Blake biography. Return to London

English poet and artist, mystic and visionary.

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

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

Adam and Eve at the body of Abel. 1825

William Blake and the British Visionaries

Great architect. 1794

Even as a child, Blake copied Greek subjects from drawings acquired for him by his father. Parents, regretting that he did not go to school, gave him painting lessons. William's early work speaks of his exposure to the work of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser. At the same time, he began to write poetry.

The tornado of lovers. 1827

In 1778, Blake entered the Royal Academy of Arts, where he proved himself an adherent classical style era High Renaissance. Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, appeared in 1783. In the future, the poet creates several "illuminated manuscripts", engraving his poems and drawings on a copper plate with his own hand.

William Blake is a prominent representative of the era of romanticism, who made a great contribution to the development of English literature in 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 in 1966 the complete collection of his works was published. Until that moment, only his close friends who periodically published William's works at their own expense were connoisseurs and admirers of his talent.

Blake's first book, Poetic Sketches, opened a new period in English literature, being the first swallow, with the advent of which a hitherto dormant England began a real take-off of romantic poetry. There was not a trace of mysticism in the Poetic Sketches. Thus, the singer in the "Song of Madness" compares himself with "a demon lurking 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 uttering loud groans."

Next book- the collection "Island in the Moon" - marks the beginning of the mystical period in Blake's work. "Isle in the Moon" is a satire on the group of dilettantes and ne'er-do-wells who used to congregate at Mrs. and Mr. Matthew's house. At the same time, the book includes several excellent lyric poems which were not known from Blake's other manuscripts. There are other poems in it, which he later included in the book Songs of Innocence.

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

Blake's poetry contains ideas that would become fundamental to Romanticism, although its contrasts still echo the rationalism of the previous era. Blake perceived the world as an eternal renewal and movement, which makes his philosophy related to the ideas of the German philosophers of the romantic period. At the same time, he was able to see only what his imagination revealed to him. Blake wrote: "The world is an endless vision of Fantasy 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." Delight before the possibilities of the human mind is unchanged in Blake: “One thought fills the immensity (immensity). His famous quatrain from the "Divinations 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 a cup of a flower.

Hour and eternity, a grain of sand and the world, a handful and infinity, a flower and the sky are opposed. 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 are also connected, as in German romantics: each individual contains a particle of the universal: as a particle of infinity is embodied in a grain of sand, so the essence is reflected in the phenomenon.

Big red dragon and sun wife. 1810

The contrast of the world in Blake is especially clearly expressed in the cycles of poems "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience". Obviously, it was no coincidence that the first cycle appeared in the year of the French Revolution, and the second - during 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 cheerful songs so that everyone can have a holiday in their souls. This cycle includes the poem "The Lamb". Little Lamb, who made you? asks the author in the first line. His "clothes of delight", "gentle voice" touches 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
Himself the Lamb
(Lamb).

Beautiful light images overshadowed by Jesus appear in the first cycle. In the introduction to the second cycle, one can feel the tension and uncertainty that have arisen during this period in the world, the author sets a different task, the “Tiger” appears in the verses. 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 strength to create "terrible symmetry"? Surprise remains in the answer: He who created the Lamb created you?

But for the poet, the issue 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 lyric 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 W. Whitman later imitated): the poem "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" (1793), the poems "America" ​​(1793), "Europe" (1794), " The First Book of Urizen" (1794), "The Book of Ahania" (1795), "The Book of Los" (1795), "The Shafts, or 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 tyrannical theme runs like a formidable leitmotif through all of Blake's Prophetic Books.

Lullaby. Music and performance: Boris Levy. Lyrics: William Blake.

Significant is the ominous image of Yuraizen - a cold, deadly cruel despot, who for the time being enslaved all living things to himself. The forces of fire, light, freedom rise up against him—Los, Orc, Fuzon.” Blake firmly believed that the people would eventually win, that “Jerusalem” would be “built on the green soil of England,” a just, classless society of the future.

Blake had a significant impact 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 a higher harmony, which must be created by a holistic and spiritualized person. This conviction predetermined the creative principles of Blake. For romantics, nature is a mirror of the soul, for Blake it is rather a book of symbols. He does not value either the brilliance 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 above all through the prism of the eternal conflict of mechanistic and free vision. In nature, he reveals the same passivity and mechanization 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 both in the "Songs of Ignorance" and in the "Songs of Knowledge".

Couplet. Aphorisms. Selected works

As a model, I will rather take the wise man's flaws, Than a fool full of victories and successes. He tried to comply with the laws all his life - As a result, that fool remained in the cold. Murders, as a rule, are committed not in a fit of uncontrollable passions, but out of malicious intent and quite cold-bloodedly.

You should learn humility from the sheep!

To make it easier to cut my hair, holy father?

In heaven on earth I have suffered enough,

I'd rather be in hell.

A learned man is one who likes to rant, but by no means an ordinary person. Sacrifice particulars - then what will become of the whole?

Neither Greece with Rome, nor Babylon with 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 not able to know the Truth at first sight will never know it.

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

Tyranny is the worst of diseases; all other diseases spring from it.

He slavishly kept the laws - what a fool! And 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 life, will never be an Artist. A genius can only express himself through his works.

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

And now everyone is friends: they have nowhere to put them!

Heaven and Hell were born together.

The ability to be surprised and admired is the first step towards knowledge, while skepticism and mockery are the first step towards degradation. One who never ascends to heavenly heights in his thoughts cannot be considered an Artist.

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

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

A 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 those who never write them down.

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

The 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 (born William Blake; November 28, 1757, London - August 12, 1827, London) was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Almost unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered an important figure in the history of poetry and visual arts romantic era. Despite the fact that he lived all his life in London (with the exception of three years in Felpham), his work embraced both the "body of God" and "human existence itself."

Although Blake was considered insane 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. Biblical but opposed to the Church of England (as well as to 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.

The 19th-century writer William Rossetti called him "a glorious luminary", and "a man neither anticipated by predecessors, nor classified by contemporaries, nor replaced by known or supposed successors."

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 the age of ten, having learned there only to write and read, and was educated at home - he was taught by his mother. Parents were Protestants - dissenters from the Moravian Church and very religious people, so the Bible had a strong influence on Blake's worldview all his life. Throughout his life, she will remain his main source of inspiration.

