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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... poet demands from his critic a combination of direction and perspective, of intensive and extensive reading. The ... poetry, it comes as a disillusioning shock to learn that, as Valéry says, cosmology is a literary art. The statement ...
... poets, with the Milton whose Raphael advised Adam that while studying the stars was all very well, keeping his own freedom of will was even more important. Blake's poetry, like that of every poet who knows what he is doing, is mythical ...
... poetic life. The combination of radical and evangelical sympathies——so frequent in England, so rare elsewhere ... poetry as instructive, and the horses of instruction in their turn are Wiser than the balky mules of hysteria. Blake ...
... poetry is perhaps not as large as it is often vaguely stated to be. After deducting the obsolete, the eccentric and the merely trivial, what remains is surely no greater in volume than a poet of such importance is entitled to. It is ...
... poets do not fully comprehend what they are writing.3 All his poetry was written as though it were about to have the immediate social impact of a new play. Besides, if we look at some of the other poets of the second half of the ...