First of all, I must say that reading William Blake's biography in the book was very insightful. I would have never known that The Doors took their name from one of his works. That's pretty cool, but I digress. Blake was a very interesting individual. He claimed to have had spiritual encounters left and right (p. 74), and these experiences didn't really make him too popular. Well, let me clarify that. It didn't make him popular in his lifetime, but he later gained a cult-following in the 1950's and 1960's.
In his piece, "All Religions Are One", Blake delivers a poem that's a product of extreme ideology and philosophy. The book says that "Blake asserts that religious sects are only various forms of a central truth, divined by the poet's imagination. He did not subscribe his name to the potentially heretical All Religions Are One but presents its argument and principles as if from the voice of a Biblical prophet speaking to the modern age." This confuses me. If he didn't subscribe to their principles, then why is he arguing in their favor? While I'm not rehearsed in what they believe in, when Blake says, "The Religions of all Nat-ions are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is everywhere call'd the Spirit of Prophecy", he appears to be summarizing the religion's beliefs. I wish the book had elaborated more on why he didn't subscribe to their beliefs. Did he not OPENLY subscribe to them, out of fear of political or religious persecution? Or did he simply not believe in other things the religion had to offer? His mentioning of a "Poetic Genius" is interesting. He's essentially comparing God's work to poetry, which isn't mind-blowing or anything, but makes you look around and think about it.
All in all, William Blake was a hippy before his time. While he did make some interesting observations and was wildly imaginative in his poetry, he struck me as the kind of guy who was hard to take seriously when he was alive. I am not surprised that he was an outcast in his day, but I'm NOT surprised that he is celebrated today. Two hundred years makes a world of difference.
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2 comments:
Daniel,
Some good comments on this challenging author, although you seem at times to get sidetracked by Blake's lunatic fringe beliefs and you quote more of what the editors say than waht Blake says. One point of clarification: when the text says he did not subscribe his name to the text, it means he published it anonymously. As to whether he fully believed it then and throughout his life, that is harder to say, with Blake.
Nice title, but yeah William Blake is a bit crazy and kind of out there...
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