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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... Christians—to anyone who cares to look at it—the poet who boasted of being understood by children,6 would have resented this treatment strongly. It is true, however, that the poet who said “Exuberance is Beauty”7 demands an energy of ...
... Christianity has always insisted on the resurrection of the body, though the two facts that the risen body is spiritual and that it is a body are hard to keep both in mind at once. All belief in ghosts or shades or in any form of spirit ...
... Christianity except Deism, can do nothing good; yet what does the imagination do except reveal to us our own impotence? The realization that the ... Christian terms, this means that the end of art is the recovery of Paradise. 40 THE ARGUMENT.
... Christianity, the identity of God and Man. The conclusion for Blake. and the key to much of his symbolism, is that the fall of man and the creation of the physical world were the same event. All works of civilization, all the ...
... Christian personage, one mighty growth, and stature of an honest man.”26 Hence these gigantic forms which inhabit the unfallen world are, on nearer view, human aggregates of the kind which inspire loyalty even in this world: . . . these ...