UNPLEASANTLY SANE & MYSTICALLY MAD | Madame Pickwick Art Blog.

“William Blake is an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement….the proor man fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are intelligible allegory, others an attempt at sober character by caricature representation, and the whole “blotted and blurred”, and very badly drawn. These he calls an Exhibition, of which he has published a Catalogue, or rather farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness, and egregious vanity, the wild effusions of a distempered brain. ” ( The Examiner, 1808 )

Long before our time, William Blake ( 1757-1827 )  believed that Christianity was a revolutionary faith and poetry a radical art, and that the poet’s duty was to speak for the slave, the captive, and the poor. Yesterday’s lunacy has a disconcerting way of becoming today’s wisdom; more than 200 years have passed since the unsigned review above appeared and in the meanwhile William Blake’s wild effusions have acquired an almost Biblical authority. Had he been a Catholic, he might have been canonized by now

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