Preview Blake
BLAKE A Psychological Study Firstpublishedin OSBOOKIS PRODUCED INCOMPLETECONFORMITY WITHTOTAUTHORIZEDECONOMYSTANDARDS MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN ATTHE CHAPEL RTVEH PRESS ANDOVER. HANTS 5.46 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION 7 1. THE NATURE OF IMAGINATION . . 16 2. THE SUPREME INTROVERT . . . . 23 3. THE FOUR ZOAS 30 4. THE BIRTH OF THE FUNCTIONS . . 42 5. THE ANATOMY OF DISINTEGRATION . . 52 6. THE CONFLICT OF THE ZOAS . . 69 7. REINTEGRATION 92 8. BLAKE'S MAP OF THE PSYCHE . . 105 9. AN INTROVERT LOOKS AT THE WORLD 114 APPENDIX. THE USE OF THE SYMBOL THE ROMANTIC POETS . . . . 123 8 'BLAKE A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY " " namedcharacterswhichmakeupthe PropheticBooks are not something outside our own experience. In studying Blake we shall discover psychic patterns which are to be found within the soul of every man. The Blakean figures (altered indeed by the circumstances of each one's individuality) are to be found in all our dreams. Like Keats, Blake was a Cockney, born in London just after the turn of the eighteenth century, in 1757. But to state that a man is a Londoner is to beg the question of his origins. It is said that a Londoner of strictLondondescentisananimalunknown ; themonster always replenishingits lifefrom outside sources. Blake's descent is known. He was London Irish that common phenomenon in English life the second-generation Irish immigrant; a fact which would be more generally known if the Blake family had kept their correct name* ForWilliam Blakewas ofthe clan O'Neill. His paternal " grandfather was John O'Neill, an Irish gentleman on the run," who managed to conceal his no doubt wanted identity by taking the name of his wife, Ellen Blake. He brought to the marriage a motherless boy ofhis own, who also took the name Blake. There is often a great gulf fixed between the generations. The son of the Jacobite adventurer became a prosaic character, a hard- working and successful draper, or hosier as the business was then called, in London. He managed completely to forgetor to hide his origins, and itis doubtfulwhether his children knew anything about it. For the story was preserved as a family tradition by the real descendants ofJohn O'Neill and Ellen Blake(the Carter Blakes), who told it to the poet Yeats. So it was that our William, who should have been born and brought up in some crumbling tower by the Atlantic shore and fed upon the
The list of books you might like
