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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.19099199 [Reply] [Original]

'I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes, Of man inwards into the Worlds of Thought'

What do you guys think of William Blake's work? The poetic inspiration towards the divine is striking and brilliant. I am hoping to engage his work on a deeper level, but find myself lost in some of his writings. For more experienced readers of Blake, are there any works of his you prefer or any other thinkers that bring out the profundity of the imagination as a means to the divine?

>> No.19099231

>>19099199
He was a schizo.

>> No.19099243

>>19099231
Yes.

>> No.19099307
File: 28 KB, 373x500, Blake's Apocalypse .jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
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>>19099199
Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a good intro, Milton is best work IMO. Download and read this:
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=D5529AC8828DE2E1750241AAC04172FB

>> No.19099320

>>19099307
Thanks! I loved his works on religion, but I have never read Milton.

>> No.19099716

>>19099199
There is a talk by Borges about Blake that I found quite interesting:
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. THE POEM "THE TYGER." BLAKE AND SWEDENBORG'S PHILOSOPHY, COMPARED. A POEM BY RUPERT BROOKE. BLAKE'S POEMS.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1966.
In: Professor Borges: A course on English literature.

It helped me understand Blake as a Gnostic and also more generally the problem of how one can be a Gnostic and a creative person at the same time.

>Now Blake, through his entire oeuvre, distinguishes between the Creator God, who would be Jehovah from the Old Testament—the one who appears in the first chapters of the Pentateuch, in Genesis—and a much higher god. In this case, according to Blake, the earth would have been created by an inferior god, and this is the god who gives the ten commandments, moral law; and then a much higher god sends Jesus Christ to redeem us.

>So, for Blake there are two worlds. One, the eternal one—paradise—is the world of the creative imagination. The other is the world in which we live, deceived by the hallucinations imposed on us by our five senses. And Blake calls this universe “the vegetable universe.” Here, we can see the enormous difference between Blake and the romantics, because the romantics felt reverence for the universe.

For Blake, being creative meant not following in the footsteps of the Creator God, the demiurge, equal to Newton's mathematizing God, but following one's own imaginative spirit and inner sense of beauty.

>> No.19099976

Unfortunately, Blake's "philosophy" appears to have about as much substance as the occasional gnostic spam on /lit/'s catalogue

>> No.19100000

>>19099716
>THE POEM "THE TYGER."
yes.
YES.

>> No.19100050
File: 102 KB, 1448x816, 1616066882445.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
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>>19100000
The quints
They destroyed their cage
Yes
YES
The quints are out

>> No.19100066

>>19099199
Bataille (pbuh) briefly discusses THE TYGER in The Accursed Share

>> No.19100088
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>>19100000
my god, I have witnessed.