Blake's Sources 1

Blake's Sources




Although he was many other things, Blake might well be

considered a "man of books". His reading was omnivorous. He might also be

considered a Renaissance man if such a thing were possible in the 19th

Century.




In The Sacred Wood T.S.Eliot wrote an essay on Blake. He found him lacking

in the poetic tradition. Kenneth Rexroth wrote more excisively about Eliot's

relation to Blake; he referred to Blake's sources as "the tradition of organized

heterodoxy." And this from a lecture given by Kathleen Raine:




"Blake's sources and reading proved to be not 'odds and ends' as T.S. Eliot had

rather rashly described them. On the contrary, Blake's sources proved to be the

mainstream of human wisdom. It was the culture of his age that was provincial,

whereas Blake had access to the 'perennial philosophy', an excluded

knowledge in the modern West in its pursuit of the natural sciences in the light

of a materialist philosophy."




Blake was not 'unlettered'! Quite the contrary he was a modern throwback to

medievalism when 'it all' could be known; he knew all of which Eliot knew

nothing. Bacon, Newton (and presumably Eliot) cared little for these cultures,

but Blake included them in his 'library' of acquaintance. He despised Bacon

and Newton as shallow materialists.




in a Letter to Flaxman Blake wrote:




"Now my lot in the Heavens is this; Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me

his face, Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years

gave me his hand; Paracelsus & Behmen appeard to me."




His "nodding acquaintance" was actually much, much broader. Here are some

of the disciplines that Blake had at least a nodding acquaintance with:




Some of Blake's Sources:






The Bible

Swedenborg


Homer


Plato


Plotinus


Hermes


Paracelsus


Boehme


Dante


Shakespeare


Milton


Michaelangelo


Bacon,


Newton,


Locke


Berkeley











Swedenborg In the 18th century Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish

scientist, philosopher and religionist, had a very high reputation. In London a

'new church' sprang up espousing his values. William Blake's parents were

members of the New Church. That probably explains several interesting things

about Blake's early life. For example his father appear to be about as

permissive as the average modern father in our culture today, but very atypical

for his generation. .




Blake was imbued with a great many of the famous man's values, particularly

his esoteric religious ones. As a young adult Blake found many of the same

ideas among the great thinkers of the ages. He became less dependent on

Swedenborg's thought forms. With MHH Plates 21 and 22 he declared his

independence of his childhood teacher.




Perhaps the chief objection of the mature Blake was that Swedenborg had a

positive demeanour re the established church:




O Swedenborg! strongest of men,

the Samson shorn by the Churches;

Showing the Transgressors in Hell,

the proud Warriors in Heaven,

Heaven as a Punisher, and Hell as One under Punishment;

With Laws from Plato and his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods In Albion,

and to deny the value of the Saviour's blood. The reader no doubt recalls that

Samson was shorn of his locks by Delilah, leading to the loss of his unusual

strength.

(Erdman 117; Milton 22:50ff)