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William Blake (1757 - 1827) was an eccentric painter , printmaker and poet who lived most of his life in
Georgian London. He produced books by first etching verses and surrounding designs on a copper plate , after which the printed pages were coloured by hand. It was a process in deliberate
opposition to methods of mass production , which ensured his output was always limited in numbers. Blake fulminated against the powers of both the State and the Church , protesting any
physical or spiritual repression. This has tempted some critics to call him an anarchist but that is an over-simplification of a philosophy that verges on the impenetrable. Many have
been unable to make much headway with his 'Prophetic' poems or with most of his graphic output. He exalted imaginative over representational art , so his pictures are often based on
visions that had a higher reality for him than the material world. It would seem that he could see angels around him as he walked the London streets.
Blake's God had abandoned his self-contained repose and the mysteries of creation reflected the emanation of this awakened divine life. His contemporaries considered him mad and he was
too unconventional for the nineteenth century , remainining little-known until the twentieth. His preface to a poem about Milton became the lyrics forthat alternative national anthem , Jerusalem ,
which was set to music in 1916. The following poem entitled London , comes from "Songs of Innocence and Experience" , one of his Illuminated books published in 1794.
I wander thro' each charter'd 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-forged manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening Church appalls ,
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 Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
Here is a remonstration against the evil effects of industrial civilisation upon its constituents. George Orwell
wrote that there was more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in this poem than there was in most 'socialist literature'. The 'mind-forged manacles' of the second verse suggest
both the culturally-induced hypnosis which keeps a subject majority thinking in ways that serve the interests of the powerful minority and the deleterious preference for Reason over the
Imagination. He had a particular animus towards Newton. For Blake , Science and Industrialisation had exiled the people from their proper place in the world. He influenced the Beat poets of the
1950s and was well regarded in the 1960s , with his convenient exoneration of unbridled self-indulgence. "Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be
controlled," he wrote.
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