Eternity's Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake
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William and Catherine were both buried in a Dissenting cemetery, the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, but the exact location is unknown. As Gilchrist noted, they were interred in inexpensive “common graves” that would be reused for later occupants.18
Blake’s Greatness
Blake’s questing imagination has never ceased to startle and inspire. The novelist Joyce Cary made his character Gulley Jimson say, “I took Blake’s Job drawings out of somebody’s bookshelf and peeped into them and shut them up again. Like a chap who’s fallen down the cellar steps and knocked his skull in and opens a window too quick, on something too big.” A character in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame says, “The old questions, the old answers—there’s nothing like them!” Blake criticized the old answers unsparingly, but he never stopped asking the old questions. What is remarkable in him, T. S. Eliot said, “is a peculiar honesty, which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is peculiarly terrifying.”19
To speak personally, after half a century of living with Blake, I am still in awe of the depth and range of his genius. He honors the simplicity of childhood without ever condescending. He exposes hypocrisy and exploitation with challenging severity. He movingly dramatizes the turbulent dynamics of the psyche. He celebrates a spiritual connection with the world that is utterly without false piety or sentimentality. And he achieves all of this not in a single art but in two.
Like the Zen masters, Blake urges us to put aside preoccupation with self and to learn to be. If we could experience each moment in all its fullness, we would indeed perceive eternity in an hour. That there is a world in each grain of sand is a truth both spiritual and scientific. “As William Blake recognized,” a geologist writes, “every sand grain has a story to tell, of the present and the past.”20
Blake sought universal constants, but he insisted also on the primacy of each individual within those larger forms.
How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the bounding line and its infinite inflexions and movements? What is it that builds a house and plants a garden, but the definite and determinate?
Above all Blake teaches us, with his words and images, to see—“through the eye and not with it.” The birds that chirp and flutter at the periphery of our ordinary consciousness are just generic birds. Not so for Blake, and not so for us if we will open our imaginations to his:
How do you know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?21
1. Pity
2. A Sunshine Holiday
3. Songs of Innocence, title page, copy Z, plate 3
4. Infant Joy, Songs of Innocence, copy Z, plate 25
5. The Blossom, Songs of Innocence, copy Z, plate 11
6. The Chimney Sweeper, Songs of Innocence, copy Z, plate 12
7. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, title page, copy C, plate 2
8. The Sick Rose, Songs of Experience, copy Z, plate 39
9. The Tyger, Songs of Experience, copy F, plate 42
10. The Tyger, Songs of Experience, copy Z, plate 42
11. Albion Rose
12. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, title page, copy D, plate 1
13. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, copy D, plate 21
14. America: A Prophecy, Preludium, copy M, plate 3
15. Europe: A Prophecy, title page, copy E, plate 2
16. America: A Prophecy, copy M, plate 9
17. Europe: A Prophecy, copy A, plate 10
18. Newton
19. Hyperion
20. Milton, copy D, plate 16
21. The Book of Urizen, copy A, plate 14
22. The Book of Urizen, copy F, plate 17
23. The Song of Los, copy E, plate 4
24. Milton, copy D, plate 47
25. Jerusalem, copy E, plate 6
26. Jerusalem, copy E, plate 70
27. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, copy G, plate 3
28. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, copy G, plate 6
29. The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli
30. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, frontispiece, copy G, plate 2
31. Satan Watching the Caresses of Adam and Eve
32. The Book of Urizen, copy C, plate 18
33. Milton, copy C, plate 39
34. Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car
35. Jerusalem, copy E, plate 2
36. The Ancient of Days, Europe, frontispiece, copy E, plate 1
37. The Book of Urizen, copy F, plate 5
38. Elohim Creating Adam
39. Jerusalem, copy E, plate 76
40. Jerusalem, copy E, plate 99
CHRONOLOGY
1757
born in London, November 28, at 28 Broad Street, Carnaby Market
1762
birth of Robert Blake
1768
enters Henry Pars’s drawing school in the Strand
1772
begins seven-year apprenticeship with James Basire, Great Queen Street
1779
briefly attends Royal Academy Schools, forms friendships with John Flaxman and George Cumberland
1780
begins commercial engraving for the bookseller Joseph Johnson; caught up in the Gordon Riots
