William Blake often read books with outrage. The margins of his books are filled with annotations, which are a good introduction to his thought.
Professor Robert F. Gleckner, who edited a selection of Blake’s writings for the Crofts Classics series, made that point by including samples. Among my favorites:
• A note in Francis Bacon’s Essays:
Self-evident truth is one thing and truth the result of reasoning is another thing.
A child who has never heard of a syllogism sees an animal being treated cruelly and knows that’s wrong.
• A note in Bishop Richard Watson’s An Apology for the Bible:
Every honest man is a prophet; he utters his opinion both of private and public matters thus: if you go on so, the result is so. He never says, such a thing shall happen let you do what you will. A prophet is a seer, not an arbitrary dictator.
Blake’s “prophecy” — at least here — is not mystical or magical. It’s the kind of thing we say to each other all the time: “If you don’t give yourself a break from social media … “
• A note in Sir Joshua Reynold’s Discourses:
Reynolds thinks that man learns all that he knows. I say on the contrary that man brings all that he has or can have into the world with him. Man is born like a garden already planted & sown. This world is too poor to produce one seed.
We come into the world not to eat, drink and be merry but to show what we know to be true: to make art. A garden bears fruit. Humans make art.
Iris Murdoch said something about her own beliefs that I think fits Blake:
To be a human being is to know more than one can prove, to conceive of a reality which goes beyond the facts.
That’s the part of Blake I like and admire.
No comments:
Post a Comment