s attraction to visionary fiction, allegorism and mystical symbolism, appeal to a bold, almost arbitrary play of lines, and sharp compositional solutions.

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BLAKE William The Lovers Whirlwind. Francesca Da Rimini And Paolo...

Blake rejects traditional composition and perspective; the exquisite linear forms of the painter’s works evoke an idea of ​​the other world. The style itself reflects the artist’s unique mystical vision of the world, in which reality and imagination merge together.

An engraver and book illustrator by profession, Blake expressed his talent in poetry and in strikingly powerful mystical and symbolic paintings. The spiritual world seemed to William Blake to be more important than the material world, and a true artist was seen by him as a prophet endowed with the divine gift of insight into the essence of things. Blake lived in poverty and died unrecognized on August 12, 1827. Currently, William Blake is rightfully considered one of the great masters of English fine art and literature, one of the most brilliant and original painters of his time.

William Blake. Illustration for Dante's "Divine Comedy". "Hell"

William Blake. Beatrice talks to Dante from her chariot

William Blake. Illustration for Dante's "Divine Comedy". "Hell"

William Blake (eng. William Blake; November 28, 1757, London - August 12, 1827, London) - English poet and artist, mystic and visionary.

Now, almost two hundred years later, it has become obvious that the works of William Blake were not intended for his contemporaries. All his life he created, turning to his descendants, and apparently he himself was aware of this. Seeing the complete indifference of his contemporaries brought him considerable despair. “My works are better known in heaven than on earth,” - so he said, and continued to create, hoping for due respect and attention from his descendants. Today, taking a general look at his work, we can understand how much he was ahead of his generation, perhaps by a century, and perhaps more. Two centuries have passed since his life, one might say, two centuries of his oblivion, and only today William Blake becomes a real proper idol. For example, in Great Britain, his poem “Jerusalem” became almost the second national anthem, and in America, an exhibition of his paintings and engravings, held in 2001 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was a great success. Today, Blake's books are published in huge numbers in many countries, including Russia, and they do not languish on the shelves. The number of translations is growing.

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Blake phenomenon

What attracts people about Blake is not only his creativity, but also his mysterious personality. He is attracted by his strange and extraordinary creative destiny. main feature his creative life was that Blake was neither a special poet, nor a special artist, nor a special philosopher. Moreover, his literary works very often run counter to the norms of the literary English language, his painting often contradicts generally accepted canons, and his philosophy is not always consistent and logical. However, if we take all his works together, they represent something grandiose, something bewitching and majestic. In general, his creative works represent a well-defined completeness; they are the result of a long, stubborn and deep search for a creative, talented soul. Blake can be appreciated primarily for the fact that he tried to penetrate many of the laws of this universe, to understand and teach spirituality itself.

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He did this by writing literary works (in poetry and prose), supplementing them with numerous illustrations for better assimilation. Such a literary device, combining philosophy, literature and painting, has never been seen before. He is special, and even after William Blake, few were capable of such creative asceticism (in particular, Kahlil Gibran is called a follower of William Blake’s techniques). However, it remains to be recognized that it is precisely this extraordinary method of creative self-expression that suits William Blake most effectively in order to express his prophetic ideas, to express his enlightened view of the purity of spirituality.

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Blake's works show us how deep and subtle the author's inner world was. It was completely different from the one in which the others live, which makes it clear what Blake himself was like, and what his creative mission. We clearly realize that a person who achieved such a level of self-expression was able to go beyond the usual conventional boundaries of human awareness, beyond the work of the senses and the mind. Only that person who is completely absorbed in the desire for spirituality, for its laws, for its existence is capable of such liberation from conventions and in-depth perception of reality. This is the level of William Blake's worldview. This raises a completely logical question: wasn’t he himself endowed with something special that allowed him to see the world with different eyes - more complex and diverse, wasn’t he at a higher level of human awareness, in other words, didn’t he really have a spiritual self-realization, to be able to create like that, to let the world around you pass through you like that?

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The purity of William Blake's spirituality, free from the shackles of rationalism and dry dogma, was not only his creative method, but also in his way of thinking, his state, his inner essence. He was not a poet “for everyone” and, apparently, did not strive for this. He wrote for those who, like himself, were concerned with themes of spirituality. He believed in the divine destiny of the poet, in the fact that inspiration was given from above, he believed in his mission as a Prophet, called to open people's "eyes turned inward." Be that as it may, William Blake walked it to the end to light the way for those who would follow him. The result of his path was his works as guiding beacons for seekers who want to rise from inert and blind ideas, beliefs and conventions to the heights of Spirituality.

During his life, William Blake managed to create a huge number of works in the field of painting and literature. Moreover, it should be noted that, unlike other artists of brush and word, his creative skills did not decline with age, but rather improved. By the end of his life, truly masterpieces of his work came out of his pen and brush, for example, the work “Lacoon” or illustrations for Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, where William Blake showed both the depth of literary thought and ease in mastering the brush, which was not observed in him previously.

In the history of world literature, William Blake is considered to be the first English romantic poet. What is striking is the unprecedented coloring of the author’s moods, his unpredictability and inability to understand and accommodate in us everything that he expressed. Sometimes rebellious moods slip through him, and then they turn into religious mysticism. His lyrical motifs are combined with figurative mythology and symbolism. His innocent, joyful perception of the world subsequently turns into a kind of mysticism of the collision of the forces of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell. His mythological system of complex symbolic images and allegories remained misunderstood for a long time and was considered incapable of any deciphering. Only now are scientists beginning to get closer to the solution.

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Blake's Confession

It is believed that 1863 marked the beginning of the recognition of William Blake and the growth of interest in him. At this time, Alexander Gilchrist published a biography, The Life of Blake. Soon after, Blake's never-before-published early poems were published, establishing him as a lyric romantic poet. Blake's engravings, also previously unknown, were subsequently discovered and greatly influenced the development of the so-called Art Nouveau style. In 1893, Yeats, together with Ellis, published a three-volume, at that time the most complete edition of Blake's works, accompanying it short biography poet. However, real interest in Blake's work and personality began in the twentieth century.

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In 1966 it was published " Complete collection works of William Blake." Blake revealed himself to the world not only as an apocalyptic seer, as he was usually considered, but also as the author of witty epigrams and aphorisms, as an original thinker and critic, far ahead of his orthodox, ossified age.

As for Russia and countries former USSR, the name of William Blake became known to the general public only in 1957, after the whole world celebrated the bicentenary of his birth. His works then began to appear both in periodicals and in separate collections. Blake was published relatively rarely, and much of his work was never translated into Russian. One can only hope that over time the entire legacy of his work will be translated.

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WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake (1757-1827)

To the Evening Star

Thou fair-hair"d angel of the evening,
Now, while the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let your west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with your glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And the lion glares thro" the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover"d with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence.

Evening star.

O evening, golden-haired angel,
Now that the sun has set on the mountains,
Light the lantern of love; radiant crown
Putting it on, smile at us for our evening sleep!
And, pushing aside the blue curtains of the sky,
Scatter the silver dew in everyone
The flower that sleepily closes its eyes.
Let the breeze slumber on the lake;
Exude silence with the radiance of your gaze,
Wrap the evening in silver. After all, soon
You will leave; the wild wolf howls
And the lion will look through the thicket of the forest:
The fleece is covered with holy dew;
Protect him with your influence.

Love's Secret. William Blake.

Never seek to tell your love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
Ah! She did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveler came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.

The secret of love. Translation by Marshak.

Can't say it in words
All the love for your beloved.
The wind moves, gliding,
Quiet and invisible.

I said, I said everything
What was hidden in the soul.
Oh, my love is in tears,
She left in fear.

And a moment later
A traveler walking by
Quietly, insinuatingly, jokingly
He took possession of his beloved.

The secret of love. Translated by Savin.

About love only between the lines,
After all, love cannot be expressed;
A light breeze blows
Unnoticed and without words.

I told her about love
I opened my heart to the bottom,
Cold, trembling, afraid -
She left anyway!

Yes, my love is gone.
A man walking by
Unnoticed and without words,
Just sighing and taking him away forever.

In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant depths or skies
Burnt the fire of thin eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of your heart?
And when your heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What's the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was your brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasps
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Tiger! Tiger! Unearthly
A reflection in the thicket of darkness at night,
Who is your immortal blacksmith?
Creator of terrible beauty?

In the abysses, in the heights, did it light up
That flash of stinging eyes?
Who soared there on wings?
Who held the fire in their hands?

What kind of master made a heart
From tight and powerful veins?
And I heard between the hands
Did his pulse suddenly start beating?

What kind of hammer? Whose chains?
Who baked your brain in the oven?
Who forged it? Squeezed in a vice
Terrible body parts?

And when from starry thunderstorms
The sky could not hold back its tears,
Did he smile at the beast?
Was the Lamb created by him?

Tiger! Tiger! Unearthly
A reflection in the thicket of darkness at night,
Who is your immortal blacksmith?
Creator of terrible beauty?

Silent, Silent Night

1Silent, silent Night
2Quench the holy light
3Of thy torches bright.

4For possess"d of Day
5Thousand spirits stray
6That sweet joys betray.

