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Old 06-17-2010, 02:49 PM   #494
TimMason
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An Aside on Blake

Quote:
I think you're taking Blake out of context there. Wasn't that one of Blake's proverbs of hell? I'm not sure he was actually promoting that point of view, but it's been awhile since I've read "Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
If you look at all the proverbs of hell, there are some that Blake almost certainly felt to be just. For example, when he wrote: "Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion," this chimes with what are known of his opinions at the time. Others are more debatable. But on the whole, Blake's vision is dialectical. He saw the Devil as, in many ways, God's equal partner, believing that one should listen to both, and that the Devil's voice had been silenced or muffled by Law and Religion. It was the poet's task to let that voice be heard.

Blake was in no way meek and mild as a person. Several incidents in his life suggest that he himself was no stranger to anger, and that he could be aroused to violence. And he was surely no friend to the horses of instruction; his relationship with his teachers was often antagonistic - see what he wrote about Reynolds!

But as has been said, many have wandered into the labyrinth of Blake's poetry, never to return.
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