Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William BlakeThis brilliant outline of Blake's thought and commentary on his poetry comes on the crest of the current interest in Blake, and carries us further towards an understanding of his work than any previous study. Here is a dear and complete solution to the riddles of the longer poems, the so-called "Prophecies," and a demonstration of Blake's insight that will amaze the modern reader. The first section of the book shows how Blake arrived at a theory of knowledge that was also, for him, a theory of religion, of human life and of art, and how this rigorously defined system of ideas found expression in the complicated but consistent symbolism of his poetry. The second and third parts, after indicating the relation of Blake to English literature and the intellectual atmosphere of his own time, explain the meaning of Blake's poems and the significance of their characters. |
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... Blake uses, and uses constantly. A visionary creates, or dwells in, a higher spiritual world in which the objects of perception in this one have become transfigured and charged with a new intensity of symbolism. This is quite consistent ...
... Blake's symbolism will involve explaining his conception of symbolism. To make this clear we need Blake's own definition of poetry: Allegory addressed to the Intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the Corporeal ...
... Blake's eyes. Then comes the question of how he read some of his other essential sources, Ovid's M etamorphoses, for instance, or the Prose Edda, and how he related their symbolism to his own. As one proceeds, one emerges from a haze of ...
... Blake's symbolism. But all that can be produced from this must be spun out of the philosopher's own bowels like a ... Blake means the whole man as an object of perception. We need another word to describe the man as a perceiver, and that ...
... Blake thinks of this he has put into one of his most brilliant epigrams: God Appears 8c God is Light To those poor ... Blake's symbolism.“ Even when we try to think of the superhuman in terms of intelligence and imagination we run into ...