William Blake
There are two diverging schools of thought about Blake. The first, upheld by people like Kay Redfield Jamison (see her book Touched With Fire) is that he was most probably mad with psychotic features, most likely a manic depressive. The other school leans more to the idea that he was simply a visionary, a mystic, eccentric but not mad. Just an enchanting mystic who, given his disenchantment of the world, devised a world all his own within which he liked to dwell.
Blake was born in London in 1757. Two of his six siblings died in infancy. From a very early age, he claimed to have visions; on one occasion God “put his head to the window” and when he was nine years old, he happened upon a tree in the countryside that was filled with angels. He also said that he received his unique method of “illuminated printing”(relief etching)in a dream from the spirit of his dead brother Robert (see his book Songs of Innocence and of Experience for an example of the technique) whom he saw rise up to the ceiling “clapping its hands for joy”.
There are two diverging schools of thought about Blake. The first, upheld by people like Kay Redfield Jamison (see her book Touched With Fire) is that he was most probably mad with psychotic features, most likely a manic depressive. The other school leans more to the idea that he was simply a visionary, a mystic, eccentric but not mad. Just an enchanting mystic who, given his disenchantment of the world, devised a world all his own within which he liked to dwell.
Blake was born in London in 1757. Two of his six siblings died in infancy. From a very early age, he claimed to have visions; on one occasion God “put his head to the window” and when he was nine years old, he happened upon a tree in the countryside that was filled with angels. He also said that he received his unique method of “illuminated printing”(relief etching)in a dream from the spirit of his dead brother Robert (see his book Songs of Innocence and of Experience for an example of the technique) whom he saw rise up to the ceiling “clapping its hands for joy”.
At age fourteen, after a stint in a drawing school that he left because of the cost, Blake apprenticed with an engraver. One of his assignments while apprenticing was to draw the tombs at Westminster Abbey, an appropriate assignment indeed for it exposed him to the Gothic styles which would inspire him throughout his life.
In 1772, he married an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher and taught her to read and write and draw. Some say he even taught her to see his visions! In many ways, at least at the outset, Catherine was the ideal wife for Blake. He more or less transformed her into what he needed but in doing so, realized that he had for a wife not so much an independent woman but rather an adoring servant. Blake’s own writings reveal as much; that he was tormented by her jealousy is also not in doubt.
In 1784, Blake set up a print shop but it failed after a number of years. He then went on to make a meagre living as an engraver and illustrator for books and magazines. Indeed there were times he was so poor that Catherine would put an empty plate before him at dinner as a reminder of their state of existence.
In 1772, he married an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher and taught her to read and write and draw. Some say he even taught her to see his visions! In many ways, at least at the outset, Catherine was the ideal wife for Blake. He more or less transformed her into what he needed but in doing so, realized that he had for a wife not so much an independent woman but rather an adoring servant. Blake’s own writings reveal as much; that he was tormented by her jealousy is also not in doubt.
In 1784, Blake set up a print shop but it failed after a number of years. He then went on to make a meagre living as an engraver and illustrator for books and magazines. Indeed there were times he was so poor that Catherine would put an empty plate before him at dinner as a reminder of their state of existence.
During his lifetime, Blake’s poetry was not well known by the general public. He did exhibit some of his paintings and in one such show at his brother James’s house in 1809, many patrons considered the work “hideous” and a few called him insane.
Insane? Mad? More than a few eminent people have thought as much. The poet William Wordsworth said this of Blake: “There was no doubt that the man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.”
And Harold Bloom opined: “The legends of Blake’s madness persist because he wrote poetry that describes Milton entering his left foot, because he claimed to speak daily and hourly with the spirit of his dead brother and with other spirits, because he wrote long incomprehensible poems about unheard-of-beings with names like Enitharmon and Golgonooza. In almost any age of human history such a man would have seemed insane…What is striking in a way about Blake’s career is not that so many people considered him insane but that so many people did not.”
There is no question that Blake suffered from intermittent periods of depression and exaltation. In some ways then, it would appear that he did fit the definition of a manic-depressive.
For the sake of fairness though, let’s look at the opposing viewpoint.
Insane? Mad? More than a few eminent people have thought as much. The poet William Wordsworth said this of Blake: “There was no doubt that the man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.”
And Harold Bloom opined: “The legends of Blake’s madness persist because he wrote poetry that describes Milton entering his left foot, because he claimed to speak daily and hourly with the spirit of his dead brother and with other spirits, because he wrote long incomprehensible poems about unheard-of-beings with names like Enitharmon and Golgonooza. In almost any age of human history such a man would have seemed insane…What is striking in a way about Blake’s career is not that so many people considered him insane but that so many people did not.”
There is no question that Blake suffered from intermittent periods of depression and exaltation. In some ways then, it would appear that he did fit the definition of a manic-depressive.
For the sake of fairness though, let’s look at the opposing viewpoint.