7Why should joys be sweet
8Used with deceit
9Nor with sorrows meet?

10But an honest joy
11Does itself destroy
12For a harlot coy.

Hush, Night, be silent.

Hush, Night, be silent,
Dim the rays
Your own lights.

Spirits of darkness scurry about
Soon the day will be crucified,
Joy will be betrayed.

Is joy bright?
If evil is in the hands,
Has the sadness gone?

Little world of joy
It’s not rock that will break
And the soul is a vice.

William Blake (1757-1827)
I Heard an Angel

1I heard an Angel singing
2When the day was springing,
3"Mercy, Pity, Peace
4Is the world's release."

5Thus he sung all day
6Over the new town hay,
7Till the sun went down
8And haycocks looked brown.

9I heard a Devil curse
10Over the heath and the furze,
11"Mercy could be no more,
12If there was nobody poor,

13And pity no more could be,
14If everyone were as happy as we."
15At his curse the sun went down,
16And the heavens gave a frown.

17Down pour"d the heavy rain
18Over the new reap"d grain...
19And Miseries" increase
20Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.

The angel sang.

On a clear spring day
The beautiful angel sang:
"Mercy, Peace, Goodness -
Joy to the whole earth."

Sang all spring day
Over a haystack
And when the sun went down,
A shadow fell on the hay.

In heather and gorse
The two-horned devil grumbled:
"If everyone is rich,
No mercy needed.

Thankfully it's useless
If everyone is wonderful."
The sun has eclipsed here,
The sky became dark.

It rained heavily
For a bountiful harvest:
The cloud has turned
In Goodness, Peace, Mercy.

Jerusalem: England! awake! awake! awake!
(excerpt)

1England! awake! awake! awake!
2 Jerusalem your Sister calls!
3Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death
4 And close her from thy ancient walls?

5Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
6 Gently upon their bosoms move:
7Thy gates beheld sweet Zion's ways:
8 Then there was a time of joy and love.

9And now the time returns again:
10 Our souls exult, and London's towers
11Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
12 In England's green and pleasant bowers.

O England! hear! hear!
(excerpt)

O England! Hear! Hear!
Jerusalem is calling!
Why are you sleeping like death?
And don't you want to meet him?

His sacred heel
I walked on your hills;
Zion entered your gates
In days of fun and love.

And again that time comes:
Our spirit flies over the towers
And the Lamb is coming to England
Between hearths and ancient slabs.

Midge.

Oh, my little midge,
Why did I slam you?

And I, a passerby,
And any -
We are so similar
Everything is with you!

Like you, we live
Buzz bye
It won't kill us
Fate's hand.

If in thought there is life
And spirit and power,
And life without thought -
Decay and night

Am I alive?
Am I not living?
I'm a midge after all
Happy.

:::::.
William Blake

Oh, poor rose!
Invisible worm
Abandoned by the wind
Starless nights
I found you scarlet
Full of strength
And dark passion
Extinguished forever.
:::..

Song: Memory, hither come

1Memory, hither come,
2 And tune your merry notes;
3And, while upon the wind
4 Your music floats,

5I"ll pore upon the stream
6 Where sighing lovers dream,
7And fish for fancies as they pass
8 Within the watery glass.

9I"ll drink of the clear stream,
10 And hear the linnet's song;
11And there I"ll lie and dream
12 The day along:

13And, when night comes, I"ll go
14 To places fit for women,
15Walking along the darken"d valley
16 With silent Melancholy.

Song: Memory, come to me.

Memory, come to me
Bring on the days of fun;
And while on the wave
Music of yesteryear

I'll stand by the river
Where love lives
Where are the schools of magical fish -
On the surface of glassy waters.

I'll drink clean water,
I’ll listen to the birds ringing;
And I'll dive into dreams
For all day:

And at night I'll go far away,
Where there is sadness
Wandering along the shady alleys,
Silently, it’s sweeter to be sad.

PS. Written by Blake at age 14.

New Jerusalem. William Blake.

The New Jerusalem
by: William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem built here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my charm of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

New Jerusalem.

And those feet in those days
Did they touch England's soil?
And the Lamb of God was visible
In the rich pastures far away?

And the rays of God's face
Did the hills fall on ours?
And bright Jerusalem
Arose in the midst of Satanic Darkness?

O give me my golden bow!
The arrows of desires burn me!
Give me the sword! Shine a ray of sunshine!
Give me the chariot from the fire!

My struggle will not give up my thoughts,
The hand is a weapon, bye
Jerusalem will not rise
In my country for all ages!

William Blake (1757-1827)
The Gray Monk
(excerpt)

1"I die, I die!" the Mother said,
2"My children die for lack of bread.
3What more has the merciless Tyrant said?"
4The Monk sat down on the stony bed.

5The blood red wound from the Gray Monk's side,
6His hands and feet were wounded wide,
7His body bend, his arms and knees
8Like to the roots of ancient trees.

9His eye was dry; no tears could flow:
10A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
11He trembled and shudder"d upon the bed;
12At length with a feeble cry he said:

13"When God commanded this hand to write
14In the studious hours of deep midnight,
15He told me the writing I wrote should prove
16The bane of all that on Earth I lov"d.

17My Brother starv"d between two walls,
18His Children"s cry my soul appalls;
19I mock"d at the rack and griding chain,
20My bent body mocks their torturing pain.

21Thy father drew his sword in the North,
22With his thousands strong he marched forth;
23Thy Brother has arm"d himself in steel
24To avenge the wrongs thy Children feel.

25But vain the Sword and vain the Bow,
26They never can work War"s overthrow.
27The Hermit's prayer and the Widow's tear
28Alone can free the World from fear.

29For a Tear is an intellectual thing,
30And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
31And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woe
32Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.

33The hand of Vengeance found the bed
34To which the Purple Tyrant fled;
35The iron hand crush"d the Tyrant"s head
36And became a Tyrant in his stead."

Gloomy Monk (excerpt).

“I’ll die, I’ll die!” said the mother,
“Without bread, children will die.
The tyrant's anger is our lot."
The monk sat down on a bed of stone.

His side was soaked with blood
And blood flowed from my arms and legs,
He was both wiry and clumsy,
Like the roots of thick oak forests.

He didn't shed a drop of tears,
Only a prolonged groan shook my chest.
He shuddered, trembled more violently
And, quietly crying out, he said to her:

"Lord, leading my hand
In the dead of night with your line
Ordained, inexorably:
Whom I love - woe to them.

My brother was killed by starvation,
His children are such a pitiful sight;
I'm not afraid of torture, I'm not afraid of chains
And the torment of the body is funny to me.

Your father took your regiment with him,
In the north he entered into battle;
Your brother, having dressed himself in armor,
He avenges your children like a lion.

But arrows or sword are in vain,
Wars cannot be stopped by weapons.
Saints' prayer, widow's cry -
This is fear, the true executioner.

In a human tear there are rays of the soul,
In a sigh - angels' swords.
The groaning of the most bitter torment -
The arrow that the Lord's bow sends.

Wherever the Tyrant seeks shelter,
Revenge and judgment will overtake him.
The Tyrant will die from terrible wounds
And a new Tyrant will appear.

William Blake (1757-1827)
Ah! Sun-flower

1Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,
2Who countest the steps of the Sun,
3Seeking after that sweet golden climate
4Where the traveler's journey is done:

5Where the Youth pined away with desire,
6And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
7Arise from their graves, and aspire
8Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Oh, sunflower!

Oh, sunflower! time friend,
The steps of the sun are tired singer,
Your gaze looks beyond the circle of the sun,
To where all wanderings end.

Where are the Young Men, tormented by sensual fetters,
And the Maidens, dressed in a shroud of snow,
From the dark graves they rise and walk,
Where the Sunflower's call takes them.

William Blake.

Song: How sweet I roam"d from field to field

1How sweet I roam"d from field to field,
2 And tasted all the summer's pride,
3"Till I the prince of love beheld,
4 Who in the sunny beams did glide!

5He shew"d me lilies for my hair,
6 And blushing roses for my brow;
7He led me through his gardens fair,
8 Where all his golden pleasures grow.

9With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
10 And Ph?bus fir"d my vocal rage;
11He caught me in his silken net,
12 And shut me in his golden cage.

13He loves to sit and hear me sing,
14 Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
15Then stretches out my golden wing,
16 And mocks my loss of liberty.

Song: I wandered in the summer, as if in a dream.

I wandered around in the summer, as if in a dream,
Bathing in grasses and streams,
And the prince of love appeared to me,
Sparkling in the sun!

He told me: “I will give you lilies,
I will decorate my forehead with roses";
He took me around the gardens,
Where everything shone and bloomed.

May has bound my wings with dew,
Phoebus gave me a voice to sing;
Caught in a silky net
And locked him in a golden cage.

He asks for love songs
Passionate about games and laughter,
And, touching my wings,
He teases me with freedom.

P.S Written by Blake at 14 years old.

The Clod and the Pebble

1"Love seeketh not itself to please,
2Nor for itself hat any care,
3But for another gives its ease,
4And builds a Heaven in Hell"s despair."

5So sung a little Clod of Clay
6Trodden with the cattle's feet,
7But a Pebble of the brook
8Warbled out these meters meet:

9"Love seeketh only self to please,
10To bind another to its delight,
11Joys in another"s loss of ease,
12And builds a Hell in Heaven"s despite."

