William Blake vs the World

by John Higgs

Poet, artist, visionary and author of the unofficial English national anthem 'Jerusalem', William Blake is an archetypal misunderstood genius. In this radical new biography, we return to a world of riots, revolutions and radicals, discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics and comparative religion to look afresh at Blake's life and work - and, crucially, his mind. Taking the reader on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context and shows us how Blake can help us better understand ourselves.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Art, Poetry, History, Philosophy, Religion

390 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2021

About the author

Also see J.M.R. Higgs

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an era when almost everyone seems very hard to understand, Blake stands out for being unusually opaque. Even people at the time had no idea what to make of him. ‘Artist or Genius – or Mystic – or Madman?’ (as Henry Crabb Robinson put it), to which we might tentatively reply, ‘Yes!’

His life story is of fairly limited use when it comes to understanding him – which makes biographies feel vaguely unsatisfying. Peter Ackroyd's Blake has an excellent handle on the man and the time, but it doesn't really touch on Blake's importance or show how he influenced later artists and thinkers. So this book from John Higgs is a very good complement: less a biography than a book about Blake's ideas, it ventures beyond the confines of Georgian London to take in Einstein, Jung, Mumsnet, The Good Place, Carlo Rovelli, transcendental meditation and Star Wars merchandise, among many others.

Admittedly, Higgs is on firmer ground with some of these than others (I'm not sure how far quantum physicists would agree with his breezy summaries of their field), but the effect is still very productive. So much so that you sometimes don't even notice how far from Blake we have actually travelled. The speculative nature of Higgs's links is clear from all the qualifying phrases: ‘you might expect’, ‘it is also possible’, ‘it seems a safe bet’, ‘it is likely’, ‘it is tempting to assume’ (these all from a single double-page spread). But perhaps that doesn't matter too much if it genuinely helps you think about Blake's work in useful ways.

And some help is welcome. Anyone who's tried to read Blake's longer, later works will know how completely impenetrable they are, coming across as something like a cross between The Silmarillion and the Book of Mormon. There's more than a whiff of the pathological about them. Some of Higgs's comparisons open this work up in fascinating ways – especially the link to meditation and mindfulness, which casts Blake as, in part, a pioneer of investigating deep mental states.

Like early explorers returning from their ocean voyages with exotic plants and strange beasts, or Apollo astronauts returning to earth with a case full of moon rocks, he has travelled to inner places that we know nothing about and returned with exhibits to convince the sceptical.

Of course, you don't have to be convinced to enjoy Blake's visionary weirdness – or to enjoy this incredibly wide-ranging, omnivorously curious book, which successfully makes the case that Blake is, if anything, even more relevant now than he's ever been.

[K.J. Charles]

Not so much a biography of Blake as an analysis and explanation of his ideas, more or less chronologically as his personal mythology evolved. As such it's really good, talking about how he fits (doesn't fit) into the tracks and patterns of religion and philosophy, thinking seriously about his inspiration and possible mental illness, and making some sense of what is pretty impenetrable later work. A very useful book if you read/intend to read Blake.

Also very satisfying/annoying on the unthinkingness with which his work is now embraced, eg Eton schoolboys singing Jerusalem, a poem which calls for the destruction of privileged educational establishments instructing pupils in limited ways of thought, or the classic of St Paul's Cathedral (of the organised religion he had little time for) agreeing to have an image of Blake's Satan figure projected onto it. (Blake's Urizen is an old bearded white guy who looks very like God, ahaha.)

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first biography or introduction to the life and work of William Blake (1757-1827) that I have read, so it is difficult for me to compare. But it’s clear that reading Blake without an accompanying explanation is pointless. Those who do (like me 20 years ago) will inevitably be rejected by it, and that is a pity. Blake's oeuvre is so atypical and idiosyncratic that it inevitably comes across as hermetic, and seems like the work of a madman. His texts portray a strange universe full of mythical creatures, expressed in exuberant statements that are presented with many exclamation points, often in a very a visionary style. And the fabulous accompanying graphic work only strengthens that.

