William Blake: biography and works. The mystical works of William Blake

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. Despite living in London all his life (except for three years in Felpham), his work embraced both “the body of God” and “human existence itself.”

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; and 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called him a "glorious luminary", and "a man neither anticipated by predecessors, nor classified by contemporaries, nor superseded by known or supposed successors."

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 art of the Romantic era. Lived all his life in London (except 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 a friendly relationship 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 work 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 Besayer’s engraving style was already considered old-fashioned at that time, and teaching his student in this way could not in the best possible way influence the skills he acquires in this work, as well as 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 strong impressions were created through alternation 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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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 greatest poets 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, 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 progressive 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, believed creative imagination poet-artist (Imagination) the greatest ability of man, his own poetry, generated by a huge gift of artistic imagination, has never been “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: "Everyone fair man- prophet; he expresses his opinion on public and private affairs. He says: “If you do this, the result will be such and such.” He will never say: “No matter what you do, such and such 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 classes of the London petty bourgeoisie in the 18th century, the traditions of the left-wing “heretical” sects of the times were still alive English revolution who were in opposition to the dominant church, state and social order, at the same time mystical and revolutionary. 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 Enlightenment, which he was prejudiced against; he read Shakespeare and especially Milton and in his youth was fond of 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 as an apprentice for eight years. 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 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 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.

English poet and artist, mystic and visionary.

William never attended school and was educated at home - he was taught by his mother.

My parents were Protestants and very religious people, so all my life I had a strongBlake's worldview was influenced by the Bible.

Adam and Eve near Abel's body. 1825

William Blake and the British Visionaries

Great architect. 1794

Even as a child, Blake copied Greek scenes from drawings purchased for him by his father. His parents, regretting that he did not go to school, sent him to art lessons. William's early works indicate his familiarity with the work of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser. At the same time, he begins to write poetry.

Twister of lovers. 1827

In 1778 Blake entered the Royal Academy of Arts, where he showed himself to be a devotee classic style era High Renaissance. 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.

William Blake - bright representative era of romanticism, who made a great contribution to the development of English literature of the 19th century. Being not only an original poet, but also a skilled engraver and designer, Blake was not recognized by his contemporaries.

Blake's recognition as a writer came to him much later - already in the 20th century, when the complete collection of his works was published in 1966. Until this moment, only his close friends were connoisseurs and admirers of his talent, who periodically published William’s works at their own expense.

Blake's first book, Poetical Sketches, opened new period V English literature, being the first swallow, with the appearance of which the real rise of the poetry of romanticism began in hitherto sleeping England. There was not a trace of mysticism in Poetic Sketches. Thus, the singer in the “Song of Madness” compares himself with “a demon hiding in a cloud,” and this is nothing more than a metaphor, but in the later and purely mystical works of the poet we already read about “a child sitting on a cloud” or about “my Brother John, that evil genius, shrouded in a black cloud and making loud moans."

Next book- the collection “Island on the Moon” - marks the beginning of a mystical period in Blake’s work. "Island in the Moon" is a satire on a group of amateurs and slackers who used to gather at the house of Mrs. and Mr. Matthew. At the same time, the book includes several excellent lyric poems, which were not known from other Blake manuscripts. There are other poems in it that were later included by him in the book “Songs of Innocence.”

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

Blake's poetry contains ideas that will become fundamental to romanticism, although in its contrasts an echo of the rationalism of the previous era is still felt. Blake perceived the world as eternal renewal and movement, which makes his philosophy similar to the ideas German philosophers romantic period. At the same time, he was able to see only what his imagination revealed. Blake wrote: “The world is the endless vision of Fancy or Imagination.” These words define the foundations of his work. His democracy and humanism were most fully embodied in one of the “Proverbs of Hell”: “The highest act is to put another before yourself.” Blake’s admiration for the possibilities of the human mind is constant: “One thought fills immensity (immenseness). His famous quatrain from “The Prophecies of Innocence” contains almost all the ideas of romanticism:

See eternity in one moment,
Huge world- in a grain of sand,
In a single handful - infinity
And the sky is in the cup of a flower.

An hour and an eternity, a grain of sand and the world, a handful and infinity, a flower and the sky are contrasted. At the same time, “heaven” can also be understood as something standing above the entire universe, as an indication of the Creator. But time, space, man and God are not only opposed by Blake, but also connected, as in the German romantics: each individual contains a particle of the universal: just as a grain of sand embodies a particle of infinity, so the essence is reflected in a phenomenon.

Big red dragon and sun wife. 1810

The contrast of Blake's world is especially clearly expressed in the cycles of poems “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”. Obviously, it is no coincidence that the first cycle appeared in the year of the French Revolution, and the second in the period of the Jacobin Terror. In the introduction to the first cycle, the child asks to sing a song about a lamb, and the poet writes funny songs so that everyone has a holiday in their souls. This cycle includes the poem "Lamb". Little Lamb, who created you? - the author asks in the first line. His “clothes of delight” and “tender voice” touch the poet. He sees in the lamb (lamb) intimacy with Jesus Christ:

Little Lamb,
I am telling you:
It's named after you
For He calls
Yourself as a Lamb
(Lamb).

Beautiful bright images overshadowed by Jesus appear in the first cycle. In the introduction to the second cycle, one can feel the tension and uncertainty that arose in the world during this period, the author poses a different task, “Tiger” appears in the poems. The gentle voice and wondrous clothes of the Lamb are contrasted with the fire personifying the tiger, burning “in the forest of the night”: there it is not only especially bright, but also creates a feeling of horror. The poet again asks the question, who created the night fire? Who had the power to create “terrible symmetry”? The answer remains astonishing: He who created the Lamb created you?