Clay and stone.

Love doesn't need profit
And not being in herself is her joy,
She gives life to others,
And builds Heaven in the torment of Hell.

So the lump of clay sang, barely audible,
Trampled by a blind hoof,
But a stone from a stream in a rhyme
He answered unforgotten.

Love only needs benefits,
The captivity of another is her need,
Her freedom and she
He will build Hell in the palace of Heaven.

Song: My silks and fine array

1My silks and fine array,
2 My smiles and languish"d air,
3By love are driv"n away;
4 And mournful lean Despair
5Brings me yew to deck my grave:
6 Such end true lovers have.

7His face is fair as heav"n,
8 When springing buds unfold;
9O why to him was"t giv"n,
10 Whose heart is wintry cold?
11His breast is love"s all worship"d tomb,
12Where all love's pilgrims come.

13Bring me an ax and spade,
14 Bring me a winding sheet;
15When I grave have made,
16 Let winds and tempests beat:
17Then down I"ll lie, as cold as clay,
18True love doth pass away!

Song: Outfit, my silks.

Outfit, my silks,
Smile, languid look,
They faded without love;
Melancholy, sadness poison
The arrival of death is preparing:
The outcome of passionate love.

Like a god, handsome in face,
When spring blooms;
Oh, what's the heart in it
Hasn't it turned to ice?
Love's grave is this breast,
For whom there is only a path to love.

Oh give me the shroud
Shovel with axe;
How will I lie in the ground,
Strike lightning and thunder:
I am a lump of clay in the damp earth,
Love has gone with me!

The Divine Image

1To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
2All pray in their distress;
3And to these virtues of delight
4Return their gratitude.

5For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
6Is God, our father dear,
7And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
8Is Man, his child and care.

9For Mercy has a human heart,
10Pity a human face,
11And Love, the human form divine,
12And Peace, the human dress.

13Then every man, of every climate,
14That prays in his distress,
15Prays to the human form divine,
16Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

17And all must love the human form,
18In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
19Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
20There God is dwelling too.

Divine image.

Love and peace on earth
They all offer prayers;
For these lights in the darkness
We thank fate.

There is God - our own father,
Love and pity, mercy, peace
He has an earthly son.

My son has pity in his heart,
And Kindness and Light,
And there is Love, like God's message,
And Peace is the soul's covenant.

And a man, praying in trouble,
When he is small and sire,
Only with God does the connection return:
Love, Goodness and Peace.

And there is God's beauty in him,
Be it of any era;
Where is Peace, Love and Kindness -
God dwells there.

The Book of Urizen
(excerpt)

CHAPTER I
1

1Lo, a shadow of horror is risen
2In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific,
3Self-clos"d, all-repelling: what demon
4Hath form"d this abominable void,
5This soul-shudd"ring vacuum? Some said
6"It is Urizen." But unknown, abstracted,
7Brooding, secret, the dark power hid.

8Times on times he divided and measure"d
9Space by space in his nine darkness,
10Unseen, unknown; changes appear"d
11Like desolate mountains, rifted furious
12By the black winds of perturbation.

13For he strove in battles dire,
14In unseen conflicts with shapes
15Bred from his forsaken wilderness
16Of beast, bird, fish, serpent and element,
17Combustion, blast, vapor and cloud.

18Dark, revolving in silent activity:
19Unseen in tormenting passions:
20An activity unknown and horrible,
21A self-contemplating shadow,
22In enormous labors occupied.

23But Eternals beheld his vast forests;
24Age on ages he lay, clos"d, unknown,
25Brooding shut in the deep; all avoid
26The petrific, abominable chaos.

27His cold horrors silent, dark Urizen
28Prepar"d; his ten thousands of thunders,
29Rang"d in glow"d array, stretch out across
30The dread world; and the rolling of wheels,
31As of swelling seas, sound in his clouds,
32In his hills of stor"d snows, in his mountains
33Of hail and ice; voices of terror
34Are heard, like thunders of autumn
35When the cloud blazes over the harvests.

Urizen (excerpt).

Look, a terrible shadow is rising
In the Universe! Unknown, unfruitful,
Secretive, repulsive: what a spirit
Created this vile emptiness,
This soul-shaking vacuum? They say:
"Urizen." But unknown, abstract,
Painful, secret, dark force it's hidden from us.

From time to time he divided and measured
Countless spaces in their ninefold darkness,
Invisible, unknown; changes occurred
Like desert mountains that shook
Furious, dark whirlwinds of disturbance.

For he fought hard battles,
Entered into invisible conflicts with forms,
Born from his desert wildness
Animals, birds, fish, snakes and elements,
Combustion processes, explosions, vapors and clouds.

Dark, silent and active,
Torn apart by tormenting passions,
Events unknown and terrible,
Self-contemplating shadow
Busy with huge accomplishments.

But Eternity gazed upon his vast estates;
From time to time he rested, withdrawn, unknown,
Generating twilight in the depths; aside
From frozen, terrible chaos.
Dark Urizen was preparing his chilling, silent
Horror; his ten thousand lightnings,
Lined up in gloomy order, they prostrate
Over the trembling world; clang and rumble
The crowded swells sounded in his clouds,
In the hills of stored snow and in the mountains
Ice and hail; terrible voices
Were heard like autumn thunders,
When the clouds sparkle with lightning over the harvest.

William Blake (1757-1827)

Auguries of Innocence

1To see a world in a grain of sand
2And a heaven in a wild flower,
3Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
4And eternity in an hour.

5A robin redbreast in a cage
6Puts all Heaven in a rage.
7A dove house fill"d with doves and pigeons
8Shudders Hell thro" all its regions.
9A dog starv"d at his master"s gate
10Predicts the ruin of the state.
11A horse misus"d upon the road
12Calls to Heaven for human blood.
13Each outcry of the hunted hare
14A fiber from the brain does tear.
15A skylark wounded in the wing,
16A Cherubim does cease to sing.
17The game * clipp"d and arm"d for fight
18Does the rising Sun affright.
19Every wolf"s and lion"s howl
20Raises from Hell a human soul.

89He who respects the infant's faith
90Triumphs over Hell and Death.
91The child's toys and the old man's reasons
92Are the fruits of the two seasons.
93The questioner, who sits so sly,
94Shall never know how to reply.
95He who replies to words of doubt
96Doth put the light of Knowledge out.
97The strongest poison ever known
98Came from Caesar's laurel crown,
99Nought can deform the human race
100Like to the armour's iron brace.
101When gold and gems adorn the plow
102To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
103A riddle or the cricket's cry
104Is to doubt a fit reply.
105The emmet"s inch and eagle"s mile
106Make lame Philosophy to smile.
107He who doubts from what he sees
108Will ne"er believe, do what you please.
109If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
110They"d immediately go out.
111To be in a passion you good may do,
112But no good if a passion is in you.
113The whore and gambler, by the state
114Licens"d, build that nation"s fate.
115The harlot's cry from street to street,
116Shall weave Old England's winding sheet.
117The winner"s shout, the loser"s curse,
118Dance before dead England"s hear.
119Every night and every morning
120Some to misery are born.
121Every morning and every night
122Some are born to sweet delight.
123Some are born to sweet delight,
124Some are born to endless night.
125We are led to believe a lie
126When we see not thro" the eye
127Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
128When the Soul slept in beams of light.
129God appears and God is light
130To those poor souls who dwell in night,
131But does a human form display
132To those who dwell in realms of day.

1.See the sky in a wildflower
2. In a small grain of sand there is infinity,
3. Hold the whole world in your hand
4.And fit eternity into a moment.

5. A song thrush caught in a net
6.Gives rise to the wrath of the Heavenly Stars.
7. Captive pigeon in a tight cage
8.Hell is shaking everywhere.
9.Hungry and homeless dog -
10.The country is a harbinger of storms and thunderstorms.
11. And the horse, tortured by lashes,
12.Broadcasts blood and flame to people.
13. Killed hare on the run,
14.Vessels in someone's brain are vomiting.
15. Is the bird wounded in the wing -
16.And the angel in the sky will shed tears.
17. Rooster, beaten to smithereens,
18. The Sun causes fear.
19. Will a lion or a wolf begin to moan -
20.And the human spirit will rise in Hell.

89.Who spares a child’s faith -
90.That Hell with Death will win.
91. The game of a baby, the thoughts of an old man -
92.Spring and autumn messengers.
93. A timid person in matters
94. The answer will never be found.
95.Who answers doubts -
96. Sheds light on knowledge and skills.

