William Blake biography in English. Spiritual motivation behind Blake's views

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 a large family of a knitwear merchant. 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 ability appeared early and at the age of 10 his parents sent him to art school. And after art school, he 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 William Blake is often described as "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 creates a loop watercolor works, illustrating the poem " Lost heaven» 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. Its main feature creative life was that Blake was neither a special poet, nor a special artist, nor a special philosopher. Moreover, he literary works very often go against the norms of the literary English language, painting often contradicts generally accepted canons, and its 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 understanding. Such literary device, which combines 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 admitted that it is precisely such an extraordinary technique creative self-expression is the most effective way for William Blake 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 pass through yourself like that the world?

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, artist and engraver. Almost unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered an important figure in the history of poetry and visual arts romantic era. He lived in London all his life (with the exception of three years in Felpham).

Although Blake was considered mad by his contemporaries, later critics noted his expressiveness and the philosophical and mystical depth of his work. His paintings and poems have been characterized as romantic, or pre-romantic. A believer in the Bible but opposed to the Church of England (as well as all forms of organized religion in general), Blake was influenced by the ideals of the French and American Revolutions. Although he later became disillusioned with many of these political beliefs, he maintained friendly relations with the political activist Thomas Paine; was also influenced by the philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg. Despite all his influences, Blake's work is difficult to categorize. The 19th century writer William Rossetti called him "a glorious luminary" and "a man neither anticipated by his predecessors, nor classified by his contemporaries, nor superseded by known or supposed successors."

Blake was born on November 28, 1757 in London, in the Soho area, in the family of shopkeeper James Blake. He was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. William attended school only until the age of ten, learning there only to write and read, and was educated at home - he was taught by his mother Catherine Blake (nee Wright). Although his parents were Protestant Dissenters from the Moravian Church, they baptized William in the Anglican Church of St. James in Piccadilly. Throughout his life, Blake's worldview was strongly influenced by the Bible. 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 Hemsker and Albrecht Dürer instilled in him a love of classical forms. Judging by the number of paintings and well-bound books that William's parents bought for William, it can be assumed that the family was, at least for some time, prosperous. 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.

On August 4, 1772, Blake entered into 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 he was 21, he had become a professional engraver. There is no record of any serious quarrel or conflict between the two, but 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 he gained while working at Westminster Abbey helped shape 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 James forcefully pushed him off the scaffolding to the ground, where he fell with a terrible crash. Blake had visions in the abbey, for example, he saw Christ and the apostles, a church procession with monks and priests, during which he imagined the singing of psalms and chorales.

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This is the story of one of the greatest myth-makers and mystics. About a visionary who created a completely new face of love and showed that Hell and Heaven are not much different from each other. Meet: William Blake.

Fashion rules almost everything in this world. The greatest artists are considered to be those who were not recognized during their lifetime and gained their immortality after they went to another world. Paintings , late works, and fascinate us not only with their beauty, but also with the fact with what ease they were rejected by people of the past.

How simply genius was recognized as mediocrity, and a new word in painting was perceived by connoisseurs of the art of its time as the speech of a fairground charlatan. And what more tragic fate artist, the greater our desire to restore historical justice. But there was no tragedy in the fate of William Blake. He is a rejected, but not an unhappy artist. That's probably why Mass culture will not pay him such attention, although it is his fate that shows how an unrecognized talent, by chance, can gain world fame.

Every genius is crazy. This simple truth can easily be applied to William Blake. The boy first saw God at the age of four, when he personally looked into his window. The huge shining face of the Creator looked at him with a searching gaze, and the young poet and artist screamed in horror in his childhood bed. This was only the beginning of a long series of dates between the Creator and Blake. Already at the age of nine, he told his mother that he saw angels on a tree. The artist later recalled:

“It was literally covered with them, and bright angelic wings showered the branches of the tree like stars.”

They didn’t believe the boy, and he was offended, so much so that he almost never mentioned his parent. And then not only visual images appeared, but also voices. They sang beautiful hymns, and, according to Blake himself, he sought to immediately write them down and depict the vision that came to him as quickly as possible. This is how the method of illuminated printing, invented by him, arose, where hand-made engravings were accompanied by poetic text. This is how “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” are created. But they will not bring success to their creator. Unlike God, fortune and glory will look through his window only after death.

The intransigence and absurdity of Blake's thinking and creativity is amazing. He took part in the uprisings: in the front ranks he stormed Newgate prison, at the age of forty-six he beat a British army soldier, for which he was convicted, and supported revolutionary movements in America and France. He is a real slap in the face of English conservatism. All his life, fascinated by biblical mythology and creating for the Bible, Blake hated the church, any kind, and in the end he created absolutely his own mythology.

AND central place she was occupied with the ideas of harmony and love. There is no longer a clear dichotomy between good and evil. The Creator kneels before the world he created. Everything in the world is subordinated to love and passion, there is no difference between the carnal and the spiritual - they are one whole. It is not surprising that the artist and poet considers the Christian ideal of purity to be complete nonsense, because, in his opinion, it contradicts the very essence of this world. Yes, the Lord and his angels sitting on the branches had clearly not pious conversations with Blake. And another interesting paradox: Blake, who adored his wife, considered her an angel in the flesh and created a portrait of her just before his death, on his wedding night he wanted not only his wife, but also his mistress to go to bed with him. Whether he succeeded - everyone who could tell about it is long dead, but chastity is clearly not about our prophet.

However, what scares or amazes ordinary people V ordinary life, what is considered the pinnacle of depravity and depravity of character, in art often takes on the most amazing and unusual forms, delighting with its depth and beauty. This was the case with Blake. Only at first glance his ideas seem absurd, and in order to understand them, it is necessary to know the era in which the artist lived and worked. His work in many ways exceeded the understanding of his contemporaries, but it was formed under the influence of the ideas of that time and was their product.

The 18th and 19th centuries went down in history as the era of the formation and development of scientific knowledge. It was then that the entire surrounding world for a thinking person was presented as unified system. Something like a clock mechanism, where each part performs its own function, without which the universe will perish. Where was there a place for God in this system? For Descartes, the Lord was the spring, the prime mover that set the entire mechanism in motion. But Blake had a completely different view of the order of things. The Lord who looked into his window was not a banal clock spring. In the head of an English artist all the latest scientific knowledge were combined in a bizarre way with the mystical teachings of the Middle Ages - it could not have been otherwise. For Blake, God is, above all, the “Great Architect.”

The Creator stands on one knee in front of his creation, like a knight in love in front of a beautiful lady. The architect himself is in a luminous circle, and the circle in the imagination of medieval mystics was an ideal form, the embodiment of the divine principle, a symbol of eternity (the spheres of Paradise, the ledges of Purgatory, the circles of Hell in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, but more about that a little later). At first glance, the figure of God is ideal, as in the paintings, but this is not so. His body is disproportionate, his arms are no shorter than his legs. Traditions Italian Renaissance the most in an unusual way combined with motifs of religious painting.

In his hands the Great Architect holds a compass that forms equilateral triangle- one of the Christian symbols of the Trinity. This bizarre combination of proportion and disproportion best represents William Blake's thinking. Peace is harmony between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. All opposites are one with each other. And another antithesis immediately attracts our attention: the wind of time flutters the hair and beard of the Creator, carries heavy dark clouds, obscuring the sun, but the figure of the creator is motionless, but how much internal energy in it: all the muscles of the body are tense to the limit. True harmony and love are born in struggle, and Blake, who stormed prisons, beat soldiers, fought all his life to be recognized, knew this firsthand.

William Blake, as already mentioned, never received recognition during his lifetime. But the lack of understanding on the part of his contemporaries never stopped the artist. Shortly before his death he took up main work his life, which he never managed to finish. It's about about his illustrations in watercolors for Dante's Divine Comedy.

