The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell Illuminated Manuscript With The Original Illustrations Of William Blake

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Illuminated Manuscript with the Original Illustrations of William Blake)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. This ebook is a series of texts, which were written in imitation of biblical books of prophecy, but expressing the poets own personal romantic and revolutionary beliefs. It is not exactly known when the work was written. One assumes it was composed in London between 1790 and 1793 , a period of political conflict arising immediately after the French Revolution. The book is about the first person narrators visit to Hell, a concept taken by Blake from Dantes Inferno and Miltons Paradise Lost. Apart from the opening Argument and the Song of Liberty, the entire book is written in prose. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was influenced by the mysticism of Swedish theosophist Emanuel Swedenborg and is also in part a satire on Emanuel Swedenborgs writings, especially on Heaven and Hell from which Blake adapted the title. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

The text of each poem is given in letterpress on the page facing the beautiful color reproductions of the plate. The book is printed on vellum.

This vivid facsimile of Blake's romantic and revolutionary publication offers a concise expression of his essential wisdom and philosophy. His distinctive hand-lettered text is accompanied by 27 color plates of his stirring illustrations.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a visionary and poetic work by the English artist, poet, and mystic William Blake. Published in 1790–1793 as part of his collection The Prophetic Books, this piece stands as a significant exploration of Blake's unique philosophy and artistic vision.

"No work has challenged its readers like Blake's 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'. The 'Proverbs of Hell' have been culled for the slogans of student protest and [have] become axioms of modern thought. iconoclastic, bizarre, unprecedented, it is all of these. Most extraordinary is the revolutionary method of its making. The Bodleian Library copy is one of the first that Blake printed using the method he called 'illuminated printing' and the only work in which he signifies its importance. This new edition includes a complete facsimile of the work, together with a transcript, and a plate-by-plate guide to the text, the interlinear figures, and the larger designs. In a special comparative section, the same plate from each of the other eight surviving copies is also reproduced"--Publisher's description, p. [4] of cover

A visionary of eighteen-century English art, William Blake was largely unknown during his own lifetime and often rejected as a madman for claims of hearing voices and later having visions. Since his death, Blake has achieved enduring fame for his innovative and extraordinary work and is widely viewed as one of the most important of all English artists. Created between 1790 and 1793, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is considered by many to be one of his most original and inspired books. Written largely in criticism of Emanuel Swedenborg's 1758 work "Heaven and Hell", which argued in favor of a strict moral structure and a clear distinction between good and evil, Blake instead viewed the world as unified where both the heaven of the physical world and the hell of desire and passion were all part of the same divine plan. Written in the form of imaginary Biblical prophecies, Blake created a world where contradictory impulses and emotions are all necessary parts of existence and where each person must embrace these paradoxical characteristics of human nature in order to progress in life. The result of Blake's vision is a dynamic and thought-provoking masterpiece from one of history's most eccentric and brilliant artists. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and reproduces one of the first set of plates in full color along with a complete transcription of the poem.

William Blake was born in London to a working-class family. His father, a hosier, provided for his training in drawing and engraving, practical skills which he would use to support himself and his wife Catherine for the rest of his life. One of six children, Blake claimed to have received angelic visitations and other visionary experience even as a child. After his brother Robert's death, William said that Robert often appeared to him, providing him with practical information such as an acid-wash engraving system that William used to produce his "illuminated," or illustrated, works, including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Never financially successful as an artist or writer, he was often reduced to drudge work, such as engraving drawings for the catalog of the Wedgwood China Company. From 1800 to 1803, Blake received the patronage of minor poet William Hayley; however, the experience proved bitter and demeaning to the independent-minded Blake. During this period, the fiery-tempered Blake was also accused of treason after evicting a drunken soldier from his garden with the epithet "God d-- the King!" Blake, who was eventually acquitted of the charge, transmuted the twin ordeal of patronage and accusation into his masterpieces Vala: Or, The Four Zoas (wr. 1795-1804, pb. 1963; best known as The Four Zoas) and Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804-1820). Two concepts are key to understanding The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Blake's idiosyncratic form of Christianity. First, as articulated in his classic Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794), is the notion of "contraries," or opposing forces, similar to the Daoist notion of yin and yang. Blake saw all life as a necessary interplay of opposites. "The Argument" of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell applies this notion of the contraries to orthodox Christian dogma: As Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is a collection of sketches touching on the subject of Good versus Evil and examining the biblical idea of "Hell" the place of eternal suffering for those who reject God. Author and poet William Blake seems to repudiate the idea of such a place and seeks to show that in fact Hell is a place of freedom for as he puts it, "The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at [the] tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment."