Write a summery about Blake's life.
WILLIAM BLAKE.
William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was an artist, an
engraver, he studied at a drowning school and he loved Gothic style. W. Blake
married Catherine Boucher, an illiterate woman to whom he taught to read and
write. He had a relationship with William Hayley, but refused his patronage
because he wanted to be free, in fact he was an in conventional
artist! He spent his old age in poverty and obscurity, and in 1827 he died.
After his death the critics regarded him as an insane artist, a little bit
strange, but a good artist. He wrote two important songs :
Songs of Innocence and Song of Experience. The first song deals with childhood
as the symbol of Innocence, a state of soul connected with happiness, freedom,
and imagination. The second one deals with adulthood, pessimistic view of life.
Blake was influenced by two ideas : he thought like
Voltaire and Diderot that a person had right to happiness, and pleasure outside the
restrictions of morality and religion. Moreover he believed in Swedenborg's
theories, and believed in the illuminating power of vision. In Blake's vision
he saw the complementary opposite, because without contraries it is impossible
the progress. This is the same in the God's ure. Blake knew the Bible,
although he wasn't religious, but there he found the world's history. Like in
the romantic thought the God, the child and the poet was innocent Blake was interested in social-political
problems, in fact in his poem he write about the victims of industrial society
and institutional oppresses, like children or orphans. He was agree with slavery abolition, with the principles like
freedom, equality . Before he believed that a Revolution was a
purification to the people, after he understood that he was wrong.
