The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

by William Blake
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 09/07/2022

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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs.


Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets from etched plates containing prose, poetry, and illustrations. The plates were then coloured by Blake and his wife Catherine.

It opens with an introduction of a short poem entitled "Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air".


William Blake claims that John Milton was a true poet and his epic poem Paradise Lost was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." He also claims that Milton's Satan was truly his Messiah.

The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical ferment and political conflict during the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell, published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake in several places in the Marriage.


Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral strictures and his Manichaean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order; hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening "Argument" and the "Song of Liberty". The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost.

ISBN:
9791221369182
9791221369182
Category:
Poetry
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
09-07-2022
Language:
English
Publisher:
Memorable Classics eBooks
William Blake

William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was apprenticed to a master engraver and then studied at the Royal Academy under the guidance of Joshua Reynolds. In 1789 he engraved and published Songs of Innocence and the contrasting Songs of Experience came later in 1794. A poet, painter and printmaker of great originality and imagination, his work was largely unrecognized during his lifetime and he struggled to make a living. Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. He died in 1827.

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