William Blake: life, works, and literary influence

William Blake, the poet, was also William Blake the artist and William Blake the religious mystic. In his view of the world, it was the things that seem to oppose us that help define us. Trained in drawing and engraving, Blake had to use writing instrument and paper, or acid and metal, to create a contrast. It was that contrast that illustrated. There was no picture if he applied either no ink or covered the entire page in ink, and there was no engraving if he applied either no acid or bathed the entire surface, evenly and completely, in etching acid. The picture appeared where dark met light. Many of Blake's poems reflect this concept of opposites, often visually. In this way, Blake used words to emphasize what he saw in his art, that without the opposites of ink vs. no ink, there was nothing revealed.

Blake held some interesting theological beliefs. According to his religious beliefs, since it is opposites that define us, God had to have Satan in order to exist. An important part of Man's understanding of God was the struggle between good and evil. This view of the importance of opposites, with clear differences between them, could be viewed as crucial to both drawing and engraving. In a way, drawing anything on a piece of paper, no matter how simple, divides the space into "art" and "space." Even in a simple drawing of a tree, the lines drawn by the artist divide the space on the page into opposites: tree, and "not tree."

It should not be surprising that an artist would use strong visual imagery when writing poems, and this was often true of Blake. Two examples in particular demonstrate the connection he saw between drawing and poetry: his two poems "The Lamb" and 'The Tiger." These poems also reflect his belief that both evil and good must exist for either to exist. In his poem "The Lamb," Bake evokes many visual images. He uses simple language to describe the lamb in words that produce a strong image of what the animal looks like: "clothing of delight, softest clothing, wooly, bright...." Then, in "The Tiger," he evokes a very different visual image: "fearful symmetry," "the fire of thine eyes," "dread feet." The reader can see in the mind a great difference between the two.

It would be easy to look at these poems simplistically, as words evoking an image and that happen to rhyme, but in both poems, the author also evokes the image of the God who made them. He sees the lamb simplistically: can the lamb comprehend the similarities between him and his maker? But then, in the tiger poem, Blake presents an entirely different image of God, one whose "dread hand" forged the tiger's "dread feet." Again, Blake thinks in contrasts, balancing extremes against each other. It is the fine skill of a master engraver, to divide the space into perfect balance. Blake's artistic medium reflects his theology and his poetry: the tiger and the lamb are opposites, and the God who made them both has traits that oppose each other: God the gentle lamb, or God the fearful avenger.

He shows this ability to divide the world into opposites, as if it were a line drawing on paper, in other ways as well, such as in his poems "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience," which he himself calls "Poetical Sketches." When considering poems that so clearly deal with opposites, it is useful again to think of the art of engraving. Blake held that neither innocence nor experience were superior to the other and that in fact the two states were inter-dependent. Once again he had divided the world into opposites, but instead of making the judgments that most people would make - that either one or the other were vastly superior - Blake saw great importance in the interplay between them. He saw that there could be no innocence if one could not acquire experience and knowledge later. This is also true of the kind of art Blake executed. Engravings are drawings made up of lines. It is not possible to remove the lines and have any art left, because that is what his style art does: it divides blank space. Without the blank space, there can be no lines. Without the lines, there is no art. There is only a blank sheet.

Blake emphasizes the differences between his poems of innocence and poems of experience. Just as Blake could have painted in watercolors, with many colors, many shades, all running together, he could have imbued his poems with "shades of gray." When artists paint with colors, they don't use line. The line is implied as the rooftop meets the sky. But in Blake's etchings, the only way we would see the separation of roof and sky is because Blake drew it as a line. Blake took his poems and boiled the concepts down to their core, eliminating uncertainty and doubt and leaving the images and the ideas as clearly defined as possible. He did the same thing with his art. He was the opposite of an impressionistic painter who might paint a tree by putting small dots on the paper and letting the viewer's eye add the lines. For Blake, the line, the separation between tree and not-tree, drawing and empty space, was important. It was the essence of the tree for him.

In his poems of innocence and experience, he made this very clear by speaking of two muses. For his poems of innocence he spoke of a childlike muse. He includes his theology in these poems, but it is a childlike, innocent view of God as gentle and loving. However, later he reveals God as a terrible and awe-inspiring force, a less innocent but equally valid view of God. Just as we cannot look at a drawing of a tree without taking in the empty spaces, he sees God as defined by both the gentle and fear-invoking qualities he sees in God.