Eternity's Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake

377 Pages·2015·21.77 MB·English

by  Leo Damrosch

Eternity’s Sunrise
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(Archbishop of
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William Blake’s London
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E T E R N I T Y ’ S
S U N R I S E
The Imaginative World of
William Blake
  

Leo Damrosch
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund and
the Louis Stern Memorial Fund. The acquisition of images was supported
in part by a grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Copyright © 2015 by Leo Damrosch.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the
US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business,
or promotional use. For information, please e-m ail [email protected] (US office)
or [email protected] (UK office).
“The Poems of Our Climate” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE
STEVENS by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright
renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint
of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House
LLC. All rights reserved.
Designed by James J. Johnson.
Set in Dante type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015942776
ISBN 978- 0- 300- 20067- 6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To
Harold Bloom and E. D. Hirsch
and in memory of
Charles Ryskamp
three great teachers who first inspired my love of Blake
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Working Artist 7
2. How Should We Understand Blake’s Symbols? 39
3. Innocence 50
4. Experience 67
5. Revolution 96
6. Atoms and Visionary Insight 120
7. “The Gate Is Open” 128
8. Understanding Blake’s Myth 139
9. The Zoas and Ourselves 155
10. The Prophetic Call 163
11. Breakthrough to Apocalypse 182
12. “The Torments of Love and Jealousy” 195
contents
13. The Female Will 212
14. Wrestling with God 235
15. The Traveler in the Evening 258
Chronology 273
List of Short Titles 277
Notes 279
Illustration Credits 305
Index 311
Color plates follow page 132
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to express my gratitude to my agent, Tina Bennett, for her unfailing loyalty
over many years; to Jennifer Banks, my marvelously encouraging and intuitive edi-
tor; to Laura Jones Dooley, who ably guided the manuscript through all the stages
of production; and above all to my wife, Joyce Van Dyke, whose imaginative yet
rigorous critique of successive drafts improved this book immeasurably.
ix