William Blake: Song of Innocence and of Experience E-Book

William Blake

• Herausgeber: Tate Publishing
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 40

Beschreibung

'Every page is a window open in Heaven … interwoven designs companion the poems, and gold and yellow tints diffuse themselves over the page like summer clouds. The poems [of Song of Innocence] are the morning song of Blake's genius.' - W.B. Yeats'Blake sang of the ideal world, of the truth of the intellect, and of the divinity of imagination … The only writer to have written songs for children with the soul of a child … he holds, in my view, a unique position because he unites intellectual sharpness with mystic sentiment.' - James JoyceSong of Innocence and of Experience is a rare and wonderful book, its seeming simplicity belying its visionary wisdom. Internationally recognised as a masterpiece of English literature, it also occupies a key position in the history of western art.This unique edition of the work allows Blake to communicate with his readers as he intended, reproducing Blake's own illumination and lettering from the finest existing example of the original work. In this way readers can experience the mystery and beauty of Blake's poems as he first created them, discovering for themselves the intricate webs of symbol and meaning that connects word and image.Each poem is accompanied by a literal transcription, and the volume is introduced by the renowned historian and critic, Richard Holmes. The poems are narrated by novelist and critic, Adam Mars-Jones.This beautiful edition of Song of Innocence and of Experience will be essential for those familiar with Blake's work, but also offers an ideal way into his visionary world for those encountering Blake for the first time.

Leseprobe

Blake’s Songs of Innocence & of Experience

WILLIAM BLAKE Songs of Innocence & of Experience Introduction by RICHARD HOLMES Tate Publishing

Contents

Introduction

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Songs of Innocence

Songs of Experience

Introduction William Blake was born in Soho, London, in 1757; and at the age of eight saw ‘a tree filled with angels’ on Peckham Rye, their bright wings ‘bespangling every bough like stars’. His visionary gifts, as a painter, engraver and poet, never left him; and when he died, in a two-room garret in Fountain Court, Strand, in 1827, he was singing. His poetic powers are most fully demonstrated in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, published in 1794 and now the most justly famous of all his works, although less than thirty copies are known to have been sold in his life-time. Wordsworth thought he was insane; Coleridge – who visited him in Fountain Court – thought he was a genius; and the world has remained somewhat divided ever since. The Songs combine extreme simplicity of form with complex and mysterious meanings. To begin to understand them, it is helpful to know something of the enigmatic man who described himself as ‘Author & Printer W Blake’ on their title-page. Blake’s father was a hosier, and all his life Blake supported himself as a small, independent craftsman-printer and illustrator. He was apprenticed to an engraver in Covent Garden, began exhibiting paintings at

the Royal Academy when twenty-three, and two years later married Catherine Boucher, the beautiful young daughter of a market-gardener, whom he taught to read, mix paint and prepare plates. Her small, undulating figure seems to haunt many of his drawings. The marriage was childless (a significant fact, since the Songs were addressed to children), but very happy; and despite periods of poverty and depression the household attracted many friends and later ‘disciples’, including the painter Samuel Palmer. At Lambeth, where many of the Songs were composed, Blake was once discovered in his little back-garden, sitting naked in the sun under a tree with Catherine, reading Paradise Lost. He called to the friend, ‘Come in! It’s only Adam and Eve, you know!’ Another friend of later days, Frederick Tatham, described his visionary approach to life as something quite different from hallucinations or madness: he emphasised Blake’s witty originality and strong visual and dramatic sense, and in a revealing phrase called it Blake’s ‘peopled Thoughts’. One can see, even in Blake’s casual letters, how he constantly perceived the world around him in symbolic form. Commiserating with his friend William Hayley on the death of Hayley’s son, Blake wrote: ‘May you continue to be more & more

persuaded that every Mortal loss is an Immortal Gain. The Ruins of Time builds Mansions in Eternity.’ Again, when moving briefly to Sussex to begin new work, Blake recorded a symbolic incident which to him indicated that the work would go well. ‘Work will go on here with God speed. A roller & two harrows lie before my window. I met a plow on my first going out at my gate the first morning of my arrival, & the Plowboy said to the Plowman, “Father, the Gate is Open.” ’ Blake read voraciously from childhood, and began writing poetry at the age of thirteen, walking about the streets of London and going on long expeditions to the surrounding country villages (as they then were) of Marylebone, Islington and Dulwich, seeing angels working in the hayfields. Later in life he explained his inspiration in the following way: ‘ “What,” it will be Questioned, “when the Sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a Guinea?” O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the host crying “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty.” I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would question a Window concerning a Sight. I look through it & not with it.’ Self-taught, energetic, passionately imaginative,