But for the poet the question is resolved: the Creator is able to create the entire universe, full of contradictions. For Blake, the world is one, although it consists of opposites. This idea would become fundamental to Romanticism

Brodsky, Song of Innocence

Blake's most significant lyrical collections are Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). The most romantic part of Blake’s work is his “Prophetic Books”, written in unrhymed verse (which was later imitated by W. Whitman): the poem “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” (1793), the poems “America” (1793), “Europe” (1794), “ The First Book of Juraizen" (1794), "The Book of Achania" (1795), "The Book of Los" (1795), "The Shafts, or the Four Zoas" (1804), "Milton" (1808), "Jerusalem; emanation of the giant Albion" (1820). Great importance for the development of Blake’s revolutionary romantic views, his work on the poems “ French revolution"(1790) and "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (1798).“The tyrann-busting theme runs as a menacing leitmotif throughout Blake’s Prophetic Books.

Lullaby. Music and performance: Boris Levi. Poems: William Blake.

The sinister image of Juraizen is significant - a cold, deathly cruel despot who, for the time being, enslaved all living things. The forces of fire, light, freedom—Los, Orc, Fuzon—are rebelling against him.” Blake firmly believed that the people would ultimately win, that Jerusalem would be “built on the green soil of England”—a fair, classless society of the future.

Blake had a significant influence on Western culture XX century. The song "Jerusalem" with lyrics by Blake is considered the unofficial anthem of Great Britain.

The harmony of nature, in his opinion, was only an anticipation of the higher harmony that a holistic and spiritualized personality should create. This conviction also predetermined Blake's creative principles. For romantics, nature is a mirror of the soul, for Blake it is more like a book of symbols. He does not value either the colorfulness of the landscape or its authenticity, just as he does not value psychologism. Everything around him is perceived in the light of spiritual conflicts, and primarily through the prism of the eternal conflict of mechanistic and free vision. In nature, he reveals the same passivity and mechanicalness as in social life. Therefore, ignorance, purity, spiritual purity, naturalness determine the emotional and figurative range of the first part of the cycle - for Blake it is by no means just some kind of lost Paradise. His thought is more complex - perhaps it is most fully conveyed in the image of a lost and found child, which appears in both the “Songs of Ignorance” and the “Songs of Knowledge.”

Couplet. Aphorisms. Selected works

I would sooner take as a model a wise man's mistakes, Than a fool full of victories and successes. He tried to follow the laws all his life - In the end, that fool remained a fool. Murders, as a rule, are committed not in a fit of uncontrollable passions, but out of malice and in completely cold blood.

You should learn humility from the sheep!

To make it easier to cut my hair, Holy Father?

In heaven on earth I suffered enough,

It would be better if I ended up in hell.

A pundit is someone who loves to rant, but is certainly not a simple person. If you sacrifice the particulars, what will happen to the whole?

Neither Greece and Rome, nor Babylon and Egypt stood at the origins of the Arts and Sciences, as is commonly believed; on the contrary, they pursued and destroyed them.

He who is unable to recognize the Truth at first sight will never know it.

Some people will never notice a painting unless it is hanging in a dark corner.

Tyranny is the worst of diseases: all other diseases stem from it.

He slavishly followed the laws - what a fool! And he finally became a slave to the laws.

Only those who follow this path, that is, a creative person, can go astray. And an ordinary person, even if he leads a righteous lifestyle, will never be an Artist. A genius can only manifest himself through his works.

"A friend is a rarity!" - in ancient times they loved to repeat,

And now everyone is friends: there’s nowhere to put them!

Heaven and Hell were born together.

The ability to be surprised and admire is the first step to knowledge, while skepticism and ridicule are the first step to degradation. Anyone who never ascends into the heavenly heights in his thoughts cannot be considered an Artist.

Only the mind can create monsters - the heart is incapable of this. By trying to please people with bad taste, you lose the opportunity to please people with bad taste. good taste. It is impossible to please all tastes at the same time.

The goal of the wise is clarity, but the fool is silent

The stupid intrigue will confuse him.

It is better to imitate one great master than a hundred third-rate artists.

The less said, the more eloquent it looks.

The smartest thoughts come to the minds of those who never write them down.

There are people who believe that if they do not repeat every day that the sun rises in the east, it will rise in the west.

He who is weak in courage is strong in cunning.

If you try to please your enemies, you may offend your friends. It is impossible to please everyone at once.

Difficulties mobilize, successes relax.

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. "From endless adversity, she has long lost former beauty, except for the one that gave her love and talking eyes, sparkling and black."

BookJob. WilliamBlake

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. 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 were clearly reflected in English art late XVIII- first quarter of the XIX century: the master's attraction to visionary fiction, allegorism and mystical symbolism, resort to a bold, almost arbitrary play of lines, sharp compositional solutions.

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 a world where reality and imagination merge.

An engraver and book illustrator by profession, Blake expressed his talent in poetry and in strikingly powerful mystical and symbolic paintings. Spiritual world seemed to William Blake more important than the material world, and the true artist was seen by him as a prophet, endowed divine gift penetration 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, looking back general view Based on 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 to the 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 literary in English, 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. Overall, its creative works They represent a very definite 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 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.

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Blake's works show us how deep and subtle inner world author. It was completely different from the one in which the others live, which makes it clear what Blake himself is like and what his creative mission 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 more high level human awareness, in other words, didn’t he really have spiritual self-realization to be able to create like this, to let the world around him through him 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 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.

William Blake managed to create during his life great amount 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 is complex symbolic images and allegories for a long time remained incomprehensible and was considered indecipherable. 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 is 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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