Even as a child, Blake became interested in copying Greek stories from drawings that his father acquired for him. The works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Hemsker and Albrecht Dürer instilled in him a love for classical forms. Gradually, this occupation grew into a passion for painting. Parents, knowing the hot temperament of the boy and regretting that he did not go to school, gave him painting lessons. True, during these studies, Blake studied only what was interesting to him. His early work shows familiarity with the work of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser. It was then that he became interested in poetry.

In 1772, Blake was apprenticed for 7 years to the engraver James Basir. There is no evidence that there were any serious disagreements or conflicts between the teacher and the student during the training period. By the end of his studies, at the age of 21, Blake became a professional engraver.

In 1778, Blake entered the Royal Academy of Arts, where he proved 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. Catherine herself died in 1831. They didn't have children.

Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, appeared in 1783. In the future, the poet creates several "illuminated manuscripts", engraving his poems and drawings on a copper plate with his own hand.

In 1784, having survived the death of his father, Blake set up a printing press with his brother Robert and began working with the publisher Joseph Johnson, who was known for his radical ideas. The Johnson House was a meeting place for many of the "dissidents" of the time. Here Blake met the poet William Wordsworth and was carried away by the ideas of the French revolutionaries. In 1789, with the beginning 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, at the height of his 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 impact on Western culture of the 20th century. The song "Jerusalem" with lyrics by Blake is considered the unofficial anthem of Great Britain. For the Russian reader, the poet was discovered by Samuil Marshak, who worked all his life on translations of his poems.

engraver training

On August 4, 1772, Blake entered a 7-year engraving apprenticeship with the engraver James Besayer of Great Queen Street. By the end of this period, to By the time he turned 21, he was to become a professional engraver. But there was not a single achievement during the period of training, which would not be accompanied by a serious disagreement or conflict between them. However, Blake's biographer Peter Ackroyd notes that Blake would later add Basier's name to his list of art rivals, but would soon cross it out. The reason for this was that Basier's engraving style was already considered old-fashioned at that time, and teaching his student in this vein may not have the best effect on his skills in this work, as well as future recognition. And Blake knew it.

In his third year of study, Basyer sent Blake to London to copy the picturesque frescoes of Gothic churches (it is quite possible that this task was given to Blake in order to aggravate the conflict between him and James Parker, another student of Basyer). The experience gained while working at Westminster Abbey helped shape Blake's own artistic style and ideas. The then Abbey was decorated with military armor and equipment, images of memorial services, as well as numerous wax figures. Ackroyd notes that "the strongest impressions were created by alternating bright colors now appearing, now as if disappearing. Blake spent long evenings sketching the Abbey. One day he was interrupted by the guys from Westminster School, one of whom tortured Blake so much that he pushed him with force from the block 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 chants.

Royal Academy

On October 8, 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy at the Old Somerset Knocks near the Strand. Although there was no tuition fee required, during the 6-year stay at the academy, Blake had to buy his own supplies and tools. Here he rebels against what he calls "the unfinished style of fashion 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 a "single truth" and a "classical understanding of beauty." Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that "the tendency to abstract vision of this or that subject, as well as to generalize and classify, is the triumph of the human mind"; Blake, in his notes in the margins, noted that “to generalize everything,“ fit everything into one size fits all, ”means to be an idiot; focusing attention is what every feature deserves. Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent, feigned modesty, which he considered hypocrisy. Blake preferred the classical neatness and clarity that influenced Reynolds to fashionable oil paintings at the time. early work works of Michelangelo and Raphael.

Gordon riots

Blake's first biographer Alexander Gilchrist's account of an incident in June 1780 recounts how, passing Basyer's shop in Great Queen Street, Blake was almost knocked over by an angry mob that was on its way to storm Newgate Prison in London. They attacked the prison gates with shovels and pickaxes, set fire to the building and set the prisoners free. According to eyewitness accounts, 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 rebellions. They also provoked an unprecedented surge in the appearance a large number laws and their introduction by the government of George III, as well as the creation of the protection of public order, the police.

Despite Gilchrist's insistence that Blake joined the mob out of necessity, some biographers have claimed that he allegedly joined the mob on impulse, or else supported the riot as a revolutionary act. Jerome McGann takes a different view, arguing that since the riots were reactionary, Blake could only resent them.

Marriage and early career

In 1782, Blake meets John Flaxman, who will become his patron, and Catherine Boucher, who will soon become his wife. At this time, Blake is recovering from a relationship that culminated in the rejection of a marriage proposal. He details this sad story Katherine and her parents, after which he asks the girl: “Are you sorry for me?”. When Katherine replies in the affirmative, he confesses, "Then I love you." William Blake and Catherine Boucher, who was 5 years his junior, got married at St Mary's Church in Battersea. Being illiterate, instead of painting, Katherine put an X on her marriage certificate. 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 Catherine to read and write, Blake also taught her the art of engraving. Throughout his life, he will understand how priceless the help and support of this woman is for him. Among the countless failures, Katherine will not let the flame of inspiration in the soul of her husband die out and will also take part in the printing of his numerous illustrations.

Around this time, George Cumberland, one of the founders of the National Gallery, became an admirer of Blake's work. The publication of Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, is attributed to 1783. After his father's death, in 1784 William and his brother Robert opened a printing press and began working with the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. The Johnson House was a meeting place for the intelligentsia - some of the leading English dissidents of the day. Among them were the theologian and scholar Joseph Priestley, the philosopher Richard Price, the artist John Henry Fuseli, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and the American revolutionary Thomas Paine. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had high hopes for the French and American Revolutions and wore the Phrygian Cap in solidarity with the French Revolutionaries, but despaired with the years of the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France. In 1784 Blake also composed, but left unfinished, his manuscript, Island in the Moon.

Blake illustrated True Stories from Real Life by Mary Wollstonecraft. It is believed that they allegedly shared views on equality between the sexes and the institution of marriage, but still there is no indisputable evidence that they ever met at all. 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 opportunities.

Embossed imprint

In 1788, at the age of 31, Blake began experimenting with relief printing, a method he would use to design his books of pamphlets and poems, for paintings, and of course, it was he who would make 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 no text. To make an impression of an image or a certain illustration and text, the desired was applied to copper plates with a pen or brush using an acid-resistant solvent. Images could be placed right next to the text in the manner of ancient illustrated manuscripts. Then the impression was made a second time, but in acid, to emphasize the contours and cover the untouched places, which are slightly blurred, after which the relief of the image became clearer.

