What is now proved was once only imagined

August 13, 2018 3:23 AM

The English poet and artist William Blake has received a new gravestone at the exact place he was buried. How amateur sleuths finally tracked down the burial place of William Blake Singer Bruce Dickinson speaking at the unveiling.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (23 comments total)

Neat post, as well as utterly eponysterical!
posted by chavenet at 3:34 AM on August 13, 2018 [10 favorites]

I was wondering whether to post something like this yesterday after reading this fascinating PDF on the Blake Society website. Many details and all the photos you could possibly need. But it is a PDF.
posted by Grangousier at 4:11 AM on August 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Very interesting - thanks for the post, fearfulsymmetry, and thanks too Grangousier for that remarkably thorough PDF.

"And I saw it was filled with graves, / And tombstones where flowers should be..."
posted by misteraitch at 4:52 AM on August 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I had a college English literature professor who loved poetry, though I didn't much care for it outside of Shakespeare and Frost and Wordsworth. The guy always had little white spit popping off his lips when he read, and he rolled his eyes when he cried "Batter my heart, three-person'd God" in his awful Boston accent at least once a week.

But he also shouted "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" just as loud, so then I read some Blake, and saw his art, and I thought, this stuff is awesome and crazy and I love it.

The drawings (sorry to say) remind me of some of the metalheads in high school who doodled endlessly, riffing on album art: lots of eternal torment but lacking in some formal technique. All the same, they are fiery and alive and so vibrant that I can't resist them.

God bless these folks for refusing to settle for "near this spot" about Blake's final resting spot: they have done an honor to the favorite artist.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:51 AM on August 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

I got to age 50 without ever hearing of Blake, and now I've run into him twice in a week. (His work plays a central role in Dan Brown: Origin, which I'm currently reading.)

1. Yes, Brown is not fine literature, but it is good escapist fun.
2. I should probably take this as a sign to read some Blake.

Anybody here want to suggest a starting point for me?
posted by COD at 5:58 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Songs of Innocence and Experience. Watch out for the paired poems, eg The Tyger and The Lamb.
posted by Leon at 6:28 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

The Bruce Dickinson?!?

/cowbell
posted by exparrot at 6:54 AM on August 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

Ditto Songs of Innocence and Experience, which I strongly recommend reading with the illustrations--the illustrations are part of the poems, not extrinsic to them.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:25 AM on August 13, 2018 [8 favorites]

But to read Blake only for his verse is to deny yourself the experience complete. Do not sleep on him as an illustrator.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:39 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yep, the FULL SOUND AND LIGHTS SHOW is required here.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:54 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Now I've got to stand in the tea chest.
posted by Funeral march of an old jawbone at 8:25 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It’s a good intro to his philosophy which forms the basis of his poetry.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:56 AM on August 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am glad to hear this. On a previous trip to the UK, I went to Bunhill Fields and was faintly nonplussed to see the marker with its vague shrug that he was “near by.” It struck me that in a 21st century cemetery, as in 18th century literature, he is overshadowed by Defoe (literally in the case of the grave markers: Blake’s modest stone is a couple of paces east of Defoe’s towering monument, just visible at the edge of the photo from the Guardian story). I am happy to hear that the next generation of Blake enthusiasts will know more securely where he rests.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:18 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I would suggest Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye as an introduction to Blake.
posted by uosuaq at 10:56 AM on August 13, 2018

Thanks for posting this. It's a pleasure to see London's Eternal Prophet honoured like this, particularly when Albion's in such dire need of saving.

I've recently been engaging with the "difficult" end of Blake's oeuvre, so I'll second the nomination of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and add that the epic poems are best read in reproductions of the original illuminated engravings. So much of the magic is lost in the translation to plain text or movable type.

The more esoteric works go down surprisingly well with a side order of cultural theory, such as this academic paper comparing Blake's Critique of Enlightenment Reason in The Four Zoas with Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, an indication of just how ahead of his time he was. For a gentler introduction, Iain McGilchrist's address to the Blake Society, The Infinite Brain and the Narrow Circle, gives some context on Blake's insight into the nature of consciousness, which influenced Freud and anticipated Jung.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 11:41 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

i have a william blake story to tell that's a bit like allen ginsburg's

i was six years old and one of the books in the bookshelves was called piper pipe that song again - it was a collection of children's poetry, i guess

one afternoon i read the title poem by william blake and heard music to it - my one little melody that went with it; my first song

it took me awhile to get up to speed, but i've been writing songs since then

he has a real ability to do things like that to people
posted by pyramid termite at 1:18 PM on August 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

As an English major who likes Blake, and as an Iron Maiden fan, this warms the fuck out of my heart.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:55 PM on August 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

Plus there were remarks by comedian Will Franken (Previously). Here's a photo of Will Franken with a life mask of William Blake.
posted by larrybob at 6:17 PM on August 13, 2018

I just used the speech by Bruce Dickinson to introduce Blake to my husband, so thank you for providing this excellent opening. (I am a poet married to very much a non-poet, though our feelings about Iron Maiden are the same.)
posted by lydhre at 5:21 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Holy frequency effect Batman!

Until last week I'd only known about Blake as the guy who wrote Tyger Tyger. Last week I read an essay that talked about his amazingly weird mythic poetry, and now that I read some of it I find this. Nifty!
posted by sotonohito at 7:00 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Is there a cogent exegesis of Blakean mythology and philosophy (cosmology?), by the way? I did ask a proper academic scholar who'd published a book on Blake once, but he sort of looked hunted and changed the subject. It was his day off, though.
posted by Grangousier at 12:02 PM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Grangrousier, I don't have specific experience in this area, but Kathryn Freeman's book gets linked a lot. Here is a free, online article for just a few years ago, that should only take a few minutes to run through

Also, take a look at the list of Blake quotes on Goodreads to get a sampler of his thundering feels: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/13453.William_Blake

"Exuberance is beauty.”

and

“Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.”

and

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

and

“Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.”

and

What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs

posted by wenestvedt at 1:08 PM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

“Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the sons of God shouting for joy.”

I realized much later that his central image was lifted stealthily out of Job 38:7, but the first time I read that line, it hit me with more force than the entirety of Paradise Lost.

I once composed a brief and spontaneous exegesis on this line to my wife when, under the influence of some edibles, I replaced some dead lightbulbs with higher wattage ones. Then I came downstairs again twenty minutes later and asked if we had just talked about Blake. Good times.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:22 PM on August 15, 2018 [1 favorite]