Customer Reviews

The Portable William Blake (Portable Library)

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This book contains a very good selection of Blake's most important and beautiful texts, and I have enjoyed reading it very much. My only complain is the quality of the paper which is very low, like mass-market paperback it resembles newspaper in texture and smell. There is a section of the book that reproduces some of his engravings in black and white, which is but a shadow of Blake's grandiose visual imagery.

If you want to sample some of this authors work on a budget, to see if you like it, then this book may be for you. But for Blake lovers there are better volumes, of complete works, some of them illustrated in color. That's what I will be purchasing next.

The best of William Blake (and then some!), taken off the shelf, dusted off and propped up for the rest of eternity to consider. From the aphorisms of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (required reading) to the later prophetic books, it's Blake in all of his...Blakeness. And let's give a hand to Kazin for his fantastic Introduction to one of the heavy-hitters of the Western tradition.

Alfred Kazin in his introduction to this work stresses the loneliness of Blake in his own world and time. Blake was one of the very few great masters as visual and as literary artist. But he was largely neglected in his own time and his works went largely unsold. Despite this loneliness and rejection he forged a vision of the world. As literary artist Blake was a supreme master of the Poetry of Childhood. His 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' are far greater works than his longer Poems of Prophecy. Blake did not understand this , any more than he understood that he lacked any real gift as Dramatic Artist and was primarily a romantic lyric poet. As Kazin points out Blake had little interest in History and little in the process of character transformation through experience. His characters are Abstract Qualities like the Accuser Satan the guilt- causing Urizen. Blake mixes the archaic Biblical scenes with scenes of modern life. He seems to live in a 'now' of his own creation. Blake's relation to marriage and sexuality were an important part of his work. Sin was bound up with hiddenness and forbiddeness. Kazin claims that Blake's marriage was not as ideal as made out in legend.
This Anthology contains the major literary works of Blake, and the excellent introduction by Kazin. I recommend focusing on the 'good parts' and avoiding insofar as possible the mythologizing abstractions of much of Blake's Prophetic and Dramatic poetry.

Francis Bacon, David Hume, Bishop Berkeley, John Locke, Edmund Burke; just a few of British philososphers. Some, like Burke and to some extant Hume are very tiresome and repulsive if one were to view them in a Nietzschean light. Other philosophers like Bertrand Russell, I loathe. Adam Smith and Thomas Carlyle: the former a crafty swindler who discovered clever ways to exploit the massess and cheat an honest man, the latter an insipid moron who boasted to the world that he was an atheist liberal who supported slavery.

British philososphy is not very exciting with such hum drum guys like the Locke who have a tiresome system of rationalizing every aspect of existence and smug bitter atheist[..]like Russell. It seems that British philosophy is dryer than dust.

Until one discoveres Blake...

William Blake (1757 - 1827), at once the purest philosopher, the most facinating figure, the greatest painter and most perfect poets ever set forth from Britain. Blake almost in the immense impressivness of his art and poetry to not be British, yet he is. Really the only true poet in the English language, the only true philosopher from Britain, for all true philosophers are poets and all true poets, philosophers. Blake is truly a noble soul

I read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell about a month ago. I am certain that it is one of those rare pieces of art that appears in literature; a beautiful work of art that appears so before its time (we seem only to begin to catch up to Blake in English) so before its time like the novels of Dostoevsky, especially Notes from Underground, lyrically Dostoevsky at his best, but my great Russian Brother is not the subject of this.

William Blake is the perfect embodiment of the Dionysian in art and literature. His works, such as the illustrations of Milton and especially Dante are the most beautiful paintings by an British hand. Particularly in the case of his illustration of the gates of Hell. This perfect haunting beauty is my ideal. Haunting in its depth of artistry, haunting in its appearence with Vergil looking at Dante in an ominous and yet celebratory way. One simply does not know. The mystery is half of Blake's magnificence and perfection.

Blake understands that many questions are left unanswered and that is my stand. I agree with him and Nietzsche when he is against the neo-classical ideal of rational explanations of every aspect of existence. I loathe many philosophers. Silence all who dare to cheapen our beautiful illusions.