This is simply a turn on its head of the classical method of impression, according to which the acid is applied only to the contours, while on the plate itself, intaglio, intaglio printing is simply done. Relief printing, 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 painted by hand. watercolor paints and then stitched. Blake used this method 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

Although Blake is best known for his embossed technology, in own work he more often had to adhere to the intaglio method, the standard 18th-century engraving method, which consisted only of notching a tin plate. It was difficult and time-consuming work; in order to transfer images to plates, a lot of time, months, and even years were needed, but, as John Boydell, a contemporary of Blake, 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 work, in particular for illustrations for the Book of Job, which he completed just before his death. Blake's newly invented technique, the embossing method, has been criticized most severely, but studies conducted in 2009 pay great attention to Blake's surviving plates, including those used for the Book of Job: they indicate that he also often 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 smooth out the unwanted notch with a few blows, making it convex. This technique, typical of the engraving work of the time, is largely inferior to the faster liquid embossing process that Blake used for his relief impression, and explains why the engraving process took so long.

Later life and career

The marriage of Blake and Katherine was strong and happy until the death of the artist. Blake taught Katherine how to write, and she helped him color printed books of his poetry. Gilchrist, on the other hand, talks about the "turbulent times" of the early years of Marriage. Some biographers claimed that Blake was trying to invite a mistress to the marriage bed according to the principles of the Swedenborgian society, but scientists decided to abandon this theory, as it was just a guess. The child that William and Katherine wanted so much, Thel could have been the first child, but not surviving after conception, she 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 received a commission to illustrate the works of the young poet William Haley. 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: "Have an angel set foot on this steep mountainside?" Blake soon resented his new patron, realizing that Hayley was not at all interested in doing art, he was more busy with "hard work in business." Blake's disillusionment with his patron Hayley so influenced the former that in the 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 attacking, 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 Paper reports: "The fabrication of what happened was so obvious that the accused was immediately acquitted." Later, in the illustration to Jerusalem, Scofield will become a symbol of the "limitation of the mind," the shackles "of slavery."

Return to London

Blake returned to London in 1804 and began work on painting and illustrating Jerusalem (1804-1820), his most ambitious work. Having concealed his idea to portray the characters of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Blake turns to the merchant Robert Kromeck to sell the engraving. Realizing that Blake is always so original and would never remake a popular work, Kromek immediately commissioned Thomas Stotherd. When Blake found out that he had been deceived, he terminated the contract with Stotherd. He then opened an independent exhibition in his brother's haberdashery shop at 27 Broad Street in the London Borough of Soho. The exhibition was conceived in such a way as to sell, along with other works, their own version of the illustrations for the Canterbury stories (under the general name of the Canterbury Pilgrims). He would also write a Descriptive Catalog (1809), which would present what Anthony Blunt would call "an outstanding analysis" of Chaucer's work. Blake's book rightfully takes its place in the classic anthology of criticism of Chaucer. However, it contains a detailed explanation of Blake's other paintings.

However, the exhibition was very poorly visited, neither tempera paintings nor 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. Prior to 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 spiritual and artistic rebirth. At the age of 65, Blake took up illustrations for the Book of Job. These works would later be admired by Ruskin, who compared Blake to Rembrandt, and by Vaughan Williams, who would stage his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing, using a selection of the artist's illustrations.

Later, Blake would sell a huge amount of his work, in particular his illustrations for the Bible, to Thomas Butts, Blake's patron, who perceived him more as a friend than as a well-deserved artist whose work was recognized. Namely, this was a typical opinion about the work of Blake throughout his life.

Divine Comedy Dante

In 1826, Lynell 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 does not allow him to realize his bold idea, and only a few works in watercolor and only 7 test prints remain completed. But even they were honored with admiration:

“Despite the complexity of the content of the Divine Comedy, watercolor illustration to her, skillfully executed by Blake, are among the greatest achievements of the artist. Mastery in the field of watercolor painting in his work is taken to a whole new level, this is evidenced by the effect that Blake has achieved by 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 review 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 intention remained unrecognized. Some, however, 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 they accompany by challenging the author's opinion: for example, about the scene where Homer marches with a sword and his associates, Blake writes: "Everything in the Divine Comedy speaks of what, because of his tyrannical ideas, Dante 'did ' This World is from 'Creation' and 'Goddess of Nature', but without the participation of the Holy Spirit." It is possible that 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 distributed accusations and punishments in Hell (as evidenced by the dark humor of some of the poem's songs).

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 one's personal perception of the atmosphere of the poem visually, through illustration. Even the feeling of approaching death that appeared in Blake could not distract him from creativity, in which he was completely absorbed. At this time, he feverishly pored over Dante's Hell. It is said that he was so eager to continue to replenish the series with new sketches that he spent almost the last shilling on a simple pencil.

Death

On the day of his death, Blake worked tirelessly on illustrations for Dante. It is said that, in the end, he put aside his work and turned to his wife, who had been sitting on the bed next to him all this time, unable to hold back her tears. Looking at her, he exclaimed: “Oh, Kate, please stay still, I'll paint your portrait now. You have always been an angel to me." Having completed the portrait (now lost and not extant), Blake put aside all his brushes and accessories and began to sing hymns and ditties. At 6 pm the same day, having promised his wife that he would be with her forever, Blake departed 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 as follows: “He rested with honor. He went to the country he dreamed of seeing all his life, saying that he would find the greatest happiness there. He hoped for salvation through Jesus Christ. Just before his death, his face, as if, shone with a blissful light, and, as if possessed, he began to sing about those things that he seemed to have seen in paradise.

Katherine paid for her husband's funeral with money borrowed from Lynell. Five days after his death, on the eve of their 45th wedding anniversary, Blake was interred in the Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill Fields, where his parents were also buried. The funeral was attended by Katherine, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham, and John Linell. After her husband's death, Katherine moved into Tatham'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 off his illustrations and paintings, but did not undertake his business 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 together".

After her death, Blake's manuscripts passed to Frederick Tatham, who burned some of those he considered heretical or too politically radical. Tatham became an Irvingite, a member of one of the many fundamentalist movements in the 19th century, and therefore, without hesitation, rejected everything that "smelled of blasphemy." Elements sexual in nature in some of Blake's paintings were also unacceptable, which was the reason for their destruction by another friend of the poet, John Linell.

Since 1965, the exact location of William Blake's grave has been lost and forgotten, the tombstone stolen. Later, the memory of the poet 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 erected 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 painting still managed to figure out the place where the artist's body actually rests, and they are currently going to erect a monument at this place.

