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Overview
A brilliant new biography of the mystic poet and artist William Blake – and the first to explore his startlingly original quest for spiritual truth, as well as the profound lessons he has for us all today.
The hymn ‘Jerusalem’, with its famous words by William Blake, stirs our hearts with its evocation of a new holy city built in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. However, until now, the spiritual essence of William Blake has been buried under myriad inadequate biographies, college dissertations and arts commentaries, written by people who have missed the luminescent keys to Blake’s symbolism and liberating spirit. Any attempt to uncover the ‘real’ Blake is thwarted by his status as a legend or ‘national treasure’.
In Jerusalem! Tobias Churton expertly takes you beyond this superficial façade, showing you Blake the esoteric genius – a myth-maker, brilliantly using symbols and theology to express his unique insights into the nature of body, mind and spirit. Churton is not only deeply knowledgeable about Blake’s life and times, but also uses his shared values with Blake to enter into his labyrinth of thought and feeling.
Challenging the conventional views of Blake as either a ‘romantic poet’ or a rebel with ideas about free sex, Tobias Churton’s startling new biography reveals, at last, the real William Blake in all his glory, so that anyone who sings ‘Jerusalem’ in future will see its beauty with renewed understanding.
With access to a large body of never-before-published records – letters, diaries, pamphlets and books – Tobias Churton casts unprecedented light and perspective on William Blake’s life and times.
Blake’s writing – heartfelt, vivid and profound – accounts for his status as one of the best-loved poets writing in English. Americans need no reminding that Blake inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson and American visionary Walt Whitman. Yet he spent the larger part of his creative career being ridiculed and suppressed. In Jerusalem! Churton conjures a superb portrait of Blake’s London, and in particular the rivalries of the cultural community in which the poet-artist was often misunderstood. He argues that Blake believed Man does not ‘belong’ to society; rather,we are all members of the Divine Body, co-existent with God. He was concerned with a total spiritual revival – what had gone wrong with Man, and how to put it right.
Blake’s message has proved to be as challenging to today’s readers as it was to his contemporaries. Blake perceived, so far ahead of his time, that the philosophy of materialism would dominate the world – a culture from which we now yearn to break free. Jerusalem! is unashamedly ambitious in its scope and objective. Churton ends once and for all the persistent notion of Blake as a startling peculiarity, whilst emancipating him from the labels of ‘Romantic poet’ or ‘national treasure’. Even if it means sacrificing some cherished illusions or uncovering a few painful surprises, this compelling biography reveals, for the first time, the true spirit of William Blake.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781780287881 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Watkins Media |
| Publication date: | 04/28/2015 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 464 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Foreword Michael Eavis CBE xi
Foreword Frank van Lamoen xiii
Preface: The Golden String xvii
Introduction: Jerusalem! xxvii
1 The Only Way to Die 1827 1
2 The Canvas Prepared 1727-1752 11
Catherine and the Moravians
3 Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven 1806-1863 27
Vision of Angels
4 Childhood 1752-1767 37
Henry Rimius versus the Moravians
Education
Henry Pars's Drawing School
5 Lines and Chains 1767-1772 53
James Basire and the Awful Truth
6 The Golden Cage 1772-1778 63
First Work
Freemasonry and Blake
7 Sex and the Single Genius 1779-1782 77
Early Works
Blake and the Gordon Riots
8 A Ticket to Rise 1783-1785 95
Poetical Sketches
9 An Island in the Moon 1786-1787 107
Blake and the 'English Pagan"
The Book of Thel
The Little Black Boy
10 Towards the New Jerusalem 1788 121
11 The Wisdom of Angels 1788-1790 135
The New Jerusalem Church
Sex and God
12 The Lust of the Goat is the Bounty of God 1790 159
Blake and Böhme
13 What is now proved was once, only imagin'd 1791 179
Mary Wollstonecraft
14 'Works of Extraordinary Genius and Imagination' 1792-1793 191
Visions of the Daughters of Albion
15 Singular Shapes and Odd Combinations 1794 209
16 The Song of Los and Sedition 1794-1795 221
The Song of Los
Blake's Africans
The Prints of 1795
Lenore
17 The Edge of Dawn 1795-1796 241
18 The Four Zoas 1797-1800 247
Thomas Butts
A New Century, a New Move
Lady Hesketh
19 Enthusiast in the Establishment 1801-1803 263
Spiritual Enemies of such Formidable Magnitude
20 Lady Hesketh's hair stands on end 1804-1805 277
He will poison him in his Turret
21 The Mocker of Art is the Mocker of Jesus 1805-1807 285
Statuary Flaxman takes a break
Reaction and Persecution
The Canterbury Pilgrims
Milton
22 The courage to suffer poverty and disgrace 1808-1810 299
23 Obscurum per obscurius 1811-1819 307
The Everlasting Gospel
24 A New Kind of Man 1820-1827 319
Job
Dante
Endnotes 329
Bibliography 343