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William Blake
Jun. 1st, 2016 10:48 pm“Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”
-- William Blake
In our more jaded era, this statement probably comes across as being much more provocative than was intended. I doubt that this is a call to rape and murder. In addition to giving out a call for unbounded imagination and artistic creativity, I suppose he is also inveighing against Christian timidity and meekness, but without actually becoming clearly anti-social. In this excerpt, Mr. Frye explains Blake’s ideas on the importance of imagination and vision, and why it is important not to be unduly repressed in envisioning your world.
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Heaven is not a place guarded by immigration officials interested only in passports and certificates, nor is it the higher class to which we are promoted by passing an examination showing what we have learned in this world. Heaven is this world as it appears to the awakened imagination, and those who try to approach it by way of restraint, caution, good behavior, fear, self-satisfaction, assent to uncomprehended doctrines, or voluntary drabness, will find themselves traveling toward hell, … hell being similarly this world as it appears to the repressed imagination.
-- Northrop Frye, “Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake”
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To quote Blake directly, “Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern’d their Passions or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understanding.” Pre-dating Nietzsche, Blake had also seen it as his mission to try to free people from the chains of dark, suffocating Christianity.
-- William Blake
In our more jaded era, this statement probably comes across as being much more provocative than was intended. I doubt that this is a call to rape and murder. In addition to giving out a call for unbounded imagination and artistic creativity, I suppose he is also inveighing against Christian timidity and meekness, but without actually becoming clearly anti-social. In this excerpt, Mr. Frye explains Blake’s ideas on the importance of imagination and vision, and why it is important not to be unduly repressed in envisioning your world.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Heaven is not a place guarded by immigration officials interested only in passports and certificates, nor is it the higher class to which we are promoted by passing an examination showing what we have learned in this world. Heaven is this world as it appears to the awakened imagination, and those who try to approach it by way of restraint, caution, good behavior, fear, self-satisfaction, assent to uncomprehended doctrines, or voluntary drabness, will find themselves traveling toward hell, … hell being similarly this world as it appears to the repressed imagination.
-- Northrop Frye, “Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
To quote Blake directly, “Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern’d their Passions or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understanding.” Pre-dating Nietzsche, Blake had also seen it as his mission to try to free people from the chains of dark, suffocating Christianity.