Blake was also canonized. In the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica he is listed among the saints. In 1949, the William Blake Award was established in Australia for contributions to religious art. And in 1957, a memorial was erected in Westminster Abbey in memory of Blake and his wife.

Development of Blake's worldview

Blake's later works were printed in much smaller numbers than before. And the reason for this was that now the poet began to operate with his own, invented by him mythology with its inherent complex symbolism. The recent Vintage Anthology, published by Patti Smith, draws the reader's attention specifically to the early works, as do many other critical studies, such as, for example, William Blake D. H. Gillham.

Early works, breathing the spirit of rebellion and rebellion, can be seen as a protest against dogmatic religion. This mood is particularly 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 builds a special vision of humanity, humanity redeemed by self-sacrifice and forgiveness, while demonstrating his disgust for Christianity and its traditions.

Psychoanalyst June Singer has written that Blake's later work is a development of the poet's ideas first reflected in his early works, in particular the truly humanitarian idea of ​​uniting body and soul. The final part of Blake's extended detailed edition of the study, The Corrupt Bible, refers to the later works of the poet as the "Hell Bible" mentioned in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Discussing Blake's last poem "Jerusalem".

John Middleton Murray notes the disconnect between The Marriage and the later works. Whereas early Blake focused on "the struggle between passion and reason", Blake later emphasized self-sacrifice and forgiveness as a 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 having "mutual understanding" and "mutual forgiveness".

Blake and sexuality

In addition, Blake (along with Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin) is considered the forerunner of the 19th century "free love" movement, a vast reform that began to be implemented as early as 1820. Their reform held that marriage was slavery and advocated the abolition of all state prohibitions regarding sexual activity, such as homosexuality, prostitution, and even adultery (adultery), culminating in the birth control movement at the very beginning of the 20th century. However, Blake's study was more focused on this topic at the beginning of the 20th century than today, although it is often discussed, for example by one of the scientists named Mangus Ankarsjo, who challenges his colleagues with his interpretation.

Blake became an incredibly popular part of the American counterculture of the 1960s (especially through the influence of Alain Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley). During this period, the term "free love" was used most often to express the transcendent promiscuity in relationships, in particular referring to the "summer of love" in San Francisco that remained in history. But Blake's "free love" movement emphasized Wollstonecraft's idea that state-sanctioned marriage was "legal prostitution." Rather, this movement was accompanied by the ideas of early feminist movements (according to the essays of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Blake admired) and modern freedom movements, as well as ideas of hippie culture.

In fact, Blake opposed the laws of marriage of his time and denounced the traditional moral and Christian principles that held that abstaining from adultery was a virtue for marriage. During a period of acute turmoil in the family, one of the reasons for which was Catherine's infertility, he firmly announced his intention to bring a second wife into the house. His poetry asserts that the outside world's demands for iron fidelity turn love from an attachment into a duty. 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 view of those criticized by him, 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

A notable 19th-century poet who promoted free love was Algernon Charles Swinburne, who wrote an entire scholarly work on Blake. He drew attention to the poet's understanding of marriage as slavery in such verses as "The Myrtle Tree" and devoted an entire chapter to the visions of the daughters of Albion and the image of the slave in the face of "holy and true love" free from the shackles of possessive jealousy, later called by Blake "a servile skeleton". Swinburne also traces the echo of these motifs in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which denounces the hypocrisy of the "religious depravity" of the traditionalists. Another contemporary of his, also a supporter of free love, Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was also inspired by special attention, which Blake in his work devoted to 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... marital love is only love for oneself," which, according to Blake, creates Hell while despising Heaven. In other words, everything about the same is expressed by Mary Wollstonecraft, who, like him, puts passion at the head of relationships: “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 that 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 full enough of sweet delight." Berger believes that Blake's ideas were for the most part expounded by him in the Introduction to the collection version of Songs of Innocence and Experience.

It is here for the first time that Blake 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 a whole system of values, and Blake tirelessly expressed it by all possible ways, mainly by rebelling against the bonds of marriage and acting as an ardent supporter of free love.

Spiritual motivation of 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 enigmatic and misguided judgments, the doctrine of free love was the basic and most beloved, the one on which he never ceased to insist in his poetry." She also notes that Blake did this as an edification to the "soul", believing that loyalty does not deserve anything if it is maintained through force. Much earlier in his book William Blake, Man of the New Rules (1977), Michael Davis confirms Blake's words about love taboos born out of jealousy, which deprives a person of divine union, sentencing him to cold death. Pierre Berger, in a book written in 1905 by William Blake, poet and mystic, speaks of the poet's saying that the traditional meaning of indulging in the virtue of virginity simply suffocates 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 distinguished as dominant in early works Blake, written mainly during the crisis in his family life. Other poems written during this period, such as Sweet Rose, warn against the dangers of predatory sexuality. Ankarsjo claims that Blake was part of a community with several members of which he was love affair(today members of such societies are called swingers), David Worall notes that Blake expressed dismay at community practices that forced women to share themselves with multiple residents.

This awareness of the negative side of sexuality has led the scholar Mangus Ankarsjo to examine the subpar interpretations of Swinburne and others who have written about Blake as a proponent of free love. We see that the main character of the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, an ardent defender of free love, becomes more cautious towards the end of the poem, because the awareness of the dark side of sexuality has come to her. “Is it really that which is able to drink another until the day, like a sponge absorbing water, is love?” Ankarsjo also notes that Mary Wollstonecraft, inspired by Blake, also developed a sense of caution about sexual intercourse in her later life. S. Foster Damon wrote that in Blake's understanding, the main obstacle to inculcating the ideas of free love in society 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 1928 book The Life of William Blake mentions Blake's suggestion that marriage should, in practice, allow the enjoyment of love, but in reality this is often not the case, because being betrothed , in the understanding of the couple, weakens all joy. Pierre Berger also analyzes early mythological verses such as Ahania, which states that the laws of marriage, being degenerated by pride and jealousy, are nothing but the consequences of the fall of humanity. The contemporary scholar Mangus Ankarsjo believes that Blake does not fully approve of a person’s indulgence of his own weaknesses, complete disregard for the laws, citing as an example the heroine Leuta, who finds herself in a world fallen from the experience of free love, in a world that would not interfere with some restrictions.

