More than any other English Romantic Poet, William Blake lived the Romantic life. On the surface this may appear to be untrue; certainly the sexual escapades of Byron and Shelley -- not to mention Byron's death fighting for Greek freedom -- would make them seem truer embodiments of the Romantic myth. Despite Blake's tranquil domestic life and work-a-day life as an engraver, he was in many ways, more of an individualist and more in touch with the psychological and emotional underpinnings of the Romantic Movement then many of his contemporaries.

His contemporaries certainly found him extreme. "You may perhaps smile at my calling another Poet, a Mystic," wrote Coleridge to his friend H.F. Cary "but verily I am in the very mire of common-place common-sense compared with Mr. Blake!"

But Blake, born into the urban lower middle-class and concerned all his life with freedom in all it's forms, turned away from the flamboyant in life, even as he embraced it in his poetry and art. At the age of four he reported seeing his first vision: God, with his face pressed against the windowpane.

Recognizing William’s sensitive nature, Blake's mother educated him at home, a circumstance which allowed him to take long walks in the countryside (in those days, a short walk from his London home). In many of his verses Blake celebrates the caring mother and the tender innocence of children. Yet Blake also draws women as a destructive influence on men -- in THE MENTAL TRAVELLER an old woman is given Orc, a male infant:

She binds iron thorns around his head:

She pierces both his hands & feet:

She cuts his heart out at his side

To make it feel both cold & heat.

The old woman becomes "a virgin bright" to whom the grown-up Orc is attracted. Eventually a baby girl is born and she grows up to repeat the story:

She nails him down upon the rock

And all is done as I have told.

Critics have suggested that Blake resented both the fact woman gave man his sexual fulfillment and that women have the more active role in procreation. Others have suspected that his seemingly happy marriage was not as placid as it appeared. The most famous story about his marriage, however, suggests that it was a happy, healthy union. When a friend came to visit the Blakes and found them out back in the garden, he saw both William and Catherine in the summerhouse, naked. As he retreated, embarrassed, Blake called out to him to approach, "it's only Adam and Eve, you know!"

Unfortunately for Blake, his sensitivity could become touchiness, and, later in life he alienated many friends who tried to help him. Blake ascribed to these friends various unkind motivations -- most often jealousy -- presumably because he couldn't bear to accept favors! This sort of rugged independence is typical of the Romantic hero. In reality, most Romantic poets were not nearly as independent as their protagonists. Because he relied on engraving for his income, Blake's sensitivity and independence had dire financial consequences; he literally starved for his art at times!

It is difficult to understand Blake's view that his fellow artists such as John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and Henry Fuseli and fellow writers such as William Hayley were be jealous; none of Blake's poems were published (in the usual sense -- some were published privately) during his lifetime and, despite a showing at the Royal Academy early in his career, Blake's paintings were not nearly as popular as those of his friends. Perhaps his friends were prescient; Blake is certainly more admired today than others of his circle.

Idealistically disdaining worldly success, Blake criticized his friends for theirs. Ironically, he chaffed that his own work was not widely known. When he was asked to illustrate new publications of popular poet Edward Young's NIGHT THOUGHTS, he created images that implicitly criticized Young's poems. Blake managed to be both the lofty idealist damning commercial and popular renown and, at the same time, a bitter, unrecognized genius.

In THE FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN, Blake invented his own Creation Myth, vilifying the patriarchal aspects of conventional Christianity and the Church of England. Blake saw organized religion as part of an establishment conspiracy to oppress the masses (move over, Karl Marx!). In VALA, the tyrant God Urizen proclaims "Compell the poor to live upon a Crust of Bread by soft mild arts;. . . when a man looks pale/With labour & abstinence say he looks healthy & happy/And when his children sicken, let them die." Blake disliked the English government so much that he saw the French Revolution as a positive reform movement. He later expressed such admiration of Napoleon that he was arrested for treason. His poem AMERICA predicted success for Bonaparte and his hope that as old, oppressive regimes topple they will be replaced with freer, spiritually driven orders.

Blake is also famous -- or infamous, depending on one's point of view -- for his visions, which included Milton, his dead brother Robert, Moses among others. One of his visions was of the dead poet William Cowper, who Blake reported as saying to him:

O, that I were insane. I will never rest. Can you not make me truly

insane? I will not rest till I am so. O! that in the bosom of God I

was hid. You retain health & yet are as mad as any of us all -- over us

all -- mad as a refuge from unbelief -- from Bacon, Newton & Locke.

Blake identified with Cowper, who did, in fact, have mental problems. It is significant that Blake, who was called "an unfortunate lunatic by Robert Hune and "a decided madman" by Robert Southey, glorifies madness as a refuge from reason, represented by Bacon, Newton and Locke.

Blake ended his life poor and obscure except for recognition by a small group of young painters who called themselves "the Ancients." They adopted Blake as their master and referred to his home as "the house of the interpreter." These men, as much as Blake's writings and art, influenced how the nineteenth century saw Blake, helping to create his legend as the madman/genius of the Romantic movement.

Blake's Writings, in chronological order:

AN ISLAND IN THE MOON
SONGS OF INNOCENCE
TIREL
BOOK OF THEL
MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN & HELL
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
AMERICA
VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION
FOR CHILDREN; THE GATES OF PARADISE
EUROPE
A FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN
SONGS OF EXPERIENCE
THE SONG OF LOS
THE BOOK OF AHANIA
THE BOOK OF LOS

Nothing from 1795 - 1804

VALA, THE FOUR ZOAS
MILTON
JERUSALEM