/r/williamblake

Photograph via snooOG

William Blake

Discuss the works of the great poet, writer and artist William Blake.

/r/williamblake

1,022 Subscribers

6

Wienananda - The Blossom based on the poem by William Blake

0 Comments
2024/12/11
11:08 UTC

13

William Blake Archive

Hello. Does anybody know if the William Blake Archive has the complete body of work of his paintings and art, or if It is just a selection. It seems most of the collections are complete, but some of the collections are labelled "preview", making me think that maybe those are incomplete. Thank you.

0 Comments
2024/12/11
09:01 UTC

5

Little Boy Lost

1 Comment
2024/12/09
09:04 UTC

9

William Blake Meets Thomas Paine - Encounters

1 Comment
2024/12/09
07:12 UTC

12

Some background on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?

I read through this poem a while back ago, but didn't really get it. I kind of understood what he was saying, but I never really understood the intellectual context of what he was responding to. Like I never understood why he claimed Milton's Paradise Lost to be "of the Devil's party without knowing it." Are there any good pieces out there that offer some background into this poem? I feel that it went way over my head

4 Comments
2024/11/30
02:59 UTC

7

Prophetic Collection

Is there such a collection? If not what would one recommend finding to be able to read the complete collection?

2 Comments
2024/11/19
15:53 UTC

5

A Poison Tree

My attempt at narration - please do check it out x Would love your feedback.l x

0 Comments
2024/11/06
22:09 UTC

1

Robert Illustration

Hi All, Long time fan of Blake but first time here. I’m trying to find out some information about the Robert illustration related to Milton A Poem C.1804-11 I’ve view the illustration many times but struggle to find anything about it. What was it based on? What is the meaning behind it? Can anyone help please? Thanks

0 Comments
2024/11/04
22:22 UTC

12

Looking for a good annotated version to read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Thanks :)

2 Comments
2024/10/29
10:14 UTC

5

Top 1-3 print versions of Blake's work

Hello

Wondering what everyone's fav versions of Blake's work are.

For example, your top printed choices of Songs of Innocence and Experience, etc?

2 Comments
2024/09/15
16:01 UTC

9

New study guide on Blake

Hi all, I hope this sort of post is accepted here. My father taught A Level English Lit for over 20 years and now at 82 has decided to allow me take his notes, observations, lessons and more into study guides. The aim is to put affordable, useful and informative guides into people's hands and we launched the first one yesterday, which is currently free on Kindle Unlimited or just 99p to other users. We'd love any support or feedback but most of all for my father's hard work to continue to be used and loved. Thanks for reading and link is below:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DGLZ3SNT/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=XARE795ULXGG&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V7MOPvbWWazewxwRfyds3qc_esDz9z0hBNmjKSnk8mN8aBMOWmkD929R2MsrfDx59jHIlyklot_R3dRyCORvqceso8S_Fq7xdR1SzctnOJ-TTyEsatUGi1pW9to37lHZm-PA6R6xr8o-qYu4mJ7DAiBdO4F5Cp-s_KA2G_8R2XI.V0tXPuRweFXlBqTbKQcgWiBbQ_96AqvmldLKzHzOTFo&dib_tag=se&keywords=A%2B+tutoring&qid=1726072338&sprefix=a%2B+tutoring%2Caps%2C98&sr=8-1

4 Comments
2024/09/11
16:41 UTC

7

Road of excess ranting

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough. William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

The other day at work we had a 350 lb man who died at the age of 45 from a heart attack. It burned my hears to hear the wife’s screams after an hour of doing whatever we could to bring him back. I teared up in the bathroom thinking of my own addiction to foods that slowly wreck my heart and brain. Heart disease causes a quarter of all deaths. If we all exercised, burned the fast food restaurants down, got rid of our devices, etc etc .. then it could be an easy solution to this preventable tragedy..

That’s so funny to me because it could be an easy solution…, to spend more time with others, to cook our own food, to stop consuming pointless products, to have an over abundance of waste, or to be outside in nature.