This series of paintings was a challenge and the greatest struggle in Blake's life, because in relation to the Italian poet he felt very complex emotions. There was no talk of banal admiration here! The English painter admired the power of Dante's imagination, before he managed to depict afterworld, but that's it positive emotions were coming to an end. Blake did not like the gloating with which the Italian classic sent his enemies to Hell, and the very description of this place - in the minds of the unrecognized genius of his era, it was not so gloomy. In their antithesis, Hell and Heaven are a single whole, this is exactly what Blake believed. It is not surprising that after his death some of the works were destroyed because they were considered heretical.

The artist worked on the artistic re-interpretation of the “Divine Comedy” until the very end, even on the last day of his life. And although death prevented the final implementation of the plan, even those few works that have come down to us can literally change the viewer’s worldview. It never occurred to anyone else to depict Hell, bathed in warm rays sunlight, Hell where love reigns! The unfortunate man was probably ready to eat his paints in the next world out of indignation.

In my opinion, “Whirlwind of Lovers” is one of the most emotional, deep and beautiful paintings in English paintings of the 19th century century.

It is based on that part of Dante’s poem where, having heard the story of Francesca di Rimini, the lyrical hero falls unconscious, struck by the beauty and tragedy of the story. But despite this, Dante still places Francesca and her lover in Hell, because their relationship was criminal from the point of view of Christian morality.

In Blake's painting, the mood is completely different. Only the hot lava at the bottom of the canvas reminds us of Hell, but there is no talk of suffering and torment here. The whirlwind picks up the souls of lovers, fused in a single voluptuous impulse, and carries them upward, to the light, to paradise, because it is in love, according to Blake, that true bliss is known. And Dante falls to the ground not because he is struck by the tragedy of history, but because the truth, previously hidden from view, has been revealed to him. It is no coincidence that in the upper right corner of the canvas we see a shining sphere, in the center of which is a naked man and woman. They hug each other. This is the embrace of love. With its help, the world was created: Hell and heaven as well.

It is no coincidence that Blake's poetry and painting reached the peak of their popularity in the USA and England in the 60s of the twentieth century. “Summer of Love”, hippies, hallucinations - all this would certainly be to the artist’s taste.

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 became known to a wide circle of 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 my poetry books, he himself engraved their text and illustrations on copper using a special technique he invented for this (“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). Blake's cult gained further development in the circle of 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 visionary” Blake was at the same time, in his social outlook, a humanist and lover of humanity with broad democratic sympathies, a fiery denouncer of 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, receiving a 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 childhood he was familiar with the writings of the mystics Swedenborg and Jacob Boehme, with Plato and the Neoplatonists (in English translation Taylor), but also with English philosophy the Age of 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 for him of ancient Gothic tombstones of Westminster Abbey and other London churches. “The Gothic form is a living form,” Blake later wrote. Gothic, Durer's engravings and Michelangelo's creations were those artistic samples, which defined 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 odd jobs, he completed large cycles of illustrations for works English poets XVIII 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 design and composition, extraordinary in expressiveness and strength, works of art Blake's works were not noticed by his contemporaries and received recognition, like his poetry, only in modern times.

Blake William

(11/28/1757-08/12/1827), 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. The work of Blake, who illustrated his own poems with watercolors and engravings (“Songs of Ignorance”, 1789; “Songs of Knowledge”, 1794; “Book of Job”, 1818-1825; Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, 1825-1827 and other works), clearly reflected trends of romanticism in English art late XVIII- the first quarter of the 19th century: the master’s attraction to visionary fiction, allegorism and mystical symbolism, resort to a bold, almost arbitrary play of lines, sharp compositional solutions.

Mystical artist

Twister of lovers

William Blake was one of the most original artists in the history of world art, although he lived a life that, at first glance, was prosaic and boring. He never even left London (except for the three years that he lived on the estate of one of his patrons). One explanation for this can be found - Blake did not need external impressions, since his soul was always filled with internal impressions.

