William Blake bibliography. William Blake in translations

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 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 became 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 is a prominent representative of the 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 in English literature, being the first sign, 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."

The next book - the collection "Island in 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 beautiful lyric poems that 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 the illustrations for The 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 of German philosophers of the 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,
A 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). Of great importance for the development of Blake’s revolutionary romantic views was his work on the poems “The 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 in the 20th 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 admired 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 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.

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. 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 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 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 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). Blake's experiences while working at Westminster Abbey helped shape his 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.

This is part of a Wikipedia article used under the CC-BY-SA license. Full text of the article here →

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 of the 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 the alternation of 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 the classical neatness and clarity of the works of Michelangelo and Raphael that influenced his early work.

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 National Gallery, becomes a fan 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. Together with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake assigned big hopes to 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, intaglio printing, is simply done 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-colored watercolor paints, 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 thanks to his technology of relief imprinting, in his own work he often had to adhere to the intaglio method, a standard engraving method in the 18th century, which consisted only of making notches 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, his version of illustrations for the Canterbury Tales (under the general title The 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 the spiritual and artistic revival. 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 will later sell out great amount of his works, in particular his illustrations of the Bible, to Thomas Butts, Blake's patron, who perceived him more as a friend than as an honored artist 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 greatest achievements artist. 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.

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, as well as 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 songs of the poem).

However, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and protest against the corrupt nature of power. He also received great pleasure from the opportunity to present your personal perception of the atmosphere of the poem 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 his contribution 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 Blake's later works 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

Above all, 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." This movement, rather, was accompanied by the ideas of the early feminist movements (judging by the essays of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Blake admired) and modern movements for freedom, as well as the ideas of 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

Noticeable poet XIX century, who promoted free love was Algernon Charles Swinburne, who wrote an entire scientific work about 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 condemns 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... married love is only 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 in every possible way, 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 a 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 was a member. love affair(today members similar societies called swingers), David Worall notes that Blake expressed dismay at the community's practice of forcing women to share themselves with multiple 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 the main character of 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 what 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 in society the ideas of free love is depraved human nature, and not only ordinary intolerance in society and jealousy, but also the false and hypocritical nature of 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 sensitivity in the early and late period in creativity. Berger notes that young Blake probably follows impulse, and in more mature age his ideal true love, which is sincere and capable of making a 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 virgin birth 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 best 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 of the Last Judgment, Blake says that:

“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 and 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 mistake arising from a misconception about the relationship between body and soul; in one work he presents Satan as a "fallible condition" and as an impossibility of attaining 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 the whole world, inhabited by deities and heroes, to whom he gave unusual names: Urizen, Luva, Tarmas, Urtona, Los, Enitharmon, Achania, Enion, Rintra, Bromion, Tiriel, Har, etc. Blake's mythology has many origins, including the Bible , Greek and Roman mythology, 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 “himself is surprised at how strikingly similar the notes about him made in different periods his life by Joshua Reynolds, Locke and Bacon." 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 in 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. In my brain scientific works and studying, 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 much 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

His work was forgotten for almost a century after Blake's death, 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 Blake's work.

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 were also set to music by many popular composers, especially in the 1960s, and Blake's engravings became popular among big influence to a modern graphic novel.

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
Favorites

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: "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 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 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 the English philosophy of 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 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 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 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.

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 the end of the 18th - first quarter of the 19th centuries: 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 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 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 what distinguishes Blake's paintings from the paintings of his contemporaries, since even if the latter included certain " mysterious symbols", then all this was very naive symbolism. It was not difficult to guess the "riddle". Not so with Blake, in whose small-format paintings (this is another difference from his contemporary painters - he almost never painted "large-scale" canvases ) there are a great many symbolic messages hidden, 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. Over time, 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 of an 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. 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, 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. From an early age the Bible had a profound influence 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"