William Blake (World of art library)
Category: Books
William Blake (World of art library) Details
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The author, Kathleen Raine, gushes about 156 illustrations, 28 in color, like the flood stage of social hysteria feeding warm moisture to a tropical storm system. I bought a copy copyright 1970 and reprinted 1980 used for 37 years before it came to me. An annotation on a post-it note mentions the worm. Blake wanted to work each day in the moment Satan cannot find. He was frequently hired by popular piffle people to engrave pictures so Blake would not have time to jar the objectivity of a book trade that was merely trying to keep him busy. Names like Coleridge and Charles Lamb are dropped as mighty thinkers who were aware of some exhibit of paintings by William Blake. The index has twelve page listings for John Milton, the poet most famous in England for providing a Satan determined to ruin the paradise in which Adam and Eve fit in perfectly with nature. I also own books with Blake illustrations for Dante, Jerusalem, Milton, A Poem, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by Blake on Swedenborg. He wanted clear lines to produce pictures like Ciampolo tormented by devils, image number 147 on page 199.