03-17-2009, 11:00 AM
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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Has anyone read Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell? I am reading it at the moment (mainly because my hero Aldous Huxley so admired Blake). Has anyone else read it? I'd be interested to hear what you make of it...
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03-17-2009, 12:14 PM
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#2 |
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Columbus, GA, USA
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We covered it in my Romantic lit class last month. I thinks it's great (it's on my must-read list), but don't feel bad if it confuses you. Blake purposefully contradicts himself over and over, challenging both conservative and progressive perspectives at the same time.
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03-17-2009, 01:00 PM
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#3 |
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It is one of my favorite works of poetry, ever. I love Blake... ahh, there is a lot I could say about Marriage of Heaven and Hell... the search for the sublime, and the imagination as the sublime. Active vs. Passive...yet nothing is mutually exclusive, all contraries must exist.
Do you have any specifics you want to discuss? Because there is a lot in this one work one can talk about... I personally love the "proverbs"... some of them are really symbolic and complex, and some are pretty straightforward.
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"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake 
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03-17-2009, 01:27 PM
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Card-carrying Medievalist
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Fantastic piece of poetry! I love his ideas about artistic impulse, and the link between energy and creation.
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"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche |
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03-17-2009, 02:56 PM
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#5 | |
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Quote:
Then we have the word 'energy'. Does he mean what we mean by energy? Was Blake really advocating abandoning all restraint? (Is it me or does he anticipate Nietzsche- morality is subjective and imposed by human beings, creative energy should be celebrated, we should recover reverence for humanity rather than external gods, the individual is everything etc etc...?) |
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04-05-2009, 03:59 PM
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Annoying alliterator
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 310
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I read excerpts of it in preparation for my English lit GRE. There was one episode which struck me. When Blake and an angel show each other's futures. The angel tries to convince Blake to reform to avoid the horrors of Hell, but Blake reveals that the hellish vision the angel showed him is only a figment of the angel's imagination. Once the angel leaves, the vision disappears and Blake is able to replace it with his own.
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04-05-2009, 08:18 PM
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spiritus ubi vult spirat
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: dunwich
Posts: 754
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blake was an occultist, those are exoteric terms, as opposed to esoteric.
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06-26-2009, 07:43 PM
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Location: Ireland
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Quote:
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10-01-2009, 08:01 PM
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#9 |
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Join Date: Oct 2009
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Fantastic piece of literature.
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