Blake, William: Mature Poetry
Mature Poetry
In
Blake's Prophetic Books combine poetry, vision, prophecy, and exhortation. They include
The Prophetic Books are founded in the real world, as are Blake's passions and anger, but they appear abstruse because they are ordered by a mythology devised by the poet, which draw from Swedenborg, Jacob Boehme, and other mystical sources. Despite this, and despite the fact that from childhood on Blake was a mystic who thought it quite natural to see and converse with angels and Old Testament prophets, he by no means forsook concrete reality for a mystical life of the spirit. On the contrary, reality, whose center was human life, was for Blake inseparable from imagination. The spiritual, indeed God himself, was an expression of the human.
Sections in this article:
- Introduction
- Mature Poetry
- Work in the Visual Arts
- Early Life and Work
- Bibliography
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