Blake wrote poems
during this time as well, and his first printed collection, Poetical Sketches, appeared in 1783. Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, followed by Songs of Experience in 1793 and a combined edition the
next year bearing the title Songs of Innocence and
Experience showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
Blake’s political radicalism
intensified during the years leading up to the French
Revolution. He disapproved of Enlightenment rationalism, of institutionalized religion, and of the tradition of
marriage in its conventional legal and social form (though he was married
himself). His nonconformist religious thinking is particularly evident in
The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell. In the 1790s and
after, he shifted his poetic voice from the lyric to the prophetic mode, and
wrote a series of long prophetic books, including Milton and Jerusalem. Linked together by an intricate mythology and
symbolism of Blake’s own creation, these books propose a revolutionary new
social, intellectual, and ethical order.
Blake published almost all of
his works himself, by an original process in which the poems were etched by
hand, along with illustrations and decorative images, onto copper plates. These
plates were inked to make prints, and the prints were then coloured in with
paint. This production method was called “illuminated printing”. Most
students of Blake find it necessary to consider his graphic art and his writing
together; he himself thought of them as inseparable.
Blake believed that his
poetry could be read and understood by common people, but he was determined not
to sacrifice his vision in order to become popular. When an exhibition
of his works met with financial failure in 1809, Blake sank into depression and withdrew into
obscurity; he remained alienated for the rest of his life.
During
his lifetime Blake never made much money. His
contemporaries saw him as something of an eccentric. It was only after his
death that his genius was fully appreciated. His engravings and
commissioned work drew enough money to survive, but at times he had to rely on
the support of some of his close friends.
Blake left no debts at his
death on August 12, 1827. Wordsworth's verdict after Blake's death reflected many opinions of
the time: "There was no
doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this
man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter
Scott."
Suspended between the Neoclassicism of the 18th
century and the early phases of Romanticism, William Blake heavily influenced the Romantic poets with recurring themes of good and evil,
heaven and hell, knowledge and innocence, and external reality versus inner.
Only in the 20th century wide audiences began to acknowledge his
profound originality and genius.
His works have been used by people rebelling against a wide
variety of issues, such as war, conformity, and almost every kind of
repression.
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