In Blake's early career he was largely an
aphoristic poet. To begin looking at the man
I've selected a few aphorisms that seem to
me most creative:
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image
of truth.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
And this from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
PLATE 11
The ancient Poets animated all sensible
objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling
them by the names and adorning them with
the properties of woods, rivers, mountains,
lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their
enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius
of each city & country. placing it under
its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took
advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by
attempting to realize or abstract the
mental dieties from their objects: thus
began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods
had orderd such things. Thus men forgot
that All deities reside in the human breast.
From Plate 13: (Ellie's favorite)
I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay
so long on his right & left side? he answerd.
the desire of raising other men into a
perception of the infinite.
From Plate 14:
If the doors of perception were cleansed
every thing would appear to man as it is:
infinite. For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks
of his cavern.
Opposition is true Friendship.
For every thing that lives is Holy.
If you want to look at the whole load try Larry's Blake.
6 comments:
Hi Larrty. It's interesting the parts about the marraige of heaven and hell, and the doors ofperception ... Aldous Huxley took the titles of his books, The Doors of Perception, and Heaven and Hell from Blake, I read. They're aboyt seeing things the way they supposedly were at the beginning, mainly through the use of drugs
A bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light. Those folds - what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his own creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.
- The Doors of Perception
These excerpts remind me of Coleridge's Kubla Khan --
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
I have always liked his graphic arts better. And you can tell from his use of visual language here that he is very much a visual thinker/learner. I balme the school system for how I read Blake. We're presented Tyger Tyger and if the teacher has any integrity its paired with Little Lamb -- and taht's it. This association of Blake with trite sing-song rhymes that are pretty but not terrible deep carries with us and we miss the grand mythos and the cosmic visions that Northrup Frye speaks on.
And then I run full stride into his prints and water colours in all their evocative glory. Some of them are so well used in texts and wesbites they are immediately familiar (like the Tiger) yet not nursery rhymes -- more like Tolkien in depth and breadth of vision. And many of them illustrate the poems they never teach us -- even in university.
I agree, Blake's work is stunning.
I have enjoyed lingering on even the first of what is posted here:
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?
Blake is aware there is so much more to our existence than we can merely see, or touch, or smell, or taste, or hear.
On a friend's website, Easily Amazed
http://www.easilyamazed.com/blog/
Ashley has posted two photos on July 11 - one a close up of a leaf, another a view of a city from the sky. The similarities are uncanny. Coupled with this phrase from Blake has my world opening up to such great mystery.
I am eager to hear Larry speak more about Blake.
Crystal, Huxley's Doors of Perception completely misused Blake's figures, as a great many other people have done.
BTW we're hoping to hear about Hopkins.
David, Blake's graphic works are great, too. His best work combined the two media. Unlike you graphics are difficult for me, but I do appreciate many of Blake's picture. The Vision of the Last Judgment is graphically grotesque, but poetically quite interesting.
Meredith. Those two proximate images are astounding. Might we call them brothers or cousins, or part of the All to which we belong?
Your encouragement led write a second post on my blog called What's So Good About Blake about Blake's fundamental meaning to me.
Larrt - hopkins? I think I can manage that :-) But I'm waiting til you'ra all the way done first.
I'm done, my dear.
Post a Comment