William Blake1757-18271AWilliam Blake2ABlakes lifevBorn in London. vHe never went to school, but he learned to read and write at home, with his mothers help.vAt 10, he was sent to drawing school. Then he was sent on apprenticeship with an engraver.vAt his twentieth, he ended his apprenticeship and he began graving on his own account.vIn 1782, Blake was married to Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market gardener.3AvBetween his 12th and his 20th years he had written poems which later were to be printed under the title of “Poetical Sketches”. He at the same time studied at the Royal Academy, where he drew both from the antique and from the living model.v“There Is No Natural Religion” and “All Religions Are one” were written by him in about 1788.vHe wrote poems and printed “The song of Experiences” in 1789 and then etched his earliest “Prophetic Books”, “The Book of Thel”.4AvDuring the years 1788-1793 Blake mixed a good deal with the political radicals and the social reformers of the time.vAs early as 1789, Blake wrote “French Revolution” and Prophetic Book”.vIn 1790, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”.vIn 1793,Blake issued a “Prospectus, To the Public”.vIn 1794, “The Songs of Innocence” was published again, together with “The Songs of Experience” .vIn 1804, Blake started to etch both “Milton” and “Jerusalem”.5ABlakes political viewsvBlake never tried to fit into the world, he was a rebel innocently and completely all his life.vHe was politically of the permanent left & mixed a good deal with the radicals like Thomas Paine and William Godwin.vBlake strongly criticized the capitalists cruel exploitation, saying that the dark satanic mills left men unemployed, killed children and forced prostitution. vHe cherished great expectations and enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and regarded it as a necessary stage leading to the millennium predicted by the biblical prophets6ABlakes poetry Blakes poetry has generally been divided into two groups:(1)Lyrical poems: v “Poetical Sketches”.(1783)v “The Songs of Innocence”(1789) v “The Songs of Experience” (1794)(2)Prophetic Books contain:v “Tiriel”(1789)v “The Book of Thel”(1789)v “Milton”(1808)v “Jerusalem”(1818)v “The Ghost of Abel”(1822) 7AThe Marriage of Heaven and HellvIt is regarded as Blakes principle prose work, was conceived as early as 1790 but was not etched in its entirely until 1793. while this work was given lavish praise by the 19th-century poet Swinburne, it is actually very obscure.8AThe Songs of Innocence9A“The Songs of Innocence”(1789)vIt shows Blakes advance in his artistic achievement as a poet, though some poems are not serious and thought-provoking. The appeal seems to be chiefly to children ,and most of the poems in the collection have a strange, simple beauty both in their themes and their language and verse form and rhythm.10AvOn the whole, the poems in this collection are short and lyrical and are indeed “happy songs” in which one feels the existence of social; harmony or at least a childs feeling of “Gods in his heaven, Alls right with the world.” But there are exceptions, like:vThe Little Black BoyvThe Chimney-Sweeper11AThe Songs of Experience12A “The Songs of Experience” (1794)vIt is certainly about the most important volume of all Blakes poetry, because it is matured work than either “Poetical Sketches”.(1783) or “The Songs of Innocence”(1789) vThe poems are short and lyrical and still assume the childlike tongue and use simple language, but we could find poets deeper and more penetrating observation of reality.13AvThere are a lot of poems in the “Songs of Experience” that are pervaded with an atmosphere of intense sorrow and sadness, especially for small children( e.g. “The Angel”, “Ah! Sun-flower”, “The Human Abstract”, “Infant Sorrow”, The School Boy”).vMany of the poems in the “The Songs of Innocence”(1789) are rewritten or revised in the “Songs of Experience”, with the result that joyful atmosphere or the harmonious ending is in each case changed into a bitter mood or a sad story.14AvThe most outstanding poem in “The Songs of Experience” (1794) is the poem “London” in which Blake utters his social criticism. It shows the miseries of the common people: “I wandered thro each chartered street, Near where the charted Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe In every cry of every man, In every infants cry of fear, In every choice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear. 15AvThe poems in “The Songs of Experience” (1794) have attained to strange height of lyrical beauty, because in form these songs hearken back to the great lyrics of the Renaissance era, but the very somberness of their themes, with the curious mixture of social criticism and otherworldly mysticism, gives these poems high seriousness that stands in sharp contrast with the light-hearted fun of 16th-century lyrics.16AComments on BlakevBlake should be remembered chiefly for his “Songs of experience” in which he poured out his bitter