1782
marries Catherine Boucher (b. 1762)
1783
Poetical Sketches privately printed, not offered for sale
1784
briefly in business as print seller with James Parker; acquires rolling press
1785
manuscript satire An Island in the Moon
1787
death of Robert Blake; meets Henry Fuseli
1788
first experiments in illuminated printing
1789
attends first General Conference of the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church; publishes Songs of Innocence and The Book of Thel; writes Tiriel but doesn’t engrave or publish it
1790
moves to 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth; begins The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (date of publication uncertain, possibly as late as 1792)
1791
conventionally printed proof sheets for the first book of a projected poem The French Revolution, never continued or published; engraves illustrations for John Stedman’s antislavery memoir
1793
Visions of the Daughters of Albion; America: A Prophecy; For Children: The Gates of Paradise; Albion Rose
1794
Europe: A Prophecy; The [First] Book of Urizen; Songs of Experience (usually sold in the combined volume Songs of Innocence and of Experience)
1795
The Song of Los; The Book of Los; The Book of Ahania; twelve large color prints, including Newton and Elohim Creating Adam; stops issuing illuminated books until 1802
1797
new edition of Edward Young’s Night-Thoughts, with illustrations designed and engraved by Blake; watercolor illustrations for the poems of Thomas Gray; begins work on the manuscript of Vala, later retitled The Four Zoas
1798
begins annotating Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses
1799
paints fifty Bible illustrations for Thomas Butts, exhibits two of them at the Royal Academy
1800
moves to Felpham, Sussex, does various artistic jobs for William Hayley and his friends
1803
encounter with the soldier Schofield, indicted for sedition; returns to London; settles at 17 South Molton Street
1804
tried for seditious utterance, and acquitted; begins work on Milton
1805
designs illustrations for Robert Blair’s The Grave, but the publisher, Robert Cromek, gives the commission instead to Louis Schiavonetti
1807
first of a series of paintings of the Last Judgment; watercolor series on Paradise Lost; painting of The Canterbury Pil
grims
1808
exhibits two watercolors at the Royal Academy; possible beginning of work on Jerusalem
1809
completes a set of illustrations for Milton’s Paradise Lost; has small exhibition of paintings at his brother James’s shop, 28 Broad Street; the exhibition and its accompanying Descriptive Catalogue are savagely reviewed by Robert Hunt in the Examiner
1810
Public Address; publishes engraving of The Canterbury Pilgrims
1811
first three copies of Milton (first publication of a new work since 1795)
1815
engravings of china designs for Josiah Wedgwood’s catalog
1816
watercolor illustrations for Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso
1818
fourth and final copy of Milton; For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise; watercolor Book of Job illustrations for Butts; meets John Linnell
1819
begins drawing “visionary heads” for John Varley
1820
first three copies of Jerusalem
1821
final two copies of Jerusalem, including the only colored one; moves to 3 Fountain Court, the Strand
1824
watercolor illustrations for Pilgrim’s Progress; meets Samuel Palmer and the other “Ancients”
1825
begins Dante illustrations for Linnell; conversations with Crabb Robinson
1826
Illustrations of the Book of Job, commissioned by Linnell; engraving of the Laocoön statue surrounded by aphoristic texts
1827
dies, August 12, probably of gallbladder and liver failure; buried in Bunhill Fields, the Dissenters’ cemetery
1831
death of Catherine Blake; buried next to her husband
SHORT TITLES
Blake Records
G. E. Bentley Jr., Blake Records, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)
Blake Trust
David Bindman, gen. ed., The Illuminated Books of William Blake, 6 vols. (Princeton, NJ: The William Blake Trust and Princeton University Press, 1991–95): vol. 1: Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion; vol. 2: Songs of Innocence and of Experience; vol. 3: The Early Illuminated Books; vol. 4: The Continental Prophecies; vol. 5: Milton, A Poem; vol. 6: The Urizen Books
E
David V. Erdman, ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, with commentary by Harold Bloom, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)
Gilchrist
Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, ed. W. Graham Robertson (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1907)
Illuminated Blake
David V. Erdman, The Illuminated Blake (New York: Anchor, 1974)
Marriage
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Urizen
The Book of Urizen
Visions
Visions of the Daughters of Albion
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819), ch. 31.
