Biography of William Blake, English Poet and Artist

On August 4, 1772, English poet and artist William Blake aged 14 was first apprenticed to engraver James Basire in London. An excerpt from the article:

"Themes and Literary Style

Blake's style is easy to recognize, both in poetry and in his visual art. There’s something askew that makes him stand out among late-18th-century poets. His language is straightforward and unaffected, yet powerful in its directness. His work contains Blake’s own private mythology, where he rejects moral absolutes that mark the authoritarianism of organized religion. It draws from the Bible as well as Greek and Norse mythology. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793) for example, the Devil is actually a hero rebelling against the authoritarianism of an impostor, a worldview that is mitigated in his later works; in Milton and Jerusalem, for instance, self-sacrifice and forgiveness are portrayed as redeeming qualities.

Not a fan of organized religion, Blake only went to Church three times in his life: when he was christened, when he married, and when he died. He espoused the ideas of enlightenment, but he placed himself in a critical position towards it. He talked about Newton, Bacon, and Locke as the “Satanic Trinity” who had restricted it, leaving no place for art.

Blake was a fierce critic of colonialism and enslavement, and was critical of the church because he claimed the clergy used their power to keep people down with the promise of the afterlife. The poem in which he expresses his vision of enslavement is “Visions of the Daughters Albion,” which features an enslaved girl who is raped by her enslaver and is jilted by her lover because she is not virtuous anymore. As a consequence, she launches in a crusade for social, political, and religious freedom, but her story ends in chains. This poem equates rape with colonialism, and also sheds light on the fact that rape was actually a common occurrence in plantations. The Daughters of Albion are the English women who wanted to end enslavement.

Legacy

There is a complex mythology surrounding Blake, which makes every generation find something in his work that appeals to their specific time. In our time, one of the greatest threats is sovereignty, which manifests itself in Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump, and Blake notably spoke of similar regimes as “great evil.”

William Blake remained neglected for one generation after his death, until Alexander Gilchrist wrote his Life of William Blake in 1863, which led to a newfound appreciation for Blake among the pre-Raphaelites, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who illustrated the Divine Comedy, too) and Algernon Swinburne. Yet, he labelled him a pictor ignotus, which means “unknown painter,” which hinted at the obscurity he had died in.

The modernists deserve credit for fully bringing Blake into the canon. W.B. Yeats resonated with Blake’s philosophical ideas, and also edited an edition of his collected works. Huxley cites Blake in his work The Doors of Perception, while beat poet Allen Ginsberg, as well as songwriters Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and Van Morrison all found inspiration in Blake’s work."