Eternity's Sunrise
The Imaginative World of William Blake
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
William Blake, overlooked in his time, remains an enigmatic figure to contemporary readers despite his near canonical status. Out of a wounding sense of alienation and dividedness he created a profoundly original symbolic language, in which words and images unite in a unique interpretation of self and society. He was a counterculture prophet whose art still challenges us to think afresh about almost every aspect of experience—social, political, philosophical, religious, erotic, and aesthetic. He believed that we live in the midst of Eternity here and now, and that if we could open our consciousness to the fullness of being, it would be like experiencing a sunrise that never ends.
Following Blake’s life from beginning to end, acclaimed biographer Leo Damrosch draws extensively on Blake’s poems, his paintings, and his etchings and engravings to offer this generously illustrated account of Blake the man and his vision of our world. The author’s goal is to inspire the reader with the passion he has for his subject, achieving the imaginative response that Blake himself sought to excite. The book is an invitation to understanding and enjoyment, an invitation to appreciate Blake’s imaginative world and, in so doing, to open the doors of our perception.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Damrosch (Jonathan Swift) extends "an invitation to understanding and enjoyment" of poet William Blake (1757 1827) by bringing to life the inner logic and "imaginative reality" that governs his body of work. This exemplary study begins with a primer on reading Blake's verse, presented alongside his engravings, and goes on to explicate the artist's "dynamic, not iconic" recurrent symbols, revolutionary ideas, and "personal myth" that over his lifetime grew "challengingly complicated and increasingly strange." At ease with the complexities of the historical period as well as his subject's inward torments, Damrosch leads the reader through Blake's life and work with thoughtful clarity and frequent affection, exploring the well-studied poems and making accessible more abstruse works such as The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem. Damrosch's readings are nuanced, sensitive, and deeply perceptive, touched with wonder at the poet's originality and alive to the ways that Blake's beliefs presented "a wide-ranging challenge to orthodox morality." With generous illustrations, including a gallery of breathtaking full-color plates, Damrosch's study will build an appreciation among scholars and general readers alike for Blake's "vast, complicated myth" and reinforce his place in the Western canon as a "profound thinker" and creative genius "not in a single art but in two." 40 color plates and 56 b&w illus.