2. Jerusalem 3, E145.
3. G. E. Bentley Jr., The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 381; Blake Records, 68.
4. Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Blake: A Critical Essay, ed. Hugh J. Luke (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 276.
5. Blake to the Rev. Dr. Trusler, Aug. 23, 1799, E702; Vision of the Last Judgment, E560.
6. Eternity, E470.
7. Peter Ackroyd, Blake (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996); Bentley, Stranger from Paradise. Ackroyd is excellent on London life in Blake’s time and on his career as an artist; he is not very deeply grounded in Blake scholarship and has been rightly criticized for a number of errors. Bentley is the doyen of Blake scholarship and incomparably learned on every detail of Blake’s life and works, but Ackroyd’s biography may be more appealing to the general reader.
8. Marriage 14, E39; Plotinus’ “last words to us” are quoted by William R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, 1918), 10.
9. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Visible Language: Blake’s Wond’rous Art of Writing,” in Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 83.
10. Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). On pages 375–81, Viscomi presents his chronology of all known copies, established from watermarks in the paper and other clues.
11. Michael Phillips, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 31.
12. Tristanne J. Connolly, William Blake and the Body (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 19.
13. David Fuller, William Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose (London: Pearson Longman, 2008), 21.
14. Jerusalem 13.21, E157; G. E. Bentley Jr., ed., William Blake’s Writings (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978). An example of “and” instead of an ampersand is at Urizen 10.16, E75.
15. References are to the revised edition: David V. Erdman, ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, with commentary by Harold Bloom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
16. Alicia Ostriker, ed., William Blake: The Complete Poems (London: Penguin, 2004); W. H. Stevenson, ed., Blake: The Complete Poems (London: Pearson Longman, 2007). Once standard, but now superseded, is Geoffrey Keynes, ed., Blake: Complete Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
CHAPTER 1: THE WORKING ARTIST
1. Details about the Blake family and their shop are drawn from G. E. Bentley Jr., The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), ch. 1.
2. John Blake is mentioned as “the evil one” in an 1802 poem (E721). It is not certain that he died abroad, but because he was not buried with the rest of the family, that seems most likely.
3. Gilchrist, 97; Blake Records, 663–64.
4. Notebook verses, E510; Morton D. Paley, Energy and the Imagination: A Study in the Development of Blake’s Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 206.
5. Blake to John Flaxman, Sept. 12, 1800, E707.
6. The evidence for the Moravian connection—suggestive but not conclusive—is summarized by John Beer, William Blake: A Literary Life (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 5–6.
7. Blake Records, 10–11, 699. Aileen Ward suggests that a degree of skepticism is appropriate for tales about Blake’s childhood: “William Blake and the Hagiographers,” in Biography and Source Studies, ed. Frederick R. Karl (New York: AMS, 1994), 13–14.
8. Bentley, Stranger from Paradise, 22; where not otherwise noted, biographical details are from this source. On Pars’s school, see also Martin Myrone, The Blake Book (London: Tate, 2007), 15.
9. Blake Records, 16.
10. Robert N. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 20.
11. Public Address, E582; Blake to William Hayley, Mar. 12, 1804, E743. On Blake’s eyeglasses, see Joyce H. Townsend, ed., William Blake: The Painter at Work (London: Tate, 2003), 24.
12. Blake to George Cumberland, Dec. 6, 1795, E699; Blake to the Rev. John Trusler, Aug. 23, 1799, E703.
13. See D. W. Dörrbecker, “Innovative Reproduction: Painters and Engravers at the Royal Academy of Arts,” in Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London: St. Martin’s, 1994), 125–46 (the quoted passage is at 130–31).
14. Blake to John Flaxman, Sept. 12, 1800, E707; Mrs. A. E. Bray, Life of Thomas Stothard, in Blake Records, 19–20; Bentley, Stranger from Paradise, 60.
15. Essick, Blake, Printmaker, 28.
16. Johann Caspar Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind, 3 vols. in 5 (London, 1789–98), 1:159–60.