The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Oxford Paperbacks)

by William Blake

Other authorsGeoffrey Keynes (Editor)

Paperback, 1975

Status

Available

Call number

821.7

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Read

Publication

Oxford Paperbacks (1975), Edition: 1, 82 pages

Description

Fiction. Poetry. HTML: William Blake can rightly be described as one of the most important Romantic poets, but he is set apart from the likes of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats by his mysticism and radical social and religious beliefs. Following in the tradition of poetic geniuses such as Dante and Milton, Blake's remarkable collection The Marriage of Heaven and Hell describes a descent into the netherworld..

User reviews

LibraryThing member dbookbinder

I first encountered this part visionary / part comic / part poetry / part etching long poem in 1969, in an English class, while an Engineering student at Cornell University. I had grown up a kid scientist, and my hope was that I'd become a NASA engineer. I was also very much in my head and not so

much in my body, in the world of logic and not so much the world of emotion. Blake's poem convince me I had to change all that or I'd live out my days a reduced version of myself. This powerful piece reached out to me over many decades and 6000 miles and changed not only my focus (from Engineering to English major) but also set in motion a process of actualizing the more suppressed parts of myself, a lifelong activity that began then and there. Thank you, Mr. Blake!

- David

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LibraryThing member Pxan02

Didn't expect this to be so good. I don't feel qualified to rate it.

Highly recommend it, even only for the proverbs of hell.

LibraryThing member Stevil2001

I didn't know what was even going here, though I liked the conceit of it. Probably the most interesting image-text interplay of the Blake I've read.

LibraryThing member robertmorrow

One of my two or three favorite poetical works of all time. A great source of wisdom and one of the few works in which Blake reveals a sense of humor.

LibraryThing member JuliaBoechat

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow

laughs. Excess of joy weeps.

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LibraryThing member Kanic

The illuminations accompanying Blake's poetry should be considered necessary to the reading of his poems. The illuminations are beautiful, descriptive, obviously terribly time consuming and should not be counted as something separate from the words. That said, sometimes it is difficult to read the

poems on the illuminations, as they were meant to be read. This book provides the complete illuminations followed by the poems sans illumination, for ease of reading.

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LibraryThing member tuckerresearch

This is a beautifully put together book. It is a facsimile edition of William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from Oxford's Bodleian Library. It has replica marbled cover/endboards, aged-looking endpapers (complete with old bookplate and penciled in call numbers), and the facsimile of

Blake's plates (complete with penciled page numbers). It is a work of art. Included alongside the Bodleian's copy of the full text are other colored copies of several important plates, tacked on at the end. The book has (a) an introduction of several pages, introducing Blake and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, (b) a transcription of the poem, (c) the facsimile of the Blake original (plus extras), (d) commentary on each plate, (e) a checklist of copies of the work, and (f) a bibliography. The bibliography is long and both the intro and commentary have copious references. The commentary describes the physical attributes of each plate, such as an explanation of drawings, etchings, and writings, and it also provides commentary on the text and its meaning, with particular reference to Blake's life and time.

On the physical nature of this book, it is superb beyond compare. This is how facsimile editions should be constructed and published. (Not just of Blake, but any author).

But, then there is Blake. Blake must always be taken with a grain of salt and in small doses, because, well, Blake is weird. And probably nuts too. And Blake's ideas seem, to me, of just being ornery for orneriness's sake. He hates morality and Christianity and any organized group of people, whether church or state. This is why Blake is so beloved today, as he was the forerunner of all leftist art and agitprop that demeans the powers that be. He's a proto-hippie. Thus such crap like "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" and "The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God" (and un-biblical crap this is) drowns out any witty and philosophical epigrams that Blake might spin (like "One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression").

Three stars for Blake's text. Four stars for Blake's art. Five stars for the critical apparatus. Five stars for the physical object of the book. Four-and-a-half stars overall.

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LibraryThing member bookomaniac

Perhaps rightly, this book can be classified among the works that are quoted and referenced more than actually read. Because let's be honest: without a proper preparation this book is a no-go zone. The first time I read it, almost 20 years ago, after just a few pages my head started spinning: what

is this actually? What is Blake talking about? And why is this all so strange? I could barely process it. But this time, on the second reading, I was a little better prepared, after reading John Higgs William Blake vs the World. Higgs provides not only (biographical) context but also reading keys to understand Blake (and also explain him). And only then do you notice how original and modern this hyper-stubborn person was and is, also in this book. And this not only refers to his attacks against established and less established ways of looking at reality, such as the religion of the churches or that of the esotericists, on the one-sidedness and terror of rationalism, and especially on the dualism that is so ingrained in our culture. No, the merit of Blake doesn’t only lay in the negative, but especially in the very idiosyncratic way of seeing that Blake wants to instill on us: namely through that of the imagination, according to him the source of all reality. It seems as if he anticipated constructivism by almost two centuries, although that is probably too simplistic. Because, let’s be honest, Blake remains very unruly and inimitable at the same time. Even if you read this (relatively short book) two or three times in a row, there still are passages that you just can't fathom. William Blake will continue to challenge us, that's for sure.

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