The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - Couverture rigide

Blake, William

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1851243410 ISBN 13 : 9781851243419

Editeur : Bodleian Library, 2011

Synopsis

Book by Blake William

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

By William Blake

Romantic and Revolutionary Biblical Prophecy

‘A True Classic Publication’

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets from etched plates containing prose, poetry and illustrations. The plates were then coloured by Blake and his wife Catherine.

The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell, published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake in several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichaean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order; hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening "Argument" and the "Song of Liberty". The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Blake's theory of contraries was not a belief in opposites but rather a belief that each person reflects the contrary nature of God, and that progression in life is impossible without contraries. Moreover he explores the contrary nature of reason and of energy, believing that two types of people existed: the "energetic creators" and the "rational organizers", or, as he calls them in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the "devils" and "angels". Both are necessary to life according to Blake.

Blake's text has been interpreted in many ways. It certainly forms part of the revolutionary culture of the period. The references to the printing-house suggest the underground radical printers producing revolutionary pamphlets at the time. Ink-blackened printworkers were comically referred to as a "printer's devil", and revolutionary publications were regularly denounced from the pulpits as the work of the devil.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' is the most overt statement Blake ever wrote in prose of his beliefs and the radical, revolutionary part of this text are 'The Proverbs of Hell.''No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion. Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. Exuberance is Beauty. 'A superb insight into Blake's beliefs and essential for a full understanding of 'The Songs of Innocence and Experience.'

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Bodleian Library
• Date d'édition: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1851243410
• ISBN 13: 9781851243419
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 184