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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... reality, expressed by Berkeley in the phrase esse est percipi: “to be is to be perceived”: Mental Things are alone Real; what is call'd Corporeal, Nobody Knows of its Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy, 8c its Existence an Imposture ...
... reality. But the abstract idea of “tree” ranks far below this. We have now sunk to the mental level of the dull-witted Philistine who in the first place saw “just a tree,” without noticing whether it was an oak or a poplar. But even the ...
... reality apart from the forms in which it subsists, except as an abstract idea on the same plane as that of “proportion.” If to be is something else than to be perceived, our perceptions do not acquaint us with reality and we ...
... reality beyond others' perceptions of us, and that if esse est perez'pi, then esse est pereipe're as well. Now insofar as a man is perceived by others (or, in fact, by himself), he is a form or image, and his reality consists in the ...
... reality, and hence there are exactly as many kinds of reality as there are men. “Every man's wisdom is peculiar to his own individuality,”37 and there is no other kind of wisdom: reality is as much in the eye of the beholder as beauty ...