It has been said that those who pronounce Blake as mad are simply those who could not understand him. Undoubtedly, to a large extent, Blake existed in a mythical world all his own, a world of his own creation. In this way, he was not unlike the poet Gwendolyn MacEwen. He never traveled and led the life of a small tradesman. He was a very well informed autodidact who was ill at ease by what he had learnt. Despite his conjuring up his own mythical world, Blake was not an escapist. His visions clearly show an acute awareness of social conditions as they existed.
He saw the realities of the world and thus was against society. He loathed the church and anything that caused man to feel constricted and stifled (such as formal education or even the notion of a God who asserts domination over man). Along those lines, he despised materialism, child labour, armies, science – all at odds with his notion of what it meant to be human.
In one of his most famous poems – London – we come to understand his vision:
I wander thro’ each chartered street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appals;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
So in the poem we see a dismal picture of London, a picture of fallen man. Humanity which has lost its morality and is full of social injustices. And Blake “sees” and “marks” and “hears” and even “meets” people but does not interact; he stands apart and records the chimney-sweeper’s cries, the soldier’s sighs and the harlot’s curses. These victims of oppression, Blake believes, will eventually prove the undoing of their oppressors. In that way, the “mind-forged manacles” might come off.
He saw the realities of the world and thus was against society. He loathed the church and anything that caused man to feel constricted and stifled (such as formal education or even the notion of a God who asserts domination over man). Along those lines, he despised materialism, child labour, armies, science – all at odds with his notion of what it meant to be human.
In one of his most famous poems – London – we come to understand his vision:
I wander thro’ each chartered street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appals;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
So in the poem we see a dismal picture of London, a picture of fallen man. Humanity which has lost its morality and is full of social injustices. And Blake “sees” and “marks” and “hears” and even “meets” people but does not interact; he stands apart and records the chimney-sweeper’s cries, the soldier’s sighs and the harlot’s curses. These victims of oppression, Blake believes, will eventually prove the undoing of their oppressors. In that way, the “mind-forged manacles” might come off.
‘London’ can be found within Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. These are opposite states of being but Blake believed that only together could there be any true progress for man in terms of moral awakening. There are other Blake poems which reveal that innocence.
So the man who penned characters with strange names like ‘Orc’ and ‘Enitharmon’ was also acutely aware of conditions on earth. There is no question that Blake was a genius in painting and poetry but was apart from mankind because he understood that there was no integration in man (something which I believe he felt he alone understood). That split dealt with the illusions and constrictions that took man away from his true nature, his high imagination.
When we consider Blake as a naive mystic, he is moved further away from us. The same happens if he is perceived as mad. But as pointed out, he was not absent-minded; in fact, he understood the machinations of a chaotic and irrational society only too well. The problem may have been that he lacked a sense of belonging to his time. In any case, Blake was a highly complex man and the debate about whether he suffered from mental problems will undoubtedly continue.
*
“Seventeen whiskeys…a record, I believe.” Fans of Dylan Thomas will recognize those last words he spoke before he lapsed into a coma. A few days later, on Nov. 9, 1953, at the age of 39, he died.
*
There are others, of course. Writers touched by alcoholism or melancholia, depression, anxiety, extremes in mood. Dickens comes to mind as does Lord Alfred Tennyson and Graham Greene.
*
A quote by the Inuit mystic, Igjugarjuk, might explain why many writers, by their very natures observers of the world about them, suffer so much.
“Privation and suffering are the only things that can open the mind of man to those things which are hidden from others.”
A second quote comes from Socrates in Phaedrus:
“ Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings…the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of all arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art…So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than common sense…madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.”
So the man who penned characters with strange names like ‘Orc’ and ‘Enitharmon’ was also acutely aware of conditions on earth. There is no question that Blake was a genius in painting and poetry but was apart from mankind because he understood that there was no integration in man (something which I believe he felt he alone understood). That split dealt with the illusions and constrictions that took man away from his true nature, his high imagination.
When we consider Blake as a naive mystic, he is moved further away from us. The same happens if he is perceived as mad. But as pointed out, he was not absent-minded; in fact, he understood the machinations of a chaotic and irrational society only too well. The problem may have been that he lacked a sense of belonging to his time. In any case, Blake was a highly complex man and the debate about whether he suffered from mental problems will undoubtedly continue.
*
“Seventeen whiskeys…a record, I believe.” Fans of Dylan Thomas will recognize those last words he spoke before he lapsed into a coma. A few days later, on Nov. 9, 1953, at the age of 39, he died.
*
There are others, of course. Writers touched by alcoholism or melancholia, depression, anxiety, extremes in mood. Dickens comes to mind as does Lord Alfred Tennyson and Graham Greene.
*
A quote by the Inuit mystic, Igjugarjuk, might explain why many writers, by their very natures observers of the world about them, suffer so much.
“Privation and suffering are the only things that can open the mind of man to those things which are hidden from others.”
A second quote comes from Socrates in Phaedrus:
“ Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings…the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of all arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art…So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than common sense…madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.”