William Blake: 1757-1827 London.
Was a working class engraver and radical who very early on in his life turned against the so called “Age of Reason” (as the mid 18th Century had become known) in favour of the ‘vision’ which he described as “Determinate and Perfect”. Blake loathed the scientific, logical explanations of the universe put forward by Newton, which far from giving him reassurance that everything was logical in the world, or as Voltaire put it in his own scathing critique of contemporary society,
“All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”; had the opposite effect: it made Blake despair. For Blake reason was far outweighed by the imagination, by visions. To convey his visions to the world he sought a new form of artistic expression which led him to explore new pictorial techniques. In all his works the traditional relationship between picture and text was abandoned, and a symbolic unity of word and image was created which would not be accepted until many decades after his death. (Why does this always seem to happen? Van Gogh is another great example of this).
Throughout the 1790’s Blake was a radical (politically as well as artistically). His
Songs of Innocence (1789) and
Songs of Experience (1794) superimpose an age of innocence over a world full of corrupt laws and social inequalities where human beings are shamelessly exploited by those in power (nothing changes much does it?) This is the point which Girlabouttown didn’t mention – DS lyrics have become increasingly politicized and focus more on the external world, especially on the 9 Horses material, where he uses his artistic and creative abilities to voice his concerns over the Bush administration and the ‘Age of Terror’ we appear to be living in at the moment. Blakes’ two great epics,
Milton (1810) and
Jerusalem (1820) look toward the revival of the ancient religion of the Druids. He believed that somehow human beings must keep the flame of liberty alive within themselves. Like several other Romantic poets of the time the social and political revolution that swirled around him became internalized. In
Auguries of Innocence he wrote:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And Heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
By then Blake was living in isolation and he received very few visitors preferring the company of his wife and few select and very loyal friends (rather like DS living in his New Hampshire mountainside ashram?) He was generally looked upon as a crank. Now he is widely regarded as a genius who had the ability to write with a blinding visionary directness which is still disturbing and thought provoking.
So, Blake was controversial because: 1. He didn’t conform to the cold logical scientific theories of the ‘Age of Reason’. 2. He didn’t follow an orthodox religion which in his time and place would have been the Church of England. 3. He had visions which he believed in and he wasn’t afraid to tell people about them. 4. He devised a new method of incorporating text and image which was widely criticized at the time, but universally adopted after his death. 5. He held radical political beliefs (as Girlabouttown has already covered). 6. He was actually a very decent man with a kind heart and a soul a wide as the skies … and an absolute genius!
Hope this is OK with everyone I'm sure Silver Moon or MoodyB will remove it if it's not ....
Ha-Ha! Aint that the truth!
