Celebrating William Blake, the Nativity, and the Imagination

The Nativity by Wm. Blake

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
by Wm Blake

I'm commemorating the Nativity with having, on Christmas Eve, finished reading Peter Ackroyd's "thick" biography of William Blake.  What extraordinary work, such intense labor, and I'm not just referring to William Blake, mind you, I'm talking about Ackroyd's bio.  Blake's world, inside and out, was to say the least as sublime as it was penurious.  His visions are repeatedly heartbreaking, fearsome, and although his petulance and at times manic distrust of his friends colors some of his personality throughout, he is still for me, as he has been since I first read him at Queens College many years ago, a standard bearer, one of the horsemen of my own interior apocalypse.  Here is some Blake--


"You ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men.  That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care."

Portrait of Wm Blake by
Thomas Phillips

"I know that This World Is a World of IMAGINATION & Vision.  I see Everything I paint In This World, but Everybody does not see alike.  To the Eyes of Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes.  The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way."


"But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.  To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination."




Angel of the Revelation
by Wm Blake

 

 

Blake talked about the notion of "States."  Ackroyd writes

 "His first mention of 'State' comes in the penultimate 'Night' or chapter of the poem in which he declares that it is necessary to know 'The Difference between States and Individuals of those States.'  These states may be of desire, or rage, or longing; they may also be of the material selfhood itself, and the Individual passes through them while retaining an essential spiritual identity.  You can be 'in drink' for a while, but that does not mean you are a 'drunkard.'  ...it was a way of considering the passage of the soul through the world without dwelling upon sin and guilt but rather upon forgiveness and redemption."

 

The Ancient of Days
by Wm Blake

 "Thought chang'd the infinite to a serpent;
 that which pitieth:
To a devouring flame;
 and man fled from its face and hid
In forests of night...
Then the serpent temple form'd, image of infinite
Shut up in finite revolutions,
and man became an Angel;
Heaven a mighty circle turning;
God a tyrant crown'd."



When the Morning Stars
Sang Together by Wm Blake



"The other evening...taking a walk, I came to a meadow and, at the farther corner of it, I saw a fold of lambs.  Coming nearer, the ground blushed with flowers; and the wattled cote and its woolly tenants were of an exquisite pastoral beauty.  But I looked again, and it proved to be no living flock, but beautiful sculpture." [Blake]

 

 

Nebuchadnezzar by Wm Blake
This is one of my favorite prints by Blake.
It's an accurate representation of myself in the morning;
it's why I need coffee, first thing.

 

 

 

"What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song

Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price

Of all that a man hath in his house his wife his children

Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy

And in the witherd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain."

 

[from Vala or The Death and Judgement of the Eternal Man: A Dream of Nine Nights by William Blake]