THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606030210
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER
LENGTH: 78 lines
BLAKE
A Biography
PETER ACKROYD
Alfred A. Knopf. 399 pp. $35.
``The ancient man, bearded and naked, leans out from a bright orb and with his compass divides the material world; his long hair is being blown by some unknown force, and the nature of the fiery sphere or circle behind him is indeterminate. It may be a planet, or a globe of human blood. It may be the sun, since its colors vary from pink and red to ochre and golden. It was one of the last images upon which Blake worked in the hours before his death.''
But it is one of the first about which acclaimed British poet, novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd writes in Blake: A Biography.
Published in 1995 in England and in 1996 in the United States, Blake, replete with color illustrations, takes readers into the visionary imagination of the great 18th century genius himself, as Ackroyd looks at the connections between William Blake and his art. Ackroyd has previously analyzed similar connections in his biographies of George Eliot and Charles Dickens.
British poet, visionary, artist and engraver, William Blake (1757-1827) was an isolated man with few friends. He was also an ambitious and compulsive man given to fits of rage. And he was a mystic, who according to his wife, Catherine, spent most of his time in heaven.
Blake first saw the vision of that ancient man in Westminster Abbey, where he sketched burial monuments as part of his apprenticeship to engraver James Basire in 1772. He later saw this vision ``hovering atop the staircase'' of his childhood home in London on Broad Street.
He would call the vision ``The Ancient of Days'' and would use it to illustrate several books whose subjects ranged from poetry to science to prophecy. Blake was heard to say that the figure had made a more powerful impression than any other visitor. And he was visited by many: the archangels Gabriel and Raphael, John Milton, Michaelangelo, God, the Virgin Mary, Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus Christ.
Some of these figures came to him at the house on Broad Street. Others visited him at his cottage in the village of Felpham where he lived during his middle age with his devoted wife. Still others visited Blake in his house on South Moulton Street when he and Catherine, impoverished and in ill health, moved back to London.
Blake believed London to be essential to his creative life, yet Blake's seminal vision occurred in Felpham, while he sat on the yellow sands of the beach. Looking at the sea, he saw ``particles bright'' forming the shape of a man. Then the vision expanded like ``a sea without shore,'' and he saw the entire natural world as one man. Later, along the shore, he saw the spirits of ancient poets and prophets, ``majestic shadows, grey but luminous and superior to the common height of men.'' Perhaps this is what Blake meant by seeing ``eternity in a grain of sand.''
Best known as the author of ``Songs of Innocence'' (1789) and ``Songs of Experience'' (1794) - collections of poetry, illustrated with his own engravings - Blake also wrote ultra-symbolic prophetic books. These include The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Gates of Paradise, The Book of Los and The Book of Urizen. With their stunning engravings, they tell Blake's version of the creation story.
As Ackroyd sees it, Blake's genius lay in an overheated imagination. Blake was so caught up in his art that he imagined his subjects not just as paintings on canvas but as living beings. Those ``living beings'' spoke to him, becoming the poems that he printed on the page. They also became the figures that illustrated the poems. So in one sense, Blake was merely a recorder and an observer. Yet in the deepest sense, he became his art.
Trying to immerse the reader in Blake's mental state, Ackroyd alternates the story of Blake's life with the story of his paintings. Here Ackroyd's own genius shines. Using the present tense and detailed description, Ackroyd translates the visual medium of painting into an aural one. So evocative is Ackroyd's style that readers almost feel what Blake felt when he saw the visions.
Ackroyd wants his book to be a look into an author's very soul. He wants readers to enter Blake's world and to measure that world, inspired by the sacred fire of creative genius. That this often happens in Blake is a remarkable accomplishment. MEMO: Diane Scharper is a poet who teaches writing at Towson State
University in Maryland. Her second collection of poems, ``Radiant,'' was
published in April. by CNB