Blake's subsequent manuscripts show his renewed interest in Christianity, and although he radically reinterprets the Christian modality to include sensual pleasure as well, much less emphasis is placed on sexual freedom, the theme of some of his early works. poems. In later writings there is a motif of self-denial, which must have come from love rather than from authoritarian coercion. Berger (more than Swinburne) is interested in changing his attitude towards sensibility in the early and late period of his work. Berger notes that the young Blake is probably on impulse, and in his later years his ideal of true love, which is sincere and capable of making sacrifices, is already well formed. Married love, based, he believes, on selfishness and jealousy, is still a problem for Blake. The mystical celebration of the senses continues in the last poem Jerusalem "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 final verses that Blake renounces his belief in immaculate conception Christ. However, the later poems also emphasize forgiveness, salvation, and the authenticity of emotions and feelings as the foundation of human relationships.

Religious views

While Blake's attacks on mainstream religion were shocking for his time, his rejection of religiosity did not mean that he did not accept religion as such. His view of Christianity is seen 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 the Law, Houses of Toleration are built from the bricks of Religion. The caterpillar defiles the best leaves, the priest defiles the purest joys.”

In his The Everlasting Gospel, Blake presents Jesus not as a philosopher, nor as a figure of the Savior, but as a genuine creative personality, standing above all dogma, logic, and even morality:

He preached courtesy

Humility, meekness, but not flattery.

He triumphantly carried his cross.

That is why Christ was executed.

Antichrist, flattering Jesus,

Could cater to every taste

Would not revolt synagogues,

Did not drive merchants over the threshold

And, meek as a tame donkey,

Caiaphas would have found mercy.

God did not write in his tablet,

To humiliate ourselves.

humiliating myself,

You humiliate the god...

After all, you yourself are a particle of eternity.

Pray for your own humanity.

Translation by S. Ya. Marshak

For Blake, Jesus is a symbol of life relationships and the unity of perfection and humanity: “Everything was expressed 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 the Doomsday Vision, Blake says that:

“People are admitted to Heaven not because they<обуздали и>mastered their Passions, or had no Passions at all, but because they. Cultivated in themselves their Understanding. The Treasures of Heaven are not the Negation of the Passions, but the Essence of the Intellect from which all these Passions emanate.<Необузданные>, in his Eternal Glory."

Original: "Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have governed by 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".

There are also lines in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell that condemn 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 an Action and comes from the Body, and the Thought is attached to the Action and serves as its shell.

Action - Eternal Delight.

Blake does not subscribe to the idea of ​​the separation of the Soul from the Body from each other, which obeys the law of the soul, but considers the body as the basis, and the soul as a continuation, which comes from the “ability to recognize” feelings. Thus, the renunciation of bodily desires, and the special emphasis that Christianity places on this point, is a double blunder arising from a misunderstanding of the relationship between body and soul; in one work, he presents Satan as an "erroneous state" and as the impossibility of gaining salvation.

Blake contrasted sophistry with theological thought that justifies pain, admits evil, and forgives injustice. He had an aversion to self-denial, which he associated with religious repression and, in particular, with sexual abstinence: "Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by helplessness." "He who desires something, but does nothing for it, breeds a plague." For him, the concept of "sin" is a trap for human desires (the wild rose from the Garden of Love), he believes that the restriction in respect for a moral code imposed from the outside is contrary to the spirit of man and his being:

Instead of fragrant flowers

Tombstones, fences appeared to me,

And priests in black, knitting with thorns

My desires and joys.

He did not adhere to the doctrine according to which the Lord the Creator is God, a being separate and perfect in his being; this becomes clear from the words about Jesus Christ: “He - 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 mythology

Blake created his own mythology, which he set out in his prophetic books. This is a whole world inhabited by deities and heroes, to whom he gave unusual names: Urizen, Luva, Tarmas, Urthona, Los, Enitharmon, Ahania, Enion, Rintra, Bromion, Tiriel, Har, etc. Blake's mythology has many origins, in including the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, Scandinavian Eddas, treatises of theosophists, occultists and religious mystics such as Agrippa Nettesheim, Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme, etc.

Blake and Enlightenment Philosophy

Blake had a complex relationship with Enlightenment philosophy. Relying on his own fantastical 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 also considered Locke and Newton "the true progenitors of Joshua Reynolds' aesthetic". In England at that time, there was a fashion for mezzotint, a print that was made by applying thousands of tiny dots to the surface, depending on the features of the depicted. Blake traced the analogy between this and Newton's theory of light. Blake never used this technique, choosing to develop the method of engraving in liquid media in particular, insisting that lines and strokes are not formed by chance, a line is a line in its subdivision, whether it is straight or curved.

Despite opposing Enlightenment principles, Blake nevertheless arrived at a linear aesthetic that was more traditional for Neoclassicism, in particular the engravings of John Flaxman, than for the engravings of Romanticism, to which Blake was often referred.

At the same time, Blake was viewed as an Enlightenment poet and artist 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 Fry, speaking of Blake's constancy and firm position in his views, notes that Blake "is himself surprised at how strikingly similar the records of him made at different periods of his life by Joshua Reynolds, Locke and Bacon." Consistency in his beliefs was in 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 (although they are infinitely different)." In one poem, written from the point of view of a black boy, white and black bodies are described as shady groves and clouds that exist only until they melt, "to be illuminated by the rays of love":

That's what my mother used to say.

English boy listen: if you

You will flutter out of a white cloud, and I

Get rid of this blackness

I will shield you from the heat of the day

And I will stroke the golden strand,

When, bowing my bright head

In the shade of the tent you will rest.

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 traced in 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 argued that early years he saw visions. The first of these happened in childhood when he was 4, and according to the story, the young artist "saw God" when He stuck his head out the window, causing Blake to scream in horror. At the age of 8-10 years in Peckham Rye, in London, Blake, as he himself claimed, saw "a tree, literally covered with angels, from whose bright wings sparkles fell like stars on the branches of the tree." According to a 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 be spanked for lying if not for his mother's intervention. While all the evidence suggests that Blake's parents were very supportive of their son, it was the mother who always did it. Some of Blake's early paintings adorned the walls of her room. On another occasion, when Blake was watching mowers at work, he saw angelic figures among them.

Blake's stories about his visions impressed the artist and astrologer John Varley so much that he asked Blake to capture them on paper in his presence. The result was a series of "Ghost Heads", 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, Mohammed, Merlin, Boudicca, Charlemagne, Ossian, Robin Hood, Edward I, Black Prince Edward III, John Milton, Voltaire, and the Devil, Satan, "Cancer" , "The Man Who Built the Pyramids", "The Man Who Taught Blake to Painting", "The Head of the Ghost Flea" and many others. On the basis of the latter, Blake created one of his most famous paintings, The Ghost of the Flea.

