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."
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
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."
(Erdman 117; Milton 22:50)
The reader no doubt recalls that Samson was shorn of his locks by Delilah,
leading to the loss of his unusual strength.
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