97. There is no stronger poison yet,
98.Than the poison of the laurel wreath.
99. All successes will turn to dust,
100.How the armor became rusty.
101. Decorate the plow with pearls -
102. Envy will suddenly surrender to art.
103.Cicadas sound in the moonlight -
104. Doubt about the correct answer.
105.Step of an ant, flight of an eagle
106. Lame knowledge will not understand.
107.Who does not believe in anything boldly -
108.Forget about him and do the job.
109. If the light were mired in doubts,
110.It would have gone out a long time ago.
111. It’s wonderful to be a guest of passion,
112.But being in her captivity is terrible.
113.When scams and fornication bloom,
114.They forge the country’s destiny.
115.The screams of a whore through the alleys
116.Spirits from ancient life are called.
117.Are you lucky, poor fellow - sing
118.At the grave of England's native.
119. Day or night he gives birth,
120.Whom only happiness delights.
121. Night or day will give birth to the world
122.And unlucky for troubles.
123.Who is born into the world only for joy,
124.And who is for all the torments of hell.
125. Lies are attractive to us,
126. If we do not look through the eye,
127. That night I threw off the veil,
128.When the soul was still dozing.
129.God is light, its rays
130. Burning for those wandering in the night.
131. There is a human face
132.For those who abid in the light.

William Blake (William Blake) English poet, artist, philosopher. Born November 28, 1757 in London.

Biography of William Blake

William Blake was the second child in large family knitwear dealer. My father's shop was on the first floor of the house where they lived.

He received his primary education from his mother, who taught him to write and read, and also managed to instill a love of literature. From childhood, William was instilled with a love for the works of the Renaissance, which he carried throughout his life.

His artistic abilities manifested themselves early and at the age of 10 his parents sent him to art school. And then art school– was hired as an apprentice in an engraving shop (1772).

By the age of twenty-one he had become a professional engraver, having spent seven years studying. During this period, Blake developed a keen interest in poetry. Later, the doors of the Royal Academy of Arts opened before William (1778), which he never managed to complete. Blake regarded this failure as an impetus for independent activity, and he began to make a living by making book engravings based on drawings by other artists.

Blake's work

In 1784, William Blake opened his own engraving shop. At that time in his life, he discovered the technology of “illuminated”, “decorative” printing - a new method of engraving for that time. Subsequently, he will decorate his poems with drawings made precisely in this technique.

In 1789, Blake completed work on the cycle of poems “Songs of Innocence,” which reflected his attraction to the divine theme. A year later, the book “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” appears from his pen. And in 1793, five books by Blake were published at once: “Visions of the Daughters of Albion”, “America”, “Europe”, “The Gates of Paradise” and “The Book of Urizen”. Somewhat later, “Songs of Experience” appeared. This creative period of William Blake is often called “rebellious.” Having passed it, he will no longer deviate from religious dogma and beliefs in God. Disputes with the Almighty will remain only on the pages of his early works.

By the end of the 18th century, Blake's style was finally formed and became recognizable. His works, however, never find recognition among his contemporaries. Blake’s traditional education did not impose established canons and forms in art; perhaps this is where one should look for the origins of his creative freedom. Ignoring established foundations and using approaches in his works that run counter to established tradition determined Blake’s rejection by his contemporaries.

He often said to himself: “I am better known for my works in Heaven than on earth.” Despite this circumstance, William Blake did not give in to the temptation to quit writing. He continued to follow his path in art. Mozart bequeathed: “Music, even in the most terrible dramatic situations, must remain music”...Blake never deviated from this commandment of the Artist in his work, although not so close to music. Since 1804, Blake has been working on engraving his poems. From now on, he illustrates all of his works. In 1822, Blake created a series of watercolor works illustrating the poem “Paradise Lost” by John Milton. The splendor of the work he did will only be appreciated years later.

Later he began illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy. This job will be Blake's last. He will not be destined to complete it. However, the images that have reached descendants amaze with the perfection of technique and purity of thought. Many call them the peak of Blake's creativity.

William Blake's earthly journey ended in 1827. He was buried like Mozart once was: in a common, poor man's grave. And the place of his burial was lost forever by the dictates of time.

There will be a lot of controversy about Blake's work, it will be said about his works that they are inspired by the devil, many of them will serve as food for an almost omnivorous fire... But, nevertheless, the name of Blake will gain immortality on an August day in 1827.

William Blake's legacy would, over time, be rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites. And it, combining an unbridled flight of creative imagination, innovative ideas, subtle symbolism, reminiscences of the great classics, will influence the art of the 19th-20th centuries. The work of Blake, who worked for poetry in life, inspired more than one generation of the art world. It remains a source of inspiration in our time, far from romanticism.

What attracts people about Blake is not only his creativity, but also his mysterious personality. He is attracted by his strange and extraordinary creative destiny. The main feature of his creative life was that Blake was neither a special poet, nor a special artist, nor a special philosopher. Moreover, his literary works very often run counter to the norms of the literary English language, his painting often contradicts generally accepted canons, and his philosophy is not always consistent and logical.

However, if we take all his works together, they represent something grandiose, something bewitching and majestic. Blake can be appreciated primarily for the fact that he tried to penetrate many of the laws of this universe, to understand and teach spirituality itself.

Antaeus, lowering Dante and Virgil into the final circle of Hell Hecate. Night of Joy Enitharmon Joyful Day or Dance of Albion

He did this by writing literary works (in poetry and prose), supplementing them with numerous illustrations for better assimilation. Such a literary device, combining philosophy, literature and painting, has never been seen before.

He is special, and even after William Blake, few were capable of such creative asceticism (in particular, Kahlil Gibran is called a follower of William Blake’s techniques).

However, it remains to be recognized that it is precisely this extraordinary method of creative self-expression that suits William Blake most effectively in order to express his prophetic ideas, to express his enlightened view of the purity of spirituality.

Blake's works show us how deep and subtle the author's inner world was. We clearly realize that a person who achieved such a level of self-expression was able to go beyond the usual conventional boundaries of human awareness, beyond the work of the senses and the mind. Only that person who is completely absorbed in the desire for spirituality, for its laws, for its existence is capable of such liberation from conventions and in-depth perception of reality. This is the level of William Blake's worldview.

This raises a completely logical question: wasn’t he himself endowed with something special that allowed him to see the world with different eyes - more complex and diverse, wasn’t he at a higher level of human awareness, in other words, didn’t he really have a spiritual self-realization, to be able to create like that, to let the world around you pass through you like that?

He was not a poet “for everyone” and, apparently, did not strive for this. He wrote for those who, like himself, were concerned with themes of spirituality.

He believed in the divine destiny of the poet, in the fact that inspiration was given from above, he believed in his mission as a Prophet, called to open people's “eyes turned inward.” Be that as it may, William Blake walked it to the end to light the way for those who would follow him. The result of his path was his works as guiding beacons for seekers who want to rise from inert and blind ideas, beliefs and conventions to the heights of Spirituality.

Bibliography

• Donald Ault (1974). Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton. University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-03225-6.
• Jacob Bronowski (1972). William Blake and the Age of Revolution. Routledge and K. Paul. ISBN 0-7100-7277-5 (hardcover) ISBN 0-7100-7278-3 (pbk.)
• Jacob Bronowski (1967). William Blake, 1757-1827; a man without a mask. Haskell House Publishers.
• G.K. Chesterton (1920s). William Blake. House of Stratus ISBN 0-7551-0032-8.
• S. Foster Damon (1979). A Blake Dictionary. Shambhala. ISBN 0-394-73688-5.
• Northrop Frye (1947). Fearful Symmetry. Princeton Univ Press. ISBN 0-691-06165-3.
• Peter Ackroyd (1995). Blake. Sinclair-Stevenson. ISBN 1-85619-278-4.
• E.P. Thompson (1993). Witness against the Beast. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22515-9.
• Victor N. Paananens (1996). William Blake. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7053-4.
• George Anthony Rosso Jr. (1993). Blake's Prophetic Workshop: A Study of The Four Zoas. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8387-5240-3.
• G.E. Bentley Jr. (2001). The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08939-2.
• David V. Erdman (1977). Blake: Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-486-26719-9.
• James King (1991). William Blake: His Life. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-07572-3.
• W.J.T. Mitchell (1978). Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-691-01402-7.
• Peter Marshall (1988). William Blake: Visionary Anarchist ISBN 0-900384-77-8
• Dr. Malkin, A Father's Memories of his Child, (1806)
• Alexander Gilchrist, Life and Works of William Blake, (1863, second edition, London, 1880)
• Algernon Swinburne, William Blake: A Critical Essay, (London, 1868)
• W. M. Rosetti (editor), Poetical Works of William Blake, (London, 1874)
• Basil de Selincourt, William Blake, (London, 1909)
• G. B. Russell, Engravings of William Blake, (1912)
• B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil, (1903), contains essays.
• Joseph Viscomi (1993). Blake and the Idea of ​​the Book, (Princeton UP). ISBN 0-691-06962-X.
• David Weir (2003). Brahma in the West: William Blake and the Oriental Rennaissance, (SUNY Press)
• Sheila A. Spector (2001). "Wonders Divine": the development of Blake's Kabbalistic myth, (Bucknell UP)
• Jason Whittaker (1999). William Blake and the Myths of Britain, (Macmillan)
• Irving Fiske (1951). "Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake." (Shaw Society)

William Blake(eng. William Blake; November 28, 1757, London - August 12, 1827, London) - English poet and artist, mystic. Biography

Blake was born on November 28, 1757 in London, in the Soho area, in the family of a shopkeeper. He was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. William attended school only until he was ten years old, learning there only to write and read, and was educated at home - he was taught by his mother. His parents were Protestants - dissenters from the Moravian Church and very religious people, so throughout his life the Bible had a strong influence on Blake's worldview. Throughout his life, she would remain his main source of inspiration.

