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Heaven and Hell A brief survey of textual transmission and critical reception of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake (1757-1827) Chapter Four:
The introductory matter in The Early Illuminated Books writes: Although The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was virtually ignored in the earliest accounts of Blake, it has held a sepcial place ever since his prestige began to increase under late Victorian sponsorship. In Alexander Gilchrist's 1863 biography, the cornerstone of Blake's modern reputation, the MArriage began to attract superlatives, and, in the first book of Blake criticism (1868), Algernon Swinburne raised the appreciation several notches to hail the Marriage as the 'greates of all his books'. He located the special character of the Marriage in its odd combination of 'high poetry and spiritual speculation' (204) with audactiy and extravagant humour. (Eaves, et al. 116)In his _William Blake: A Critical Essay_, which dates 1906, Algernon Charles Swinburne perceives only genius in the words his eyes glanced. He proclaimed "In 1790 Blake produced the greatest of all his books; a work indeed which we rank greatest by the eighteenth century in the line of high poetry and spiritual speculation" (227). With such a grandiose proclamation, one wonders at its lack of popularity and proliferation for so long. Swinburne furthers his argument of his great esteem for Mr. Blake by praising his autonomy from the pressures to placate and please. "It was part of Blake's humour tio challenge misconception,
conscious as he was of power to grapple with it: to blow dust in their
eyes who were already sandblind, to strew thorns under their feet who were
already lame. ...Passion and humour are mixed in his writing like mist
and light, whom the light may scorch or the mist confuse is not his part
to consider" (228-229).
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Produced through the combined Energies of Ray
Bossert, Allyson Fetterhoff,
and Rebekah Benson for
ENG
624: Romantic Readings with Neil Fraistat.
02/15/01