It represents more an attempt to create a picture of Blake's mental universe than a strictly biographical sketch of his life, in which relatively little happened (according to Damrosch) apart from the relentless creation of Blake's art. The writing is somewhat pedestrian but serviceable. Let me begin by saying that the book is worth the price for the many color plates and black-and-white figures alone. The book is an invitation to understanding and enjoyment, an invitation to appreciate Blake’s imaginative world and, in so doing, to open the doors of our perception. The author's goal is to inspire the reader with the passion he has for his subject, achieving the imaginative response that Blake himself sought to excite.
He believed that we live in the midst of Eternity here and now, and that if we could open our consciousness to the fullness of being, it would be like experiencing a sunrise that never ends.įollowing Blake’s life from beginning to end, acclaimed biographer Leo Damrosch draws extensively on Blake’s poems, his paintings, and his etchings and engravings to offer this generously illustrated account of Blake the man and his vision of our world. He was a counterculture prophet whose art still challenges us to think afresh about almost every aspect of experience-social, political, philosophical, religious, erotic, and aesthetic. Out of a wounding sense of alienation and dividedness he created a profoundly original symbolic language, in which words and images unite in a unique interpretation of self and society. William Blake, overlooked in his time, remains an enigmatic figure to contemporary readers despite his near canonical status.
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