Biography of WILLIAM BLAKE
(1757-1827)
William Blake
William Blake was a British
artist and poet. He was the third son of a London Hosier. He was born in London on November 28, 1757.He was a visionary and dreamer from early childhood.
William Blake wife
In 1782 he married Catharine Boucher, an illiterate girl, whom he
taught how to read and write. From 1784 to 1787, Blake kept a print shop in Broad street, Golden Square, London.
William Blake works
Blake had no academic
distinction. Whatever he learned, he learned by his own efforts. He studied
painting and became both a painter and a poet. Some of the poems of his
Poetical Sketches were written, when he was only a boy of twelve.
William Blake facts
William Blake was a Republican, but the September
Massacre by the Jacobines cured him of all his enthusiasm for the French Revolution. From 1793 to
1800 he lived at Lambeth. At last he escaped and came back to London in 1803.
The next period of Blake's life was very sad. He laboured
hard and was not merely neglected but also derided. He was grossly cheated by the publisher
Cromeck over his pictures of Canterbury Pilgrims. The most violent criticism of
Blake, with the definite assertion of his madness, was openly made. He died in London,
on August 12, 1827.
Blake was a romantic poet. He was a romantic painter.
Sometimes he illustrated his own poems. He married Catherine Boucher, an illiterate girl, in
1782 and his wife became a true helpmate to him.
William Blake famous poems
He published his Songs of Innocence in 1789. Then followed his
Prophetic Books which included The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The Book of
Urizen. It was followed by the Songs of Experience in 1794. Blake also illustrated
Dante's Divine Comedy.
William Blake poems
- The
Tyger
- The
Lamb
- Infant
Joy
- Holy
Thursday
- The
Divine Image
- Ah!
Sunflower
William Blake books
- Songs
of Innocence
- Prophetic
Books
- The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
- The
Book of Urizen
- Songs
of Experience
- Dante’s
Divine Comedy
Blake as a Poet
William Blake had no celebrity in his own age. His genius,
as a poet, was explored long after his death. Today he is generally accepted as one of the
greatest poets of the eighteenth century as also an important fore-runner of romanticism.
Blake is a precursor of the great romantic poets of the
19th century. The romantic notes in the poetry of the Late eighteenth century
was heard powerfully in him.
Romantic love for nature and romantic interest in
mysticism and humanism were
voiced strongly in Blake. Actually, he founded the
‘Romantic Movement’. But he was suspected of insanity. His poetic genius was not seriously considered
in his lifetime. So it was left to Wordsworth and Coleridge to bring romanticism
in English poetry.
Blake, indeed, had
the makings of a truly romantic poet. His lyrics and songs are vibrant with
impulsiveness and imagination. His poetry is vigorous and, at the same time, simple. Of
course, the mystical elements of Blake’s poetry has often made it a bit obstrusive to general readers.
But that was due to his mystical
poetic vision. Blake was a visionary. His vision was always two fold. He saw
through the outward manifestation of things into the soul that was within.
Blake, as a visionary, was a
mystic. Most people in his life-time called him mad as he was, of course,
according to their common-sense standard. He actually comprehensible only when
he is found to compromise with common sense. He declared that his books were
dictated by spirits, yet his greatest poems are those produced not by immediate
intuition, but by Inspiration, followed by critical and rational revision.
But his eye was the eye of
understanding, not of sight. Together with common sense, he rejected morality,
and acted in theory, at least upon natural impulses.
Blake held that the privilege of
seeing into the meaning of things would come naturally to the man whose mind
might possess the happy innocence and joy of children. Beauty and joy, indeed,
were found to be the fundamental elements in his genius. He was, indeed, Keats
and Wordsworth combined, with something of Shelley's natural sensitiveness to
the agony of suffering humanity. Beauty is to him the passport to a spiritual
world beyond the physical. Joy was taken by him as the expression of that world
intimately realized. As the realization of beauty and the experience of joy would
come only to the men with a natural simplicity of soul, Blake has effected in
his poetic style a transparent simplicity of the expression in which only a few
poets are found to equal him.
Indeed, Blake's lyrical poetry
has the natural outpouring of joy, arising out of an appreciation of and wonders
at the transcendent glory of a celestial beauty. Above all, Blake seems to
perceive glory in the artless spontaneity of his feelings and their unadorned
beauty is a matter of supreme satisfaction. So, more than any other poet of his
age, he is able to recapture the song-quality of poetry that belonged to 16th
and the 17th century English poetry.
Blake's poetry sufficiently
illustrates his genius as a technician. His images are simple, yet vivid. His phrases
are peculiar, yet haunting. His melody is varied, yet captivating. Moreover, in
his poetry is felt the presence of an elfin atmosphere that has made it eerie
and charming.
As a poet, Blake stands beside
Gray, Collins, and Burns, as one of the great lyricists of an impending great
age of poetry. His unerring feeling for rhythm and the beauty of the free
variations of his poetic pattern, his almost Elizabethan grace and frankness,
coupled with his love of clear outline and simplicity of diction, make his songs
admirable to those who, too, thoughtlessly have almost forgotten his contemporaries.
His lyrics are unique. Not only are there no songs, like these, for they follow
no tradition and they influence no followers. Yet, there are a very few English
lyrics as good as the best of them. They are enjoyed not only for their historical
importance in an age which was proud, and rightly proud, of its genius and tradition;
but also for their simple and beautiful expression of “two contrary states of
the human soul’—childlike faith and wrestling doubt. Here Blake remains unique,
as dready asserted as a poet of an impending age of poetic greatness.
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