Even as a child, Blake became interested in copying Greek scenes from drawings that his father acquired for him. The works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemsker and Albrecht Durer instilled in him a love of classical forms. Gradually this activity grew into a passion for painting. His parents, knowing the boy's hot temperament and regretting that he did not go to school, sent him to painting lessons. True, during these studies Blake studied only what was interesting to him. His early works show familiarity with the works of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser. Then he became interested in poetry.

In 1772, Blake was apprenticed to the engraver James Basir for 7 years. There is no evidence that there were any serious disagreements or conflicts between teacher and student during the training period. By the end of his studies, at 21, Blake had become a professional engraver.

In 1778, Blake entered the Royal Academy of Arts, where he showed himself to be an adherent of the classical style of the High Renaissance.

In 1782, Blake married Catherine Boucher, an uneducated but very sweet girl who fell in love with him at first sight. They lived together until Blake's death, and later Catherine assured that she was regularly visited by the spirit of her deceased husband. Katherine herself died in 1831. They had no children.

Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was published in 1783. Subsequently, the poet created several “illuminated manuscripts”, engraving his poems and drawings on a copper plate with his own hands.

In 1784, after surviving the death of his father, Blake opened a printing house with his brother Robert and began working with the publisher Joseph Johnson, who was known for his radical ideas. Johnson's house was a meeting place for many of the "dissidents" of the time. Here Blake met the poet William Wordsworth and became interested in the ideas of the French revolutionaries. In 1789, with the beginning French Revolution, his collection of poems “Songs of Innocence” appeared, and in 1794 - the collection “Songs of Experience”, poems from which were written already during the period of the Jacobin terror and the poet’s disappointment in the Revolution.

William Blake died on August 12, 1827, in the midst of his work on the illustrations for The Divine Comedy. His death was sudden and inexplicable.

Since 1965, the exact location of Blake's grave has been lost and forgotten, and the gravestone has been moved to a new location.

During his lifetime, Blake did not receive any fame outside a narrow circle of admirers, but was “discovered” after his death by the Pre-Raphaelites. He had a significant influence on Western culture of the 20th century. The song "Jerusalem" with lyrics by Blake is considered the unofficial anthem of Great Britain. The poet was discovered for the Russian reader by Samuil Marshak, who worked all his life on translations of his poems.

Training with an engraver

On August 4, 1772, Blake began a 7-year apprenticeship in the art of engraving with engraver James Besyer of Great Queen Street. By the end of this period, by the time By the time he turned 21, he was supposed to become a professional engraver. But there was not a single achievement during the training period that was not accompanied by a serious disagreement or conflict between them. However, Blake's biographer Peter Ackroyd notes that Blake would later add Basyer's name to his list of artistic rivals, but would soon cross him out. The reason for this was that Basyer's style of engraving was already considered old-fashioned at that time, and training his student in this way could not have the best effect on the skills he acquired in this work, as well as on future recognition. And Blake understood this.

In his third year of study, Basyer sent Blake to London to copy picturesque frescoes of Gothic churches (it is quite possible that this task was given to Blake in order to exacerbate the conflict between him and James Parker, another student of Basyer). The experiences gained while working at Westminster Abbey contributed to the formation of Blake's own artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of that time was decorated with military armor and equipment, images of funeral dirges, as well as numerous wax figures. Ackroyd notes that “the most powerful impressions were created by alternating bright colors, now appearing, now seeming to disappear.” Blake spent long evenings sketching the Abbey. One day he was interrupted by children from Westminster School, one of whom tortured Blake so much that he forcefully pushed him off the scaffold to the ground, where he fell with a terrible roar. Blake was able to see many more visions in the Abbey, such as a church procession with monks and priests, during which he imagined the singing of psalms and chorales.

Royal Academy

On 8 October 1779 Blake became a student at the Royal Academy at Old Somerset Knows near the Strand. Although there was no tuition required, Blake was required to purchase his own supplies and tools during his 6-year stay at the academy. Here he rebels against what he calls the "unfinished style of fashionable artists" such as Rubens, so beloved by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds. Time passed and Blake I simply hated Reynolds’ attitude to art in general and, in particular, to his search for the “single truth” and the “classical understanding of beauty.” Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that "the tendency to abstract vision of this or that subject, and to generalize and classify, is a triumph of the human mind"; Blake, in notes in the margins, noted that “to generalize everything, to “fit everything into one brush,” means to be an idiot; sharpening attention is what every feature deserves.” Blake also did not like Reynolds' apparent, feigned modesty, which he considered hypocrisy. Oil painting with brushes was fashionable at the time. Reynolds Blake preferred classical neatness and clarity that influenced early work works by Michelangelo and Raphael.

Gordon Riots

Blake's first biographer Alexander Gilchrist's account of an incident in June 1780 tells how, while passing Basyer's trading post on Great Queen Street, Blake was nearly knocked down by an angry mob heading to storm Newgate Prison in London. They attacked the prison gates with shovels and pickaxes, set the building on fire and released the prisoners. According to eyewitnesses, Blake was in the forefront of the crowd during the attack. Later, this uprising, being a reaction to a new parliamentary bill that lifted sanctions against Roman Catholicism, was called the Gordon Riots. They also provoked an unprecedented surge in the creation of a large number of laws and their introduction by the government of George III, as well as the creation of a guard public order, police.

Despite Gilchrist's insistence that Blake joined the crowd under compulsion, some biographers have argued that he either joined the crowd impulsively or supported the riot as a revolutionary act. A different opinion is held by Jerome McGann, who argues that since the riots were reactionary, they could only cause outrage in Blake.

Marriage and early career

In 1782, Blake met John Flaxman, who would become his patron, and Catherine Boucher, who would soon become his wife. At this time, Blake is recovering from a relationship that culminated in her refusal of a marriage proposal. He details this sad story to Catherine and her parents, after which he asks the girl: “Do you feel sorry for me?” When Katherine answers in the affirmative, he admits: "Then I love you." William Blake and Catherine Boucher, who was 5 years his junior, were married at St Mary's Church in Battersea. Being illiterate, Katherine put an “X” on her marriage certificate instead of a signature. The original of this document can be seen in the church, where a commemorative stained glass window was also installed between 1976-1982. Later, in addition to teaching Katherine to read and write, Blake also taught her the art of engraving. Throughout his life, he will understand how invaluable the help and support of this woman is to him. Among countless failures, Katherine will not let the flame of inspiration in her husband’s soul fade away and will also take part in the printing of his numerous illustrations.

Around this time, George Cumberland, one of the founders of the National Gallery, became an admirer of Blake's work. The publication of Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, dates back to 1783. After the death of his father, in 1784, William and his brother Robert opened a printing house and began working with the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. Johnson's house was a meeting place for the intelligentsia - some of the leading English dissidents of the time. Among them were theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley, philosopher Richard Price, artist John Henry Fuseli, feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and American revolutionary Thomas Paine. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had high hopes for the French and American Revolutions and wore the Phrygian cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France. In 1784, Blake also composed, but left unfinished, his manuscript “The Island in the Moon.”

Blake illustrated Mary Wollstonecraft's book True stories from real life." It is believed that they allegedly shared views on equality between the sexes and the institution of marriage, but there is still no indisputable evidence that they ever met. In “Visions of the Daughters of Albion,” published in 1793, Blake condemns the cruel absurdity of forced, forced abstinence, as well as loveless marriage, and defends the right of women to realize their abilities and capabilities.

Relief print

In 1788, at the age of 31, Blake began to experiment in the field of relief printing, a method that he would use to design his books of pamphlets and poems, for paintings, and of course, it would be the one he would use to create Blake's masterpiece - illustrations for the Bible. This method was applicable both for illustrating books and, of course, for books of illustrations with printed images and not containing text. To make an imprint of an image or a specific illustration and text, the desired material was applied to copper plates with a pen or brush using an acid-resistant solvent. The images could be placed right next to the text, in the manner of ancient illuminated manuscripts. Then the print was made a second time, but in acid, to emphasize the contours and cover untouched areas that were slightly blurred, after which the relief of the image became clearer.

This is simply a turning on its head of the classical method of imprinting, according to which acid is applied only to the contours, while intaglio, or intaglio, is simply made on the plate itself. The relief print, invented by Blake, later became an important commercial printing method. Before the pages imprinted with such plates were turned into a book volume, they were hand-painted with watercolors and then stitched. Blake used this type of printing to illustrate most of his famous works including Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Book of Tel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem.

Engravings

Despite the fact that Blake became famous precisely thanks to his relief printing technology, own work he often had to stick to the intaglio method, a standard engraving method in the 18th century that simply involved making incisions on a tin plate. This was difficult and time-consuming work; in order to transfer images to plates it took a lot of time, months, and even years, but, as Blake’s contemporary John Boydell noted, this method of engraving made her product “a weak link for commerce,” allowing artists to get closer to the people, and making it an important art form by the end of the 18th century.