I can understand where excess may lead to wisdom, I myself battled a nasty ketamine addiction many years ago. But, I wouldn’t say that this need for excess, to go for more, or to tip toe a line of what’s enough has ever truly left me.

It feels so humiliating and embarrassing to be the product of “too much”. It feels unforgiving to live in a world where children are introduced to addictive devices and food that hijacks their little brain.

I’m not sure about excess leading to something greater. I must be wrong though.

8 Comments
2024/08/28
17:38 UTC

6

Favorite Line?

My personal favorite is: "The dew of the morning/Sunk chill on my brow/It felt like the warning/Of what I feel now"

1 Comment
2024/08/27
03:44 UTC

19

William Blake's Journey from Heaven to Hell and Back (Animation)

1 Comment
2024/08/18
18:00 UTC

3

Vito Viglioglia - William Blake - La Tigre

0 Comments
2024/08/18
17:58 UTC

7

Blake vs Gnosticism (?)

Hi there! I should note first that I haven't read everything of Blake's but am not new to him either, as I studied some of his works at Uni in a cursory overview of English Romanticism, where I fell in love with his spiritual philosophy. I do have a question to pose though, or rather I think I would like to hear from someone perhaps more educated on him what they think of this. Namely, I want to call into question something I hear very often: that Blake can be directly compared to Gnosticism.

I don't disagree that his beliefs are Gnostic in the sense of the cosmology (a creator god falls from divinity and imprisons the human spirit, so there is a messianic liberator etc.), but I do disagree that his beliefs are Gnostic Christian which is what we are usually referring to when we say "Gnosticism". Though he does use Christ, his interpretation of Christ as a creative/artistic spirit is something quite different from the vastly dominant Christian one. Him siding with Satan in his early works and his fascination with the creative potential of Evil, violence and wickedness paints him as more Satanic in his values. Also his disdain for mediocrity, his quasi-aristocratic distinction between those who create and those who merely consume, fit right into a more elitist, Satanic system of values (NOT referring necessarily to just LaVeyan Satanism here). Some of what he says in his Proverbs of Hell also strikes me as quite Dionysian, praising earthly and spiritual excess instead of poverty etc. It seems to me that in his cosmology, although he himself certainly found a place for Mercy, Pity and Love in his own work and personality, he paints what he identifies with the creator god not in the colours of wickedness like most of the Gnostics do, but in the colours of bland, boring, empty and self-sacrificial goodness, a kind of mediocrity of spirit in that Dionysian sense. The good on its own always seems somehow stupid and short-sighted in his works and results in catastrophy.

From what I gather, he did in his own words reject what he saw as the material world, but in his 19th century context this can mean something completely different from what it meant in the early days of Christianity. It seems to me that what he rejects is the scientific notion of matter and the material, as reasoned, calculated, mechanistic. He identifies spirit instead with the excessive, with the passionate, even lustful, something which in a Christian framework would be understood as materialistic, as aligning with "this world". It ultimately seems to me that what he is rejecting really is the stilted, castrated spirit of his age, which has its roots in Christianity's attack on lust and pride. And he does so without necessarily rejecting the values of Mercy and Pity, but by aligning them with the bodily or the animalistic instead of against.

That at least is my interpretation, but I'm probably missing some or a lot of nuance, which is why I wanted to post this here and ask all of you for some more insight into that tension between the Satanic and the Christian in his works. I feel like I might be missing a more historical perspective in terms of the different periods of his writing. Thanks!

2 Comments
2024/08/11
21:14 UTC

3

Nicki Wells - To Morning / O Holy Virgin - William Blake (ft. UK Sahaj Collective)

0 Comments
2024/08/08
00:54 UTC

3

https://actorschurch.org/whatson/of-prophets-and-purpose/

A new piece of writing inspired by the profound works of William Blake, sees four characters; some strangers, some friends, all asking the same questions: who, what, where, when, how, and arguably the most important.. why? Getting answers is a whole different bag of burritos.