That is why a book like this by John Higgs is absolutely appropriate. Higgs provides context and biographical data that partly clarify the meaning of Blake's oeuvre. But he also goes further and uses a lot of modern scientific insights to explain Blake's many strange twists. This ranges from the cognitive sciences, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on. Personally, I think he goes a bit too far in this, but hey, it shows how unique Blake was.

After this book I took up Blake's oeuvre again, and thanks to Higgs' reading keys it now started to make sense. The classic The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in particular now appears to be one of the most remarkable books ever written (see my review here). To be honest: of course, not everything became clear, there are plenty of elements in Blake's oeuvre that remain beyond the immediate reach of our (my) mind. For example, I still had particular difficulty with the The Prophetic Books Of William Blake: Jerusalem. But Blake's emphasis on the human imagination as the beginning and end of all understanding and being is incredibly modern; in this you can safely call him a constructivist avant la lettre. Just like his view that thinking in dualisms and contradictions, black and white, is aberrant, is a formidable criticism of the reductionism that is so characteristic of our modern thinking. But even when I stress those two things, this doesn’t do Blake justice. As Higgs himself writes: “His work is deep and rich and no matter who looks into it, they will always find their own prejudices and interests reflected back. Perhaps he is too big a mind for us to ever properly grasp, and we are doomed to always fail. Perhaps the best we can do is find our own version of Blake, and take pleasure in knowing how incomplete it will appear to others.”

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading The Marginalian column by Maria Popova, “The Only Valiant Way to Complain Is to Create: William Blake and the Stubborn Courage of the Unexampled,” I immediately downloaded this book from the library. Popova calls it “the best book on Blake in the seven decades since Alfred Kazin’s masterpiece.” She goes on to say, “John Higgs captures just how radical this [Blake’s printing innovation] was, both as a technology of creation and as an ethos.” I recognized Higgs’ name from other interesting titles he’s published (and not just his book on the Beatles), so I was sold.

I assumed this was going to be a biography of Blake. While there are some fascinating biographical details, it’s not a biography. Higgs himself is called a cultural historian, but this is more than cultural history: A mediation? An elucidation? (Certainly some kind of -tion). Regardless, it’s given me a much broader understanding of Blake and his work, one that I’ll carry with me. Close to the beginning of my read, I was afforded an explanation of Blake’s fourfold vision that came to my aid for getting a handle on the novel At the Edge of the Woods. And after finishing this book, I came across a quote about Coleridge (I’d recently re-read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with an in-person group) that spoke to his contradictions being essential: My mind and understanding went to Blake.

Last but not least, and rather miraculously, Higgs writes in a way that finally, finally got me to comprehend some concepts pertaining to physics that have eluded me since a supposedly easy university course I took to fulfill my science credit decades ago. That in and of itself is no small feat.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid 4* re-introduction to the Man, a poet I immersed myself in in my youth, but one I have also, alas, laid by and much neglected in the meanwhile years.

But when read as a book foremost by and about the man John Higgs and how William Blake shaped his own thought, this is just a pure delight, and make me want to read more by this wonderfully resourceful, thoughtful, and passionate writer: William Blake vs The World manages to capture what Carlyle I think called the "relative absolute" of what it means to read Blake in our own time, without in any way effacing or obscuring his own (JH is in fact very, very good on context as well).

Recommended!

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll read anything by cultural historian John Higgs. William Blake, poet, artist, visionary and author of the unofficial English national anthem Jerusalem, is fertile ground. William Blake vs the World explores Blake's world, a place of riots, revolutions and radicals, the Levellers. John Higgs is a peerless guide who also incorporates the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics and comparative religion, to provide a rounded and fascinating look into Blake's life, work and influence.

