William Blake

A Critical Analysis on William Blake

As romanticism flourished in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in European culture one of the figures that stood foremost was William Blake . A poet , an engraver-putting it simply , an artist , many have raised an eyebrow with his lifestyle and works . Being a lyric poet , a visionary and even a mystic at times people have come to doubt his state of mind , whether or not he truly was an artist or simply insane . Wordsworth , for example , commented that there "is no doubt that

this poor man was mad , but there is something in his madness which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott " and John Ruskin similarly felt that Blake 's work was "diseased and wild even if his mind was "great and wise (Dover ,1998

Looking into Blake 's background , we find that he lived an impoverished life in what we could say , was almost absolute seclusion . His interest in outside ideas rested on being able to refute them . Blake 's seclusion was not simply limited to isolation from other beings , it was also an isolation of the mind which has lead to many great works which differ in style

Blake 's writings have ranged from lyrical such as his Auguries of Innocence (Erdman and Bloom , 1965 ) as seen

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour

through highly elaborate apocalyptic and visionary . He purposely wrote in the manner of the Hebrew prophets and apocalyptic . He envisioned his works as expressions of prophecy , following in the footsteps (or , more precisely stepping into the shoes ) of Elijah and Milton . In fact , he clearly believed himself to be the living embodiment of the spirit of Milton (Gastfield , 2007

On other occasions , Blake 's way of writing shifted to a highly speculative and paradoxical view which is very much evident in his The marriage of Heaven and Hell (Erdman and Bloom , 1965 ) where he writes "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is , infinite

This also particularly expressed his rebellion against the established values during this era

Blake accepted nothing and had a yearning so deep , for all that is intangible and unbounded to man under the dominion of God , matter , and reason (Kazin ,1997 . He was a man who had all the divergence of human existence in his hands , and he never forgot that it is the role of man to be able to find a solution for them

Although his contemporaries may have thought him as insane and having a diseased mind , William Blake was far ahead of his time being a visionary . A non conformist who embraced radical thinking , his works have influenced the lives of a great number of people , even being acclaimed by the underground movement . Having such great talent , and having so many ideas...