This piece of new writing is having its debut at the Actors' Church. It asks, what would happen if Chicken Little read Williams Blake's the Marriage of Heaven and hell? Come and find out!

Covent Garden 7-10th August

https://actorschurch.org/whatson/of-prophets-and-purpose/

0 Comments
2024/07/26
14:28 UTC

1

Chaoskampf, Complexity and the Twisting Snake in William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job

My latest piece on Blake. Please consider subscribing to the blog.

Blake's Job has long been recognised as a hymn to an apocalyptic transformation of the self, but there are hints too of of acceptance of the role of chaos not only in God's creation, but in his own.

Don't let the length of it put you off, and feel free to skip around to find what interests you. These are the main parts:

  • An overview of the issues in interpreting the Book of Job, and how it has been interpreted historically. Some of this is introduced in the course of telling the story of Blake’s Job, while some is presented separately.
  • Some of the history of Blake’s Job project
  • An account of Blake’s version of the story image by image
  • How Blake’s work is distorted by treating it as a cypher for other traditions (Traditionalism, Neoplatonism, Jung)
  • I propose a reading of one aspect of the story – the significance of the foregrounding by Blake of the mythical beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan – which suggests an insight on Blake’s part impacting not only his understanding of Job’s revelation but also his own ideas of truth and divine vision.

https://www.travellerintheevening.com/p/chaoskampf-complexity-and-the-twisting-snake

0 Comments
2024/07/01
10:09 UTC

13

William Blake & Horror/the Gothic

Hey, Blake enthusiasts! I'm seeking recommendations for horror films, TV series, and/or fictional works that engage with William Blake (his paintings, verse, and/or philosophy). If you've engaged with Blake in your own fiction-writing or films, I'd love to know about that too.

I've already got the obvious ones covered (Saint Maud, Thomas Harris, Clive Barker, Lars von Trier, Alan Moore). Ditto for anything discussed in William Blake's Gothic Imagination: Bodies of Horror (eds. Chris Bundock & Elizabeth Effinger). Any other suggestions?

3 Comments
2024/06/21
13:43 UTC

9

Where to start ?!

Realistically I don’t see myself reading all his prophetic books in chronological order without one.. just looking for advice on where maybe to start , best ones/most influential/most prophetic whatever whatever.. anyone able to advise would be greatly appreciated 👍

5 Comments
2024/06/09
12:30 UTC

2

Why does Jonas Mekas reference Blake in this excerpt of As I Was Moving Ahead?

There is no image, really, that wouldn't relate to anybody else. I mean, all images around us, that we go through our lives, and I go filming them, they are not that much different from what you have seen or experienced... From what you have seen or experienced. It’s… all our lives are very, very much alike. Ah, my dear Blake! Just a drop of water. We are all in it and nothing, there is no big difference, essential difference, between you and me. No essential difference.

0 Comments
2024/06/08
18:16 UTC

6

Anyone have any recommended secondary reading on William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?

Songs of Innocence and Experience too if you have any recommendations.

0 Comments
2024/06/06
18:28 UTC

2

Explanation of Blake citations

I’m reading some works about Blake’s work and the citations always look like this (for example): Thel, pl. 3, l. 4, E4. I get the plate and line, but what’s the E number? Thanks.

7 Comments
2024/05/24
00:34 UTC

7

About the poet"Ah!Sun-flower"

I'm wondering if there is a "," in the line "Arise from their graves , and aspire" Cause almost all the copies on the internet seem have no "," between "graves" and "and". However after I saw a post with a "," in the line, I think it's kind of making sense( even better than the version without it) Could anyone give an authoritative answer or a reasonable explanation about the question? Here is the poem anyway:

"Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go."

1 Comment
2024/05/07
07:40 UTC

2

Best collection of visual works?

I’m looking for a good, comprehensive collection of his drawings, paintings, engravings, etchings, etc. Also would like it to be of a size that shows detail of images. I had a chance to get a very nice, large edition of Milton a few weeks back but let the moment pass and lost it.

0 Comments
2024/04/17
18:29 UTC

Back To Top