Hence, the poems’ integration with the page and the engraving is by no means arbitrary. The artist believed in the inseparable union between text and image, each being a comment on the other. The collection was accompanied by engravings hand-colored by Blake himself.
William Blake, The Lamb from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, London, 1794, 54 plates, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA. As he put it in the subtitle of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, he wanted to investigate with his poetry “the two contrary states of the human soul,” which he mirrors in unsettling ambiguity in many of the poems. His work often examined social and political conventions and argued how repressive they were for natural human passions. William Blake, Songs of Innocence, Title page, 1789, presented by Mrs John Richmond 1922 to Tate Britain, London, UK.īlake, a mystic and a radical thinker, lived, in the years leading to the French Revolution and its aftermath, at a time of great social and political change. Since William Blake’s birthday is today, we will look closer at this collection of poems. Today, England recognizes his work as one of the greatest contributions to their cultural heritage, with his Songs of Innocence and of Experience read at schools. And as usually happens with geniuses and people ahead of their time, he was scorned and disregarded by critics and fellow artists, many of whom considered him insane.
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