Blake, William (1757-1827), was a brilliant and unconventional English poet, engraver, and painter. Blake developed an elaborate personal mythology that underlies virtually all the symbolism and ideas in his works. As a result, his symbolic pictures and visionary poems are not always easy to understand. Blake’s writings and pictures reveal how a powerful artistic imagination can mold the world in its own image.
Blake thought that we have war, injustice, and unhappiness because our way of life is founded on mistaken beliefs. We cannot truly know reality through our five senses. Still, we concern ourselves almost entirely with scientific truth and materialistic values gained through those very senses. We cannot understand the vast reality beyond the material and achieve full control of ourselves until we learn to trust our instincts, energies, and imaginations. For Blake, this belief was the basis for all personal, social, and religious truth.
Blake was born on Nov. 28, 1757, in London and lived most of his life there. He was a book illustrator and engraver by profession. He claimed to have seen visions, beginning in his childhood. He called many of his poems either visions or prophecies.
Blake has received much praise for such pictures as his illustrations for the Book of Job. However, he was most interested in his “illuminated printing.” This was a process of engraving poems and related pictures on metal plates and then hand-coloring the prints made from them. Except for Poetical Sketches (1783), most of Blake’s published poetry appeared in this unique form.
Blake is best known for Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). In these works, he shows symbols of what he calls “the two contrary states of the human soul.” He explored these symbols in such contrasting poems as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” His other works include The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (about 1793), America (1793), and Jerusalem (about 1820). He died on Aug. 12, 1827.
See also Tyger, The.
