Thanks :)

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?

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

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.

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

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!

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/

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

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?

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 👍

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.

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

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.

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."

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.

I can't find anywhere that sells this book, how can I get access to it?

Hey I (24M) recently read through The Works Of William Blake and greatly enjoyed it but did have to pause and Google a decent percentage of the language used. I’m fairly familiar with British History and the French Revolution and have some knowledge of the literary canon he references but fairly little concerning certain other reference points such as his biblical ones. Im aware that his language his purposefully cryptic at times but I’m curious how many of his references were actually more worldly known at the time.

Thanks in advance

Hello everyone!

I've launched recently a YouTube channel combining my studies of theology and my love of culture : Théoculture. My last video is about the film Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch, heavily inspired by William Blake's poetry.

Here's the link : https://youtu.be/fDVM4Wck5Gc

Video is in French, but you can activate English subtitles. Enjoy!

Hello everyone!

I've launched recently a YouTube channel combining my studies of theology and my love of culture : Théoculture. My last video is about the film Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch, heavily inspired by William Blake's poetry.

Here's the link : https://youtu.be/fDVM4Wck5Gc

Video is in French, but you can activate English subtitles. Enjoy!

I've decided to take a plunge and read William Blake's works. Where should I begin?

the songs called Kid for today by boards of Canada and a lot of Blakes Images and mythology influenced my video, would mean a lot if you checked it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVnR_dyVDnk

I started the blog, The Traveller in the Evening, in 2020, after being hastily and unexpectedly ejected from the world of work, deciding I’d had enough of that life and it was time to turn to more pressing things. The blog has now been ported to substack, and there is plenty to see there on Blake, Surrealism, ecology, and radical theology and politics.

https://preview.redd.it/6mxxxb01kydb1.png?width=1400&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6dee28a077284fefc1e654b8670e66b797faa7f