What is your opinion on William Blake? Genius, prophet,

>>8389000

he got about as close to a mystic as an artist can get.

genius, yes.

One of the GOAT. A favorite between the ages of Victoria to infinity

>>8389011
Philip K. Dick begs to disagree.

>talking about doors as if they are windows

>supposed to be a great poet

He was occasionally a great genius and a prophet; most of the time an idiot

He was an autist, but a cool one.

>>8389000
Madman, stabbed a sailor n wrote some stellar verse.
Top lad.

>>8389539
Idk I imagine it as the door at the begining of the twilight zone

I never much liked his verse but his engravings and theres some little pictures illustrating the book of Job in the Tate that are absolutely dope.

>>8389011
I'd argue that art itself is a mystic pursuit, in that it attempt to communicate the ineffable.

Good but overhyped. Out perception of artists from the past is somewhat contingent upon scholarly hypebeasts. E.g. Pope was thought amazing until Wordsworth and his ilk began criticizing his heroic couplets and other forms. So too here with Blake. Retrospectively his life seems to fit an artistic/mad/mystic archetype and so all his shitty verse is overlooked for his moments of (genuinely) inspired verse. Taken as a whole hes mediocre. Cherry picked and filtered througn hype he's amazing

>>8389494
Philip K. Dick can eat himself

idk i like shit like: 'a truth told with bad intent / beats all the lies you can invent'

>>8389025
seconded

>>8389586
maybe

>>8389788
>mediocre
nahh

>>8389719
yes

>>8389000
Utter genius. One of the greatest in the language.

>>8389929
impressive

>>8389494
nah

sounds like cryptochristian nonsense to me

>>8389000
>saying the exact same thing as Kant but in drastically dumbed down words and no reasoning
>genius
kek

>>8389539
"Doors of perception"

>>8391616

Ding ding ding!!! You did it!! You said the dumbest thing in the thread!!

How do u feel :'-)

>>8391616
Being able to condense Kant that well is pretty genius though

>>8392277
As if mystics haven't seen saying it for thousands of years.

The Tyger and And Did Those Feet In Ancient Times... are fucking brilliant

I like Songs and Marriage, but once you wade into the mythology it's a complete clusterfuck.

>>8389000
All of them minus "hack." He is the only "divine" poet I take seriously other than Homer and Dante.

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>>8389000
>>8389000
>>8389000

Nice.

>>8389000
Overrated. Keats, Wordsworth, and Coleridge are all far better

>>8389788
Agreed

Auguries of Innocence is one of my favourite poems, however.

It is right it should be so,
Man was made for joy and woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go

>>8389000
why did he just open the door???? what the fuck

I drink my tears like water, I live on sadness

Jehovah was leprous

Albion etc

I really hate how most editions of his work don't have the illustrations, you're just getting black text on white paper and not the visual experience he intended.

>>8394730
You need only spend around a thousand dollars to get the complete Princeton Press edition with full-size and full colour facsimile. Or use the Blake Archive website. It's fairly comprehensive and detailed, though not quite yet complete.

>>8389494
kek, burnout hacks not allowed

>>8392881

give me a break. I prefer coleridge on a personal level but he and wordsworth together are equal to about half a blake.

>>8389788
>>8392881
>>8392899

I think part of why he's called overhyped is that it took so long to come up with a proper understanding of what he was doing and the ways that he went about it. He wasn't the greatest artist, though he is a great English artist, and while he's not the greatest poet, he is undoubted a great poet. I do think that he was a genius, and we see this in the consistency of his ideas, the complexity of his works, the intuitive understanding of psyche he seemed to possess, and the tremendous depth of his imagination.

Keep in mind that it wasn't until the 50s that he was taken seriously as a poet worthy of study. Yeats's edition of Blake in 1893/1905 started things off badly by insisting that he was a mystic poet, which he definitely was not. Rather than give the whole of his epics or prophecies, Yeats chose to fragment them and only reprint the mystical sounding bits or the bits that supported his (yeats's) own ideas about poetry and the cosmos. Not until Frye's Fearful Symmetry did it seem like Blake could sustain critical analysis, and not until the establishment of the Blake Archive could the common reader begin to ascertain the detail and levels of complexity that Blake coded into his work. We really are still learning how to read him.

/fanboy

>>8394769
What commentaries would you recommend aside from Frye?

What do you make of the more political readings of Blake? Are the prophecies really just revolutionary texts encoded in a peculiar mythos?

There's one thing he said which I think is very true.

"A truth that's told with bad intent, beats all the lies that you can invent."

Neurosyphilis probably desu senpai

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>>8394769
I wanted to find at least one person on this board who's actually read Blake enough to comment on the scholarly aspect of studying his works. I appreciate your insight.
Now, can you answer >>8395099 and also, is the Norton edition of his works a good supplement/critical apparatus?

>>8395115
I like the continuation of this poem.

Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.