Blake also used the intaglio method in his works, in particular for the illustrations for the Book of Job, which he completed just before his death. Blake's newly invented technique, the relief-print method, has been the subject of much criticism, but a 2009 study focuses heavily on Blake's surviving plates, including those used for the Book of Job, suggesting that he also frequently used the technique. repoussage, that is, a bas-relief, which made it possible to smooth out errors; it was enough to turn the plate over and with a few blows smooth out the unwanted notch, making it convex. This technique, typical of engraving work of the time, is in many ways inferior to the faster process of liquid hammering that Blake used for his relief impression, and explains why the engraving process was so time consuming.

Later life and career

The marriage of Blake and Katherine was strong and happy until the artist’s death. Blake taught Katherine to write, and she helped him color printed books of his poems. Gilchrist talks about the “turbulent time” of the first years of Marriage. Some biographers have argued that Blake tried to invite his mistress to his marriage bed according to the principles of the Swedenborgian Society, but scholars have decided to abandon this theory as it was just a guess. The child that William and Katherine so wanted, Tel, could have been the first child, but did not survive after conception and became the last. Perhaps Blake writes about her in the Book of Tel.

Felpham

In 1800, Blake moved to a small house in Felpham, Sussex (now West Sussex), having been commissioned to illustrate the works of the young poet William Hayley. It was in this house that Blake once worked on the book Milton: A Poem (the design of the preface to the book is dated 1804, but Blake continued to work until 1808). The book begins with the lines: “On this steep mountainside Has the foot of an angel set foot?”, later immortalized in the anthem (which became the unofficial anthem of Great Britain) “Jerusalem”. Blake soon became indignant at his new patron, realizing that Haley was not at all interested in making art, he was more busy with the “hard work of business.” Blake's disappointment with his patron Hayley so affected the former that in his poem "Milton" he wrote that "Friends in the material world are spiritual enemies."

Blake's problems with authority came to a head in August 1803 when he got into a fight with a soldier named John Scofield. Blake was accused not only of the attack, but also of organizing a rebellion against the king. Scofield stated that Blake exclaimed: “Damn the king. All his soldiers are slaves." The Chichester Assizes find Blake not guilty. The Sussex City newspaper reports: “The fabrication of the incident was so obvious that the accused was immediately acquitted.” Later, in an illustration of Jerusalem, Scofield would become a symbol of "the limitations of the mind, 'shackled' by slavery."

Return to London

Blake returned to London in 1804 and began work on writing and illustrating Jerusalem (1804-1820), his most ambitious work. Having hidden his idea of ​​​​portraying the characters of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Blake approaches the dealer Robert Cromek to sell the engraving. Realizing that Blake is always so original and would never remake a popular work, Kromek immediately placed an order with Thomas Stotherd. When Blake learned that he had been deceived, he terminated his contract with Stotherd. He then opened an independent exhibition in his brother's haberdashery shop at 27 Broad Street in London's Soho. The exhibition was designed to sell, along with other works, its version of illustrations for the Canterbury Tales (under common name Canterbury Pilgrims). He would also write a Descriptive Catalog (1809), which would present what Anthony Blunt would call a "distinguished analysis" of Chaucer's work. Blake's book rightfully takes its place in the classic anthology of criticism on Chaucer. At the same time, it contains a detailed explanation of other paintings by Blake.

However, the exhibition was very poorly attended; neither the tempera paintings nor the watercolor paintings aroused interest. The article about the exhibition that appeared in the weekly Expert was openly hostile.

John Cumberland introduced Blake to a young artist named John Linell. Before meeting him, Blake met Samuel Palmer, who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves the Shoreham Elders. They shared Blake's antipathy to modern trends and his belief in spiritual and artistic renaissance. At the age of 65, Blake began illustrating the Book of Job. These works would later be admired by Ruskin, who would compare Blake to Rembrandt, and by Wowen Williams, who would stage his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing, using a selection of the artist’s illustrations.

Blake would later sell off large quantities of his work, particularly his illustrations of the Bible, to Thomas Butts, Blake's patron, who regarded him more as a friend than as an artist of merit whose work was recognized. And this was precisely the typical opinion about Blake’s work throughout his life.

Dante's Divine Comedy

In 1826, Linell instilled in Blake an interest in Dante's Divine Comedy. The work inspires William to create a whole series of engravings. But Blake's death in 1827 prevented him from realizing his bold idea, and only a few works in watercolor and only 7 test prints remained completed. But even they were admired:

“Despite the complexity of the content of the Divine Comedy, the watercolor illustrations for it, talentedly executed by Blake, are among the artist’s greatest achievements. The skill in the field of watercolor painting in his works rises to a completely new level, this is evidenced by the effect that Blake achieved, being able to recreate the absolutely unique atmosphere of each of the three “worlds” through which the hero wanders, in his illustrations.”

Blake's illustrations for the poem do not literally accompany what is described; rather, they force a critical re-examination of what is happening, sometimes providing a new vision of the spiritual and moral aspects of the work.

Since the project was not destined to be completed, Blake's plan remained unrecognized. Some are of the opinion that a conclusion about it can only be made by speaking in general about the entire series of illustrations. Namely: they challenge the text that they accompany, challenging the opinion of the author: for example, about the scene where Homer marches with a sword and his companions, Blake writes: “Everything in the Divine Comedy says that because of his tyrannical ideas Dante 'did 'This World is from 'Creation' and 'Goddess of Nature', but without the participation of the Holy Spirit." Perhaps Blake did not share Dante's admiration for the poetry of the Ancient Greeks, nor the undoubted joy with which he appointed and handed out accusations and punishments in Hell (as evidenced by the dark humor of some of the poem's songs).

However, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and protest against the corrupt nature of power. He also took great pleasure in being able to represent his personal perception of the poem's atmosphere visually, through illustration. Even Blake's feeling of approaching death could not distract him from the creativity in which he was completely absorbed. At this time he was feverishly poring over Dante's Inferno. They say that he was so eager to continue expanding the series with new sketches that he spent almost his last shilling on a simple pencil.

Death

On the day of his death, Blake was working tirelessly on his illustrations for Dante. It is said that he finally put aside his work and turned to his wife, who had been sitting on the bed next to him the entire time, unable to hold back her tears. Looking at her, he exclaimed: “Oh, Kate, please remain still, I will now draw your portrait. You have always been an angel to me." Having completed the portrait (now lost and not extant to us), Blake put aside all his brushes and accessories and began to sing hymns and songs. At 6 o'clock in the evening of the same day, having promised his wife that he would be with her forever, Blake went to another world. Gilchrist said that a woman who lived in the same house and was present at Blake's death said: "I saw the death not of a man, but of a blessed angel."

In his letter to Samuel Palmer, George Richmond describes Blake's death: “He died with honor. He went to a country that he had dreamed of seeing all his life, saying that he would find his greatest happiness there. He hoped for salvation through Jesus Christ. Just before his death, his face seemed to glow with a blissful light, and he, as if possessed, began to sing about those things that he supposedly saw in paradise.”

Catherine paid for her husband's funeral with money borrowed from Linell. 5 days after his death - on the eve of his and Catherine’s 45th wedding anniversary, Blake was interred at the Dissenter’s burial ground in the town of Bunhill Fields, where his parents were buried. Those present at the funeral were Catherine, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham, and John Linell. After her husband's death, Catherine moved into Tatem's house, where she lived and worked as a housekeeper. During this time, she claimed, she was often visited by the ghost of her husband. She continued to sell his illustrations and paintings, but would not undertake to manage his affairs without first "discussing it with Mr. Blake." On the day of her own death, in October 1831, she was as calm, as joyful as her husband and called him as if he were in the next room, to say that she was already coming to him and very soon they would be together".

After her death, Blake's manuscripts passed to Frederick Tatem, who burned some that he considered heretical or too politically radical. Tatem became an Irvingite, a member of one of the many fundamentalist movements of the 19th century, and therefore did not hesitate to reject anything that “smacked of blasphemy.” The sexual elements in some of Blake's paintings were also unacceptable, which led to their destruction by another of the poet's friends, John Linell.

Since 1965, the exact location of William Blake's grave has been lost and forgotten, and his tombstone has been stolen. Later, the poet’s memory was immortalized with a stele with the inscription “Near this very place lie the remains of the poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827) and his wife Katherine Sophia (1762-1831).” This memorial stone was placed approximately 20 meters from Blake's actual burial site, which today bears no resemblance to a grave. However, a group of fans of Blake's paintings still managed to figure out the place where the artist's body actually rests, and they are currently planning to erect a monument in this place.

Blake was also canonized. He is canonized as a saint in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. In 1949, Australia established the William Blake Award for Contributions to Religious Art. And in 1957, a memorial to Blake and his wife was built in Westminster Abbey.

Development of Blake's worldview

Blake's later works were published in much smaller quantities than his earlier ones. And the reason for this was that the poet now began to operate with his own mythology, invented by him, with its inherent complex symbolism. The recent Vintage Anthology edited by Patti Smith draws the reader's attention specifically to the early works, as do many other critical studies such as D. G. Gillham's William Blake.

Early works, breathing a spirit of rebellion and rebellion, can be seen as a protest against dogmatic religion. This sentiment is especially evident in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Satan is essentially a hero fighting against a self-proclaimed authoritarian deity. In later works such as Milton and Jerusalem, Blake constructs a particular vision of humanity, a humanity redeemed by self-sacrifice and forgiveness, while demonstrating his disgust with Christianity and its traditions.

