who | what | why | background | FAQ | links | email | forum | archive | home 4 September 2002: Initial Thoughts on Blake Tonight was the intro class for the Romanticism course I'm taking this semester. We're beginning with Blake, so I'm going to ruminate a little both about what we talked about tonight as well as what I learned about Blake last semester in Brit Lit II. I'm trying, mainly, to set this stuff in my head so I can begin to build (in said head) a permanent biographical and critical background on these poets. Blake had relatively no reputation while he was alive. His fame came posthumously around the 1920's; later a man named S. Foster Damon wrote what was really the first thorough explication of Blake. Blake invented his own mythology, which I'm looking forward to getting into when we actually begin the poetry next week. He said "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." This perfectly illustrates his belief that everything manmade is corrupt; that people are imperfect so therefore society is corrupt and everything is their fault. "If you let yourself be conquered by society, then you are weak" is another way to sum up Blake's beliefs. Society is a hegemony of church and state, rich and powerful – people are enslaved by powerful institutions like the monarchy and the state church. Blake rejected formal religion on the grounds that it was artificial and conventional; he was a spiritual man but of course this is not the same thing. He thought the Bible caused a split between the body and the soul – if the body is the inlet to the soul, then the Bible stood in the way of that. He attacks religion because it's a set code and because it labels, which is a societal convention that the Romantics were completely against (more on this eventually in a separate entry on Romanticism in general). He believed that God wanted us to follow our hearts, follow our energies to excess – to do what we do with passion and enthusiasm rather than moderation. "Dip him in the river who loves water." –The Marriage of Heaven and Hell He also believed that religion perverted sexuality; that sex is supposed to elevate emotion and religion reduces it to a mere physical act. In the above quoted piece, he also wrote Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. Laws are also labeling, and punishments are necessary so that the people will follow unquestioningly. In the societal view of religion/sexuality, lust=bad, procreation=good. Even sexual desire for your spouse is frowned upon. He was arrogant and egocentric and very loud about his beliefs, but you cannot trust him. He wanted to subvert our expectations, and his writing was often ironic. You also have to keep in mind that he thought literature had no political purpose (despite having himself strong political beliefs), because a poet can't assume that readers will know what he means. Blake only worries about the relationship between himself and his text – if the reader doesn't get it, that's no concern of his. The concern is himself and his vision. Okay, so those are some initial thoughts to get me going; discussion of individual Blake poems will be coming soon enough as well as the promised entry on the beginning of that Wordsworth bio. The forum is not yet active, but until then if you have comments feel free to email me at spotsoftime [at] ladydisdain [dot] com.