Blake will see visions throughout his life. They will often be associated with religious themes and episodes from the Bible, and will inspire him in his later spiritual work and quest. Undoubtedly, the religious idea is central in his work. God and Christianity are the intellectual center of his works, a source of inspiration for the artist. On top of that, Blake believed 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 September 21, 1800, Blake writes: Felpham is a great place to study because there is more spirituality here than in London. Paradise here opens from all sides of the Golden Gates. My wife and sister feel good, waiting for Neptune's embrace... For my work, I am more honored in paradise for the work that I just conceived. In my brain, scientific work and study, my rooms are filled with books and old paintings that I painted in the years of eternity, long before I was born; and these works are bliss for the Archangels.

William Wordsworth remarked: "There was no doubt that this man was mad, but there is something in his obsession that interests me much more than the mind of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."

D. S. Williams (1899-1983) said that Blake was a romantic with critical eye on the world, he also confirmed that the Songs of Innocence were created as a vision of the ideal, the spirit of utopia is present in the Songs of Experience.

General cultural influence

For almost a century after Blake's death, his work was forgotten, but his reputation began to move as if by inertia in the 20th century, being revived by critics John Middleton Marie and Northrup Fry, and also thanks to 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 about human nature they were great ahead of their time and even were in many ways similar to the theories of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, although he himself did not perceive Blake's works at a higher level, considering them to be more an artistic product than an authentic representation of unconscious processes at 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 Alain Ginsberg and composer, poet and performer Bob Dylan. Most of the main ideas of Philip Polman's fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials" are borrowed from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". Blake's poems have also been set to music by many popular composers, especially in the 1960s, and Blake's engravings have had a great influence on the modern graphic novel.

Name: William BlakeWilliam Blake

Age: 69 years old

Activity: poet, painter, engraver

Family status: was married

William Blake: biography

The big is seen from a distance. These Yesenin words fully characterize the attitude of contemporaries and descendants towards William Blake. Only in the 20th century, the artist, poet and philosopher was awarded the title of an outstanding figure in English art and literature. During his lifetime, he was considered possessed by the devil.

Blake's main source of creativity was the Bible. But the author of the symbolic "Great Architect of the Universe", who lived in the era of a scientific breakthrough, did not like any church and eventually created his own mythology - a combination of the principles of the Enlightenment with religious dogmas.

Childhood and youth

William Blake was born in London in November 1757 and lived all his life in the British capital, not needing the external influence of the environment - the master was content with internal experiences.

The way his biography developed, William owes to his parents, who did not restrict the freedom of the heirs. My father kept a shop in Soho, where he sold fabrics. The mother raised children, who were born 7, but two died as babies. The family for that time was quite educated, although with some peculiarities. If we were talking about books, then the works of the naturalist Emmanuel Swedenborg and the mystic Jacob Boehme were read in the house. Blake's passion for painting began with reproductions of paintings, and which were purchased specifically for his son.

At the age of 10, William went to art school, then worked part-time in an engraving shop, while learning how to print on hard surfaces. Sketches in Westminster Abbey forever settled in the heart of the future genius a love for religious motives and the Gothic direction.

In 1778, Blake entered the Royal Academy of Arts, but did not graduate. The reason was the young artist's rejection of the eclectic style preached by teachers and the desire to drive students into a strict framework. The young man was closer to the classics of the High Renaissance. After leaving the walls of the academy, William began to earn money by making engravings based on other people's drawings. Blake gave 40 years of his life to this kind of art.

In 1784, having received an inheritance after the death of his father, William, brother Robert and partner James Parker opened a printing house that produced book illustrations.

Painting

In the paintings of William Blake, in addition to religiosity, there is a craving for mythology and symbolism, bordering on fantasy. The artist drew parallels between the Holy Trinity and the union of religion, imagination and art: both there and there, parts of a single whole do not exist separately.

To decipher the messages hidden in the paintings, the viewer will need knowledge about the time in which the creator lived, and the Holy Scriptures. According to legend, William saw God in early childhood. When he got older, he talked about the angels who stuck around the tree. Later the visions were joined by voices. Perhaps this prompted Blake to invent illuminated printing, in which the image was accompanied by poetry.

The works of the famous Briton are characterized by closed volumes and forms, in some places they are clearly graphic, violating the generally accepted laws of composition construction. An example of this is the illustrations of Revelation.

The writings of the apostle told about the number of the devil 666, 4 horsemen and the beast of the Apocalypse, the harlot of Babylon and the second coming. It is not surprising that such a colorful narrative prompted many artists to visualize the characters.

Blake also presented his vision. In 1805 and 1810 he wrote 2 versions of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. The first painting is kept in the National Gallery in Washington, the second - in the Brooklyn Museum. In both, the body of the monster immediately catches the eye, however main character, if you follow the content of the "Apocalypse", - a woman lying in the lower part of the canvas, personifying for someone - the Church, and for someone - the Mother of God.

According to William, "the light of other worlds" helped in the creation of Jacob's Dream. The central figure of the painting "Joyful Day, or the Dance of Albion" is a combination of the image of Christ and the Vitruvian man. Using watercolors and ink, in 1805 Blake painted an amazingly delicate, almost monochrome work, Angels Guarding Christ in the Tomb. "Adam Names Animals", exhibited at the Pollock Museum in Glasgow, is already executed on a wooden board in the tempera technique.

The second title of the painting Great Architect”- “Ancient of days”, as God was designated in world religions. The author gave him the name Urizen. The engraving is an illustration for the book "Europe: Prophecy". In Blake's mythology, Urizen is the bearer of a negative, black force that seeks to make humanity uniform, for good reason, because he measures something with a compass.

Psychoanalysts, examining the canvas "Hecate", see in it a refusal to own space, confusion, and art historians - another violation of the canons of painting: the goddess of witchcraft is depicted as 3 separate figures instead of traditional connected backs. And secret signs are everywhere: an owl, which was considered a symbol of wisdom, and later of evil, an insidious serpent with knowledge, Hecate herself, looking into the eyes of the tempter, but she keeps her hand on the Bible.

Literature

The poetry and prose of William Blake, according to a number of experts, also do not fit into the generally accepted rules, this time of English philology. Nevertheless, for two centuries now, fans of romanticism have been reading them, parsing them into quotes, and especially colorful lines have turned into aphorisms:

"Cunning is the power of the cowardly"

"Every question asked has an answer"

William Blake's poem "Tiger, Tiger..."