Psychoanalyst June Singer wrote that late works Blake represent the development of the poet’s ideas, first reflected by him in his early works, in particular the truly humanitarian idea of ​​​​unifying body and soul. The final part of an expanded, detailed edition of Blake's study, The Corrupt Bible, calls the poet's later works the "Bible of Hell", mentioned in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Discussing Blake's last poem, "Jerusalem."

John Middleton Murray notes the break in connection between the Marriage and the later works. While early Blake focused on the "confrontation between passion and reason", later Blake emphasized self-sacrifice and forgiveness as the path to harmony. The rejection of the dualistic idea in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell testifies, in particular, to the humanization of the character of Urizen as one of the heroes of his works in later works. Middleton characterizes Blake's later work as containing "mutual understanding" and "mutual forgiveness."

Blake and sexuality

In addition, Blake (along with Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin) is considered a harbinger of the “free love” movement that broke out in the 19th century, an extensive reform that began to be implemented as early as 1820. Their reform argued that marriage was slavery and advocated the abolition of all government prohibitions regarding sexual activity, such as homosexuality, prostitution, and even adultery, culminating in the birth control movement at the very beginning of the 20th century. However, Blake scholarship was more focused on this topic in the early 20th century than it is today, although it is often discussed, for example by one scholar named Mangus Ankarsjö, who challenges his colleagues with his interpretation.

Blake became an incredibly popular part of the American counterculture of the 1960s (especially due to the influence of Alain Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley). During this period, the term "free love" was used most often to express boundary-crossing promiscuity, in particular referring to what became known as the "summer of love" in San Francisco. But Blake's "free love" movement emphasized Wollstonecraft's idea that state-sanctioned marriage was "legal prostitution." The movement was, rather, inspired by early feminist movements (based on the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Blake admired) and modern freedom movements, as well as hippie culture.

In fact, Blake opposed the marriage laws of his time and decried traditional moral and Christian principles that held that abstinence from adultery was a virtue for marriage. During a period of acute turmoil in the family, one of the reasons for which was Katherine’s infertility, he firmly declared his intention to bring a second wife into the house. His poetry argues that the demands of the outside world for iron fidelity transform love from affection into obligation. A poem like “Earth’s Answer” seems to promote polygamy. In the poem London he describes the "Marriage Hearse". "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" is a tribute to free love, where the relationship between Bromion and Utuna, in his opinion, is based on law, not love. For Blake, Love and the law are absolutely opposite things; he scolds the “frozen love bed.” In fact, Blake calls passion love, while love, in the minds of those he criticizes, is perceived as spiritual closeness to one specific person. In Visions Blake writes:

Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot,

is bound In spells of law to one she loathes?

And must she drag the chain

Of life in weary lust?

Blake inspires Swinburne and Carpenter

A notable 19th-century poet who promoted free love was Algernon Charles Swinburne, who wrote an entire scholarly work on Blake. He drew attention to the poet's understanding of marriage as slavery in poems such as "The Myrtle Tree", and devoted an entire chapter to the visions of the daughters of Albion and the image of the slave before the face of "holy and true love", free from the shackles of possessive jealousy, later called by Blake "the servile skeleton." Swinburne also traces echoes of these motifs in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which decries the hypocrisy of the “religious depravity” of the defenders of tradition. Another of his contemporary, also a supporter of free love, Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was also inspired by the special attention that Blake paid in his work vital energy, free from the prejudices of the outside world.

Young Blake's rebellion against the law

Pierre Berger emphasizes that according to Blake, the enemy of free love is “jealousy and selfishness.” After reading The Lost Daughter, he writes: “The secret of love in marriage is as absurd as keeping the light under a bushel... conjugal love“It’s just self-love,” which, according to Blake, creates Hell by despising Heaven. In other words, Mary Wollstonecraft speaks about the same thing, who, like him, puts passion at the head of the relationship: “Marriage makes a prostitute out of a virgin, giving herself not to love, but sacrificing herself in the name of a false understanding of duty. Only the woman who gives herself to love and unbridled desire is holy. And when the world knows passion and returns the true fire of philanthropy, purity will return to every prostitute who wants true love.”

In America, Blake writes: “The soul cannot be sufficiently full of sweet pleasure.” Berger believes that Blake's ideas were largely set out in his Introduction to the version of the collection Songs of Innocence and Experience.

It is here that Blake first gives an interpretation of his theory that the law is evil because it limits human desires and prohibits joys. This theory became the basis of an entire system of values, and Blake tirelessly expressed it with all possible ways, mainly by rebelling against the bonds of marriage and being an ardent supporter of free love.

Spiritual motivation behind Blake's views

Many writers have noted the spiritual, mystical aspect in Blake's work, as well as in his views. Irene Langville wrote in 1904: “In Blake’s mysterious and erroneous judgments, the doctrine of free love was fundamental and most beloved, the one on which he never ceased to insist in his poetry.” She also notes that Blake did this for the edification of the “soul,” believing that loyalty deserves nothing if it is maintained through force. Much earlier, in his book William Blake, Man of New Rules (1977), Michael Davis confirms Blake's words about love prohibitions born out of jealousy, which deprives a person of divine union, condemning him to a cold death. Pierre Berger, in a book written in 1905 by William Blake, a poet and mystic, speaks of the poet's statements that the traditional meaning given to the virtue of virginity simply stifles a person, while real purity comes from a passion that cannot be bound by conventional wisdom. bonds.

Blake's qualifications and further changes in his views

Such trends can be identified as dominant in Blake's early works, written mainly during the crisis in his family life. Other poems written during this period, such as Sweet Rose, warn against the dangers of predatory sexuality. Ankarsjö claims that Blake was part of a community with several members of which he had an affair (today members of such societies are called swingers), David Worall notes that Blake expressed alarm about the community's practice of forcing women to share themselves with several residents.

This awareness of the negative side of sexuality led scholar Mangus Ankarsjö to examine the poor interpretations of Swinburne and others who wrote about Blake as a proponent of free love. We see that main character Visions of the Daughters of Albion, an ardent defender of free love, becomes more cautious by the end of the poem, because she has come to realize the dark side of sexuality. “Is it really that that which can drink another until the day, like a sponge absorbing water, is love?” Ankarsjö also notes that Mary Wollstonecraft, inspired by Blake, also developed a sense of caution regarding sexual intercourse in her later life. S. Foster Damon wrote that in Blake's understanding, the main obstacle to instilling ideas of free love in society is depraved human nature, and not only ordinary intolerance in society and jealousy, but also a false and hypocritical nature human communication. Dedicated entirely to Blake's doctrine of free love, Thomas Wright's book The Life of William Blake, published in 1928, mentions Blake's idea that marriage should in practice permit the enjoyment of love, but in reality this is often not the case because being betrothed , in the couple’s understanding, weakens all joy. Pierre Berger also analyzes early mythological poems, such as Achania, which argues that the laws of marriage, being degenerate from pride and jealousy, are nothing more than the consequences of the decline of humanity. Contemporary scholar Mangus Ankarsjö believes that Blake does not fully approve of man's self-indulgence and complete disregard for the laws, using as an example the heroine Leuta, who finds herself in a world fallen from the experience of free love, in a world that could use some restrictions.

Blake's subsequent manuscripts reveal a renewed interest in Christianity, and although he radically reframes the Christian modality to include sensual pleasure, much less emphasis is placed on the sexual freedom that was the theme of some of his early works. poems. In later works there is a motif of self-denial, the origin of which must have been love rather than authoritarian coercion. Berger (more than Swinburne) is interested in changing his attitude towards sensibility in the early and late periods of his work. Berger notes that young Blake probably follows an impulse, and at a more mature age his ideal of true love, which is sincere and capable of sacrifice, is already fully formed. The love of marriage, which he believes is based on selfishness and jealousy, still remains a problem for Blake. The mystical triumph of feelings continues in Jerusalem’s last poem “Every female delights to give her maiden to her husband / the female searches sea and land for gratifications to the Male Genius.” And it is in his last poems that Blake abandons belief in the virgin birth of Christ. However, later poems also place great emphasis on forgiveness, salvation, and the authenticity of emotions and feelings as the basis of human relationships.

Religious views

Although Blake's attacks on mainstream religion were shocking for his time, his opposition to religiosity did not mean that he did not accept religion as such. His view of Christianity is visible in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, written in the likeness of Biblical predictions. In his work, Blake devotes a section to the Proverbs of Hell, among which are the following: “Prisons are built from the stones of Law, Houses of Tolerance from the bricks of Religion. The caterpillar defiles the finest leaves, the priest defiles the purest joys.”

In his The Everlasting Gospel, Blake presents Jesus not as a philosopher, nor as a Savior figure, but as a truly creative person, standing above all dogma, logic, and even morality:

He preached courtesy

Humility, meekness, but not flattery.

He, triumphant, carried his cross.

That is why Christ was executed.

Antichrist, flattering Jesus,

Could please every taste,

I would not outrage the synagogues,

Didn't drive the traders out of the door

And, meek as a tame donkey,

Caiaphas would have found mercy.

God did not write in his tablet,

So that we humiliate ourselves.

