William Blake

220 Pages·2016·54.59 MB·English

by  Raine K.

PRAEGER WORLD OF ART PAPERBACKS $4.95
Kathleen Raine
William Blake
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Dp /Infro Nympherum (detail), 1821
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William Blake
KATHLEEN RAINE
PRAEGER
PUBLISHERS
New
York Washington
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To Kerrison Preston,
honoured friend and interpreter to all
who come to learn from Blake
BOOKS THAT MATTER
Published in the United States ofAmerica in 1971
by Praeger Publishers, Inc.
in Fourth Avenue, New York, N.Y.10003
©
1970in London, England, by Thames and Hudson Ltd
All rights reserved
Library ofCongress Catalog Card Number: 70-121081
Printed in Great Britain
Contents
Introduction 7
CHAPTER ONE
II
Apprentice to Antiquity
CHAPTER TWO
27
'The lost art ofthe Greeks'
CHAPTER THREE
41
A New Mode ofPrinting
CHAPTER FOUR
63
'Lovely Lambeth'
CHAPTER FIVE
95
Night Thoughts
CHAPTER SIX 101
Natural Friends
CHAPTER SEVEN 109
The Line ofthe Almighty
CHAPTER EIGHT
133
Spiritual Enemies
CHAPTER NINE
155
Visions ofAlbion
CHAPTER TEN
175
The Interpreter
CHAPTER ELEVEN
185
King and Priest in his own Household
Chronology 208
Select Bibliography 208
List ofIllustrations 210
Index 215
Introduction
Prophet, poet, painter, engraver - and according to tradition
a composer of melodies as well - Blake's unique greatness lies
in no single achievement, but in the whole ot what he was,
which is more than the sum of all that he did. It belongs to a
few great imaginative minds that they can create a world
which seems to possess a reality, a coherence, a climate and
atmosphere ofits own. Shakespeare, Dante, Dlirer, Blake's own
favourite painters Fra Angelico, Claude and Michelangelo,
seem to offer us fragments of worlds whose bounds extend
beyond any of those portions their work has embodied; and
that is one of the delights of the kind of art I have in mind.
Blake was such an artist; and his work, as he believed, repre-
sents 'portions of eternity' seen in imaginative vision. Blake
himselfwrites of'ever Existent Images' which may be seen 'by
the Imaginative Eye ofEvery one according to the situation he
holds' - a collective archetypal world whose reality is more
credible in our century than it was in his own. 'To different
People it appears differently, as everything else does.' Such art
comes from a source deeper than the individual experience of
poet or painter, and has a power of communication to that
same level in the spectator. To our superficial selves this is a
source ofthe 'obscurity' ofvisionary art; to our deepest selves,
ofits lucidity.
Blake's work is on a small scale. His engravings and illumi-
natedpages are measurable ininches hispaintings too tend to be
;
small. But though he executed nothing monumental, his
imaginings were on the grandest scale. 'The Artist having been
taken in vision into the ancient republics, monarchies and
patriarchates ofAsia, has seen those wonderful originals called
in the Sacred Scriptures the Cherubim, which were sculptured
and painted on the walls of Temples, Towers, Cities, Palaces
and erected in the highly cultivated states of Egypt, Moab,
Edom, Aram, among the Rivers of Paradise. . . .' There is in
Blake's minutest designs the sense that he is showing us a
portion ofthose 'stupendous originals' ofhis vision, fragments
of some unfallen world 'among the Rivers of Paradise' - a
world ofthe unhindered energy ofspiritual life. It is his gift of
communicating his vision, rather than his technical accomplish-
ment as a painter or engraver, that entitles Blake to so high
a place.
'The Nature ofVisionary Fancy, or Imagination, is very little
Known. .' Very little known because consciously possessed
. .
by few in our materialist civilization. Yet, with the aid ofthose
who possess a faculty latent in all, we can participate through
art in the enjoyment ofan interior universe whose exploration
is the theme of the religious and mythological art of all ages.
For those to whom the outer world of the senses alone seems
real, Blake, in common with all symbolic art, offers little;
for others 'the end of a golden string' to thread the labyrinth
of the psyche. Nor is this world cloudy or vague. 'A Spirit
and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a
cloudy vapour, or a nothing they are organized and minutely
:
articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature
can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and better
lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing
mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all. The painter ofthis
work [The Bard, from Gray] asserts that all his imaginations
appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely
organized than anything seen by his mortal eye. Spirits are
organized men.'
Not content with defending the 'minute particulars' of
vision, Blake pointed out that the copying ofnature must lead
in the end to loss ofform: 'Men think they can Copy Nature
as Correctly as I copy Imagination. This they will find Impos-
&
sible, all the Copiers or Pretended Copiers ofNature, from
Rembrandt to Reynolds, Prove that Nature becomes to its
Victim nothing but Blots & Blurs. Why are Copiers ofNature
Incorrect, while Copiers ofImagination are Correct?'
8