The formation of the artist’s personality was largely influenced by his parents. Blake's father was a very educated man for his circle. This education, however, was of a special nature - Blake Sr. read Swedenborg and Boehme, and was fond of mystical treatises and visionary revelations. He did not limit the freedom of children in any way. And thus, little William quite early began to read everything that came to hand - that is, all the same Boehme and Swedenborg. Soon the impressionable boy told his mother that he “saw angels in the trees and the prophet Ezekiel on the lawn.” The mother spanked the young visionary (the Blake family, undoubtedly, was not entirely ordinary, but the children in it were still not allowed to “talk nonsense”).
See the world in one grain of sand

And the whole space is in a blade of forest grass,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And in a fleeting moment there is eternity...
William Blake

ADAM AND EVE

LOST HEAVEN

Blake the artist's "mystical style" did not develop out of nowhere.According to contemporaries, Blake remained a deeply religious man all his life. He believed that art, religion and imagination are inseparable, like the Holy Trinity. And the master consistently brought this idea to life. Other artists of his time - for example, Flaxman and Füsli - also preferred imaginary subjects over subjects taken “from life”. However, if for them it was, by and large, a game, then Blake took his paintings more than seriously.

ADAM AND EVE

His works are not always amenable to unambiguous deciphering; they sometimes hide several layers of meaning, their symbolism is complex and multifaceted. This is how Blake’s paintings differ from the paintings of his contemporaries, since even if the latter included some “mysterious symbols” in their works, then it was all very naive symbolism. It was not difficult to guess the “riddle”. Not so with Blake, whose small-format paintings (this is another difference between him and his contemporary painters - he almost never painted “large-scale” canvases) conceal a great many symbolic messages, not all of which can be immediately discerned.

NEBOCHUDONOSER

Among the painters of the past, Blake singled out Michelangelo, admiring the power of his images. Another feature of Blake's work is that in it the artist was often guided by visions. As time passed, it became increasingly difficult for him to separate them from real life. Blake himself said that these visions "are not just a cloud of fog; they are so distinct that they constantly remind us of the existence other world, no less real than this mortal world."

GREAT ANCHITECT

It was only in the second half of the 19th century that interest in creative heritage artist. One of Blake's admirers was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. As a ten-year-old boy (in 1847), he accidentally bought an album of Blake's sketches, and from that moment his love for this (already completely forgotten by that time) artist began. In 1893, the now famous poet William Butler Yeats became interested in the work of our hero, and in 1920 Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote about him. But it took several more years for interest in Blake to become all-English. It was only in 1927, when the centenary of the death of the artist and poet was celebrated, that Blake was finally recognized as “one of the greatest artists in Great Britain.”

DANTE AND VIRGIL AT THE GATES OF HELL

The unusualness of Blake's world will be felt by anyone who opens a volume of his poems, illustrated with engravings. The poems and drawings from the very beginning formed a single artistic complex - this explains a lot about their imagery. Even more significant is the fact that Blake was forced to remain on the sidelines of the literary battles of his century, his tastes, hobbies, and controversies. From his popular notions. Even from his everyday poetic language.

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. Mastery in the field watercolor painting in his works rises to a completely new level, this is evidenced by the effect that Blake achieved, managing 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.

COURT OF PARIS

In the family of a shopkeeper. He was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. William never attended school, receiving his education at home - he was taught by his mother. His parents were Protestants and very religious people, so throughout his life the Bible had a strong influence on Blake’s worldview.

Even as a child, Blake became interested in copying Greek scenes from drawings that his father acquired for him. The works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Martin van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer 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. Then he became interested in poetry.

BIG RED DRAGON

The Creator archetype is an image that appears frequently in Blake's work. Thus, the demiurge Urizen prays before creating the world. "The Terrible Los" is the third in a collection of books illustrated by Blake and his wife, better known as the Foreign Prophets. The Blakes were "sectarians" and were supposed to belong to the Moravian Church. WITH early years The Bible had a profound impact on Blake. Throughout his life, she would remain his main source of inspiration.

BIRTH OF CHRIST

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."

ILLUSION TO THE POEM "PARADISE LOST"