The first collection of poems called "Poetic Sketches" was published in 1783. Then came the optimistic “Songs of Innocence” and the “Songs of Experience” clouded by the bitterness of reality. William designed illustrations for books with his own hand, and both of these works were also in one book, as a symbol of opposite states of mind. The poem "Joy-Child" was contrasted with the image of the "Sick Rose", "Echo in the Green" contrasted with the "Poison Tree", "Lamb" with the "Tiger".

The composition "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is a kind of answer to the poet and thinker John Milton to the questions indirectly asked in the poem about "Paradise Lost". To her, William released a cycle watercolor works. The highest ability inherent in man, according to Blake - imagination, is given by Hell.

Paradise represents rationality and order. Evil becomes a force that changes the world, while Good in the traditional sense is passive and reactionary. But they cannot exist alone, and only their unity, that very “marriage” gives rise to a holistic, spiritual personality.

Being baptized by the Anglican Church, William Blake resisted religious dogmas, ridiculed humility and repentance. On the other hand, the poems “On the Sorrow of the Neighbor” and “The Divine Image” are a hymn to the presence of God in the fate of every person, in joyful and sad moments.

Personal life

In the personal life of William Blake, there were much less searches and throwing than in the creative. The poet met his wife Catherine Boucher at a time when he was experiencing the collapse of a previous relationship - the girl refused to marry. Blake married his chosen one in 1782.

In the person of his wife, William found a loving and true friend, with understanding related to the fact that her husband

“There is a wealth of thoughts, delights of the spirit, a sound mind ... But the earthly treasury is poor.”

Katherine, who could not even sign a marriage certificate, learned to read and write under William's supervision, and to make engravings. The woman will become Blake's inspiration in times of failure and an assistant in illustrating books.

Death

William Blake died in August 1827 in poverty. Until the last days, the artist worked on illustrations for the poem The Divine Comedy. Blake devoted a total of 102 drawings to this work of the Italian thinker, many preliminary sketches.

Like with, the last refuge of the British genius was the common grave at the Bunhill Fields cemetery in London. After the Second World War, the authorities decided to lay out a park on this site. Since no one knew about the exact place of burial, they limited themselves to a commemorative plate on which they wrote that “the remains of Blake and his wife lie nearby.”

In the 21st century, fans of William's work spent 2 years establishing a specific burial place. Ancient church books and the knowledge of modern landscape designer Carol Garrido came to the rescue. Exploring every centimeter, enthusiasts have found the exact location.

The London Blake Society announced a collection of donations for a monument to the poet, caring people transferred almost $ 40 thousand. And in August 2018, connoisseurs of romanticism found a place of pilgrimage. On the grave of William Blake there is a white marble slab with the name, dates of life and death and the inscription: “Poet. Artist. Prophet". A photo of the headstone was published by The Guardian.

• In 1949, the Australian authorities established the William Blake Award for contributions to religious art.
• Many years after his death, Blake was canonized by the Gnostic Catholic Church, despite his anti-religious stance.

• In 1931, the ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing was staged at the London Old Vic, the first ballet created by an entirely British creative team. The ballet is based on the Book of Job from the Bible and was inspired by William Blake's illustrated edition published in 1826.
• The lines “Tiger, tiger, burning fear, You burn in the night forests. Whose immortal gaze, loving, Created a terrible you? sound in the series "Mentalist" with and.

Quotes

“Engraving is a craft that I learned, I should not have tried to live by other labor. My heavens are brass, and my earth is iron."

"My works are more famous in heaven than on earth."

“Life is Action and comes from the Body, and Thought is attached to Action and serves as its shell.”

"Do not think that you are smarter than others, although others think that they are smarter than you - and this is your advantage over them."

“Exchanging for little things, you risk losing the whole.”

Paintings

• 1786 - "Oberon, Titania and Puck with dancing fairies
• 1793 - The Gates of Paradise. A series of illustrations for the poem "Paradise Lost"
• 1794 - "Joyful Day or Dance of Albion"
• 1795 - "Isaac Newton"
• 1805 - "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun"
• 1810 - "Blake's Cottage"
• 1820 - "The Ghost of a Flea"
• 1820 - "The Sun in anger"
• 1827 - "Antaeus lowering Dante and Virgil into the last circle of hell"
• 1827 - "Whirlwind of Lovers"

Bibliography

• 1783 - "Poetic Sketches"
• 1789 - "Songs of Innocence"
• 1792 - "Song of Freedom"
• 1793 - "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
• 1794 - "Songs of experience"
• 1794 - "Europe. Prophecy"
• 1809 - "Milton"

William Blake (William Blake) English poet, artist, philosopher. Born November 28, 1757 in London.

Biography of Wilm Blake

William Blake was the second child in a large family of knitwear merchants. The father's shop was on the ground floor of the house where they lived.

He received his primary education from his mother, who taught him to read and write, and also managed to instill a love of literature. From childhood, William was instilled with a love for the work of the Renaissance, which he carried through his whole life.

His artistic abilities showed up early and at the age of 10, his parents sent him to an art school. And after the art school - was hired as an apprentice in the engraving (1772).

By the age of twenty-one, he had become a professional engraver after seven years of training. During this period, Blake develops a keen interest in poetry. Later, the doors of the Royal Academy of Arts (1778) opened before William, which he never managed to finish. Blake regarded this failure as an impetus for independent activity, and he began to earn a living by book engravings from drawings by other artists.

Blake's work

In 1784, William Blake opened his own engraving shop. At that time of his life, he discovers for himself the technology of "illuminated", "decorative" printing - a new way of engraving for that time. Subsequently, he will decorate his poems with drawings made in this particular technique.

In 1789 Blake completes work on the cycle of poems "Songs of Innocence", which reflected the attraction to the divine theme. A year later, from under his pen, the book "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" appears. And in 1793, Blake's five books were published at once: Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America, Europe, The Gates of Paradise, and The Book of Urizen. Somewhat later, "Songs of Experience" appear. This creative period of William Blake is often called "rebellious". Having passed it, he will no longer deviate from religious dogma and beliefs in God. Disputes with the Almighty will remain only on the pages of his early works.

