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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... Fall. One is that as all reality is mental, the fall of man's mind involved a corresponding fall of the physical world. Another is, that as God is Man, Blake follows some of the Gnostics and Boehme in believing that the fall of man involved ...
... fall of man. As our imaginations expand the world takes on a growing humanity, for to see things as created by God and in God is the same as seeing things as created by Man and in Man: . . . Each grain of Sand, Every Stone of the Land ...
... fall of man involved a fall in part but not all of the divine nature. The particular “Giant form” or “Eternal” to which we belong has fallen, THE RISING GOD 43.
... fall altered that goodness being a disputed point. But if we stop trying to rescue the credit of an abstract and pure goodness, we can easily see that all religion is revealed. The Greek word for revelation is “apocalypse,” and the ...
... fall and an end at the apocalypse. This is a convenient way of expressing the fact that the fallen world is temporal and the unfallen eternal, but it is not essential, and is even misleading when carried too far. “In the beginning God ...