Today is the 250th birthday of the Romantic poet, artist and engraver William Blake.
How important was Blake. A 2002 poll by the BBC of the 100 Greatest Britons has Blake coming in at 38. Not bad for someone who was pretty much unrecognized during his lifetime
Terry Eagleton honors the occassion with a commentary in The Guardian titled The original political vision: sex art and transformation
“Politics today is largely a question of management and administration. Blake, by contrast, viewed the political as inseparable from art, ethics, sexuality and the imagination. It was about the emancipation of desire, not its manipulation.”
The Tate is celebrating with an exhibition titled William Blake: ‘I still go on / Till the Heavens and Earth are gone’ The exhibit features the recently discovered plates from the “Small Book of Designs.” The Tate has also published a facsimile of Blake’s first printed book of poems, the ‘Poetical Sketches‘ of 1783.
The William Blake Archive, sponsored by the Library of Congress, is a good place to start
Blake at Poets.org
Image is the frontispiece for Visions of the Daughters of Albion, 1793