By the end of the 18th century, Blake's style was finally taking shape, becoming recognizable. His works, however, never find recognition among contemporaries. Traditional education did not impose established canons and forms in art on Blake, perhaps this is where the origins of his creative freedom should be sought. Ignoring the established foundations, using approaches in the works that run counter to the established tradition, caused the rejection of Blake by his contemporaries.

He often said to himself: "I am better known for my works in Heaven than on earth." Despite this circumstance, William Blake resisted the temptation to stop writing. He still followed his path in art. Mozart bequeathed: “Music, even in the most terrible dramatic situations, must remain music” ... Blake never deviated from this commandment of the Artist in his work, albeit not so close to music. Since 1804, Blake has been working on the engraving of his poems. From now on, he is engaged in illustrating all his works. In 1822, Blake created a cycle of watercolors illustrating the poem "Paradise Lost" by John Milton. The magnificence of his work will be appreciated only after a year.

Later, he takes up illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy. This work will be the last for Blake. He will not be destined to complete it. However, the images that have come down to posterity amaze with the perfection of technology and purity of thought. Many call them the pinnacle of Blake's work.

William Blake's earthly journey ended in 1827. He was buried, as once Mozart: in a common, poor grave. And the place of his burial by the dictates of time was lost forever.

There will be a lot of controversy about Blake's work, his works will be said to be inspired by the devil, many of them will serve as food for an almost omnivorous fire ... But, nevertheless, Blake's name will gain immortality on the August day of 1827.

The legacy of William Blake, over time, will be rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites. And it, which combines an unbridled flight of creative imagination, innovative ideas, subtle symbolism, reminiscences of the great classics, will have an impact on the art of the 19th-20th centuries. The work of Blake, who worked for poetry in life, inspired more than one generation of the art world. It remains a source of inspiration even in our time, far from romanticism.

Blake is attracted not only by his work, but also by his enigmatic personality. His strange and extraordinary creative destiny attracts him. Its main feature creative life was that Blake was neither a special poet, nor a special artist, nor a special philosopher. Moreover, his literary works very often go against the norms of literary in English, painting often contradicts generally accepted canons, and his philosophy is not always consistent and logical.

However, if you take all his works together, they are something grandiose, something fascinating and majestic. Blake can be appreciated primarily for the fact that he tried to penetrate into many laws of this universe, to understand and teach spirituality itself.

Antaeus lowering Dante and Virgil into the last circle of Hecate's Hell. Night of Joy Enitharmon Joyful Day or Dance of Albion

He did this by writing literary works (in verse and prose), supplementing them for better assimilation with numerous illustrations. Such a literary device, which combines philosophy, literature and painting, has never been seen before.

He is special, and even after William Blake, few people were capable of such creative devotion (in particular, Kahlil Gibran is called a follower of William Blake's techniques).

However, it remains to be recognized that it is precisely such an extraordinary method of creative self-expression that suits William Blake as effectively as possible in order to express his prophetic ideas, to express his enlightened view of the purity of spirituality.

Blake's works testify to us how deep and subtle inner world author. We are clearly aware that a person who has reached this level of self-expression was able to go beyond the usual conditional framework of human awareness, beyond the work of the senses and the mind. Only the person who is completely absorbed in the desire for spirituality, for its laws, its being, is capable of such a liberation from conventions, an in-depth perception of reality. Such is the level of William Blake's worldview.

This raises a completely logical question: was he himself endowed with something special, allowing him to see the world with different eyes - more complex and diverse, was he not at a higher level of human awareness, in other words, did he really possess spiritual self-realization in order to be able to create in such a way, to pass the world around you through yourself?

He was not a poet "for everyone" and, apparently, did not aspire to this. He wrote for those who, like himself, were concerned about the topics of spirituality.

He believed in the divine predestination of the poet, that inspiration was granted from above, he believed in his mission as a Prophet, called to open to people "eyes turned inward." Be that as it may, William Blake walked it to the end in order to light the way for those who would follow him. The result of his path was his works as guiding beacons for seekers who want to rise from inert and blind ideas, beliefs and conventions to the heights of Spirituality.

Bibliography

• Donald Ault (1974). Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton. University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-03225-6.
• Jacob Bronowski (1972). William Blake and the Age of Revolution. Routledge and K. Paul. ISBN 0-7100-7277-5 (hardcover) ISBN 0-7100-7278-3 (pbk.)
• Jacob Bronowski (1967). William Blake, 1757-1827; a man without a mask. Haskell House Publishers.
• G.K. Chesterton (1920s). William Blake. House of Stratus ISBN 0-7551-0032-8.
• S. Foster Damon (1979). A Blake Dictionary. Shambhala. ISBN 0-394-73688-5.
• Northrop Frye (1947). Fearful Symmetry. Princeton Univ Press. ISBN 0-691-06165-3.
• Peter Ackroyd (1995). Blake. Sinclair Stevenson. ISBN 1-85619-278-4.
• E.P. Thompson (1993). Witness against the Beast. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22515-9.
• Victor N. Paananens (1996). William Blake. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7053-4.
• George Anthony Rosso Jr. (1993). Blake's Prophetic Workshop: A Study of The Four Zoas. Associated University Press. ISBN 0-8387-5240-3.
• G.E. Bentley Jr. (2001). The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08939-2.
• David V. Erdman (1977). Blake: Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-486-26719-9.
• James King (1991). William Blake: His Life. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-07572-3.
• W.J.T. Mitchell (1978). Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-691-01402-7.
• Peter Marshall (1988). William Blake: Visionary Anarchist ISBN 0-900384-77-8
• Dr. Malkin, A Father's Memories of his Child, (1806)
• Alexander Gilchrist, Life and Works of William Blake, (1863, second edition, London, 1880)
• Algernon Swinburne, William Blake: A Critical Essay, (London, 1868)
• W. M. Rosetti (editor), Poetical Works of William Blake, (London, 1874)
• Basil de Selincourt, William Blake, (London, 1909)
• G. B. Russell, Engravings of William Blake, (1912)
• B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil, (1903), contains essays.
• Joseph Viscomi (1993). Blake and the Idea of ​​the Book, (Princeton UP). ISBN 0-691-06962-X.
• David Weir (2003). Brahma in the West: William Blake and the Oriental Rennaissance, (SUNY Press)
• Sheila A Spector (2001). "Wonders Divine": the development of Blake's Kabbalistic myth, (Bucknell UP)
• Jason Whittaker (1999). William Blake and the Myths of Britain, (Macmillan)
• Irving Fiske (1951). "Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake." (Shaw Society)