Having humiliated myself,

You humiliate the deity...

After all, you yourself are a particle of eternity.

Pray to your own humanity.

Translation by S. Ya. Marshak

For Blake, Jesus is a symbol of vital relationships and the unity of perfection and humanity: “Everything was spoken in one language and believed in one religion: it was the religion of Jesus, the ever-sounding Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus.”

One of Blake's strongest objections to Christianity was that it seemed to the poet that this religion encouraged the suppression of man's natural needs and dampened earthly joy. In Vision Last Judgment Blake says:

“People are not admitted to Heaven because they<обуздали и>mastered their Passions, or had no Passions at all, but because they. Cultivated their Understanding in ourselves. The Treasures of Heaven are not the Denial of the Passions, but the Essence of the Intellect from which all these Passions Flow<Необузданные>, in his Eternal Glory."

Original: “Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have governed their Passions or have No Passions but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but Realities of Intellect from which All the Passions Emanate in their Eternal Glory."

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell also contains lines condemning religion:

All Holy Books are the cause of Erroneous Opinions:

That Man is divided into Body and Soul.

That Action, that is, Evil, is from the Body; and Thought, that is, Good, is from the Soul.

That God will forever execute Man for Actions.

But the Truth is in the Opposite:

The Soul and the Body are inseparable, for the Body is a particle of the Soul, and its five senses are the eyes of the Soul.

Life is Action and comes from the Body, and Thought is attached to Action and serves as its shell.

Action - Eternal Delight.

Blake does not subscribe to the idea of ​​the separability of the Soul from the Body from each other, subject to the law of the soul, but considering the body as the basis, and the soul as a continuation, stemming from the “ability to recognize” feelings. Thus, the renunciation of bodily desires and the special attention that Christianity pays to this point is a double error arising from a misconception about the relationship between body and soul; in one work he presents Satan as a "faulty condition" and as an impossibility of salvation.

Blake contrasted sophistry with theological thought, which justifies pain, tolerates evil, and forgives injustice. He abhorred self-denial, which he associated with religious repression and especially sexual abstinence: "Prudence is a rich old ugly maid wooed by helplessness." “He who desires something, but does nothing for it, creates a plague.” For him, the concept of “sin” is a trap for human desires (a rosehip from the Garden of Love), he believes that restriction in respect for a moral code imposed from the outside is contrary to the spirit of man and his essence:

Instead of fragrant flowers,

I saw tombstones, fences,

And priests in black, knitting with thorns

My desires and joys.

He did not adhere to the doctrine that the Creator Lord is God, a being separate and perfect in his being; this becomes clear from the words about Jesus Christ: “He is one God, and so am I, and so are you.” One of the main sayings from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell is: “God exists and acts only in people.”

Blake's mythology

Blake created his own mythology, which he outlined in his prophetic books. This is a whole world inhabited by deities and heroes, to whom he gave unusual names: Urizen, Luva, Tarmas, Urtona, Los, Enitarmon, Achania, Enion, Rintra, Bromion, Tiriel, Har, etc. Blake’s mythology has many origins, including including the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, the Scandinavian Eddas, treatises of theosophists, occultists and religious mystics such as Agrippa of Nettesheim, Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme, etc.

Blake and the philosophy of the Enlightenment

Blake had a complex relationship with Enlightenment philosophy. Relying on his own fantastic religious beliefs, Blake contrasted them with Newton's vision of the universe and this is reflected in the lines from Jerusalem: I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe

And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,

Wash’d by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth

In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel works

Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic

Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which,

Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.

Blake also believed that Sir Joshua Reynolds' painting, which depicts the natural incidence of light on objects, was truly the product of the "vegetative eye", and he considered Locke and Newton to be "the real progenitors of Joshua Reynolds' aesthetics." In England at that time there was a fashion for mezzotint, a print that was made by applying thousands of tiny dots to a surface depending on the features of the image. Blake traced the analogy between this and Newton's theory of light. Blake never used this technique, choosing to develop the method of engraving particularly in a liquid medium, insisting that lines and features are not formed by chance, a line is a line in its subdivision, whether it is straight or curved.

Despite his opposition to the principles of the Enlightenment, Blake nevertheless arrived at a linear aesthetic that was more traditional in Neoclassicism, particularly the engravings of John Flaxman, than in the engravings of Romanticism, to which Blake was often classified.

At the same time, Blake was seen as a poet and artist of the Enlightenment in the sense that he also did not accept the ideas, systems, authorities and traditions of style. In a dialectical sense, he used the spirit of the Enlightenment as a spirit of opposition to external authorities in order to criticize the narrow concept of the period.

Creative thinking

Northrop Frye, speaking about Blake's constancy and firm position in his views, notes that Blake "is surprised at how strikingly similar the notes about him made at different periods of his life by Joshua Reynolds, Locke and Bacon are." Consistency in his convictions was itself one of his own principles.

Blake abhorred slavery and believed in sexual and racial equality. Several of his poems and paintings express the idea of ​​universal humanity: “all people are alike (even though they are infinitely different).” One poem, written from the perspective of a black boy, describes white and black bodies as shady groves and clouds that exist only until they melt away "to be illuminated by the rays of love":

This is what my mother often said.

English boy listen: if you

You will fly out of a white cloud, and I

I'll free myself from this blackness, -

I will shield you from the heat of the day

And I will stroke the golden strand,

When, bowing my bright head

You will rest in the shade of the tent.

Blake had a keen interest in social and political events throughout his life, and social and political formulations are often found in his mystical symbolism. What in his understanding was oppression and restriction of freedom was spread by the influence of the church. Blake's spiritual beliefs are evident in the Songs of Experience (1794), in which he distinguishes between the Old Testament, whose limitations he does not accept, and the New Testament, whose influence he considers positive.

Visions

Blake claimed that from an early age he saw visions. The first of these happened as a child, when he was 4, and according to the story, the young artist “saw God” when He stuck his head through the window, causing Blake to scream in horror. At the age of 8-10 years in Peckham Rye, London, Blake, as he himself claimed, saw “a tree literally covered with angels, from whose bright wings sparkles fell like stars onto the branches of the tree.” According to the story told by Blake's Victorian biographer, Gilchrist, he returned home and wrote down his vision, almost catching the eye of his father, who was ready to give him a beating for lying, if not for his mother's intervention. Although all the facts indicate that Blake's parents were very supportive of their son, it was his mother who always did it. Some of Blake's early paintings decorated the walls of her room. Another time, when Blake was watching the mowers at work, he saw angelic figures among them.

Blake's stories about his visions so impressed the artist and astrologer John Varley that he asked Blake to capture them on paper in his presence. The result was the Ghost Heads series, consisting of more than a hundred pencil portraits, including images of historical and mythological figures such as David, Solomon, Bathsheba, Nebuchadnezzar, Saul, Lot, Job, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Merlin, Boudicca, Charlemagne, Ossian, Robin Hood, Edward I, Black Prince Edward III, John Milton, Voltaire, as well as the Devil, Satan, "Cancer" , “The Man Who Built the Pyramids”, “The Man Who Taught Blake How to Paint”, “The Head of the Flea Ghost” and many others. Based on the latter, Blake created one of his most famous paintings, “The Ghost of the Flea.”

Throughout his life, Blake will see visions. They will often be associated with religious themes and episodes from the Bible, and will inspire him in subsequent spiritual work and quests. Of course, the religious concept is central to his work. God and Christianity represent the intellectual center of his works, a source of inspiration for the artist. In addition to this, Blake believed that he was guided by the Archangels when creating his paintings. Thirteen years later, he loses his brother, but continues to keep in touch with him. In a letter to John Flexman on 21 September 1800, Blake writes: Felpham is a wonderful place to study because there is more spirituality here than in London. Paradise here opens from all sides of Golden Gates. My wife and sister are doing well, waiting for Neptune's embrace... For my works, I am more revered in heaven for the works that I have just conceived. My brain is filled with research and study, my rooms are filled with books and old paintings which I wrote in the years of eternity long before birth; and these works are bliss for the Archangels.

William Wordsword remarked: “There was not the least doubt that the man was mad, but there is something in his obsession that interests me far more than the minds of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.”

D. S. Williams (1899-1983) said that Blake was a romantic with a critical view of the world, he also confirmed that the Songs of Innocence were created as a vision of an ideal, while the spirit of utopia is present in the Songs of Experience.

General cultural influence

For nearly a century after Blake's death, his work was forgotten, but his reputation began to coast into the 20th century, revived by the critics John Middleton Marie and Northrop Frye, and by a growing number of classical composers such as Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. whose work was influenced by the work of Blake.

June Singer and many others believe that Blake's thoughts on human nature were well ahead of their time and were even in many ways similar to the theories of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, although he himself did not perceive Blake's work on a higher level, considering them, at least, an artistic product, rather than an authentic representation of unconscious processes on a scientific level.

Blake was a huge influence on the Beat poets of the 1950s and the subculture of the 1960s, and is often cited in the work of such prolific artists as Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and composer, lyricist and performer Bob Dylan. Most of the main ideas of Philip Pohlman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials are borrowed from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake's poems have also been set to music by many popular composers, especially in the 1960s, and Blake's engravings have had a major influence on the modern graphic novel.