4/5

[Alex Sarll]

I'm fairly sure John Higgs couldn't write a dull book if he tried, and he's in fertile territory here, with one of England's great visionaries as his subject. Typically wide-ranging, he goes back to the Ranters, forward to everything from quantum physics to recent findings in neuroscience, seeing what light they might shed on Blake's encounters with cosmic entities, and the legendarium he crafted from that, but also what light Blake's experiences and work might in turn shed on our own time. As ever, it's dotted with things which are somewhat relevant and definitely good to know, whether that be Sartre's hallucinatory retinue of boisterous crabs, or Pixar animators counterintuitively showing a higher rate of aphantasia than the general population. There are also some really good readings of Blake, especially on how what we now know as Jerusalem (though of course it's from another poem entirely) becoming the unofficial anthem of Albion pretty much matches part of Blake's idiosyncratic mythology - even as the groups who bellow it most lustily demonstrate how thoroughly his point has been missed. The book also resists the urge towards hagiography, unafraid to address the awkward implications in Blake's paradigm, or the periods when he was the non-fun, paranoid flavour of crazy visionary. All the same, it can't help but feeling a little staid, not least because Higgs has already done one briefer, stranger, more deeply Higgs book on Blake, which could equally have been left as part of this for a longer but livelier whole. As is, this volume is a little short on the brain-inverting epiphanies to be found in Higgs' KLF, 20th century or Watling Street books; it would be a highlight in most writers' bibliographies, but feels distinctly second-tier in his.

[Toni Kely-Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was wonderful! John Higgs uses culture, history, philosophy, religion and science (all my favourite things!) to explain about the eccentric 18th/19th century poet and artist William Blake. I must admit I don’t know a lot about William Blake but after hearing the author describe this book on a podcast, I had to read it and it exceeded my expectations!

William Blake is one of those “misunderstood” genius’s who had no recognition in his own time and in fact was dismissed as quite mad because he had vivid visions from a child. He sincerely believed in these visions and saw things around him others couldn’t. These visions shaped how Blake saw the world and his attitudes to art, politics and religion. Today he would be likely medicated due to seeing delusions! But then again, maybe medication would have just stifled the creativity of his mind and “imagination”?

Maybe I need to read a more “orthodox” biography of Blake to get a more linear story about him, but I LOVED this book and how the author used modern concepts of neuroscience, psychiatry, etc. within the context of that time and gave some insight into how Blake’s mind might have possibly worked. Highly recommended!

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow.
This is a head spinner of a book.
It is not really a biography of Blake in any traditional sense---it has biographical elements, but they are sort of peppered through the book and serve more as jumping off points to discuss history, psychology, philosophy, religion, quantum physics, neuroscience, politics, social media, and countless other flights of fancy.
If you aren't a person who enjoys going down the rabbit hole into a subject and emerging hours later with no idea how you got there...skip this one.
If you are willing to follow John Higgs through a labyrinth of ideas trying to explain how Blake's mind worked, and how his work related to the world in his time and in ours---buckle in for a wild ride.
I highly recommend listening to the author's reading of the audiobook, as he has a BBC documentary presenter voice that is quite soothing and presents the material in an easy to follow manner.

[Abhinav · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fitting tribute to the life of an unfathomable man.

Now when I'm here on the other end of this wonderful book, when I've seen grow in me an almost spiritual admiration for the imagination of William Blake, it is hard to recollect a time when this wasn't the case. That's credit to the book, but seriously. How did I come to read the biography of a late-eighteenth century Romantic poet - penniless and derided as mad in his lifetime?

Like every good life-changing experience, the answer is probably an unsatisfactory combination of trivia and coincidences. Maria Popova's blog The Marginalian - that I adore - and her recommendation for this book is the direct cause; my reading of 'The Chimney Sweeper' during the English Literature and being swept up from the dullness of exam preparation into a state of furious melancholy was another checkpoint on this journey. In between, a butterfly flapped her wings.

Well, one of the first things I learnt (or recalled) right away was that my memory of Blake as the Romantic poet was grossly incomplete. He was so much more. For instance, he was very likely the first self-published author. (He had the full self-publishing experience of not having sold much at all too, ha.) He was a painter of great skill, an engraver of even greater. He was probably the first person to produce an illustrated book. He was a technological innovator - not by wish but by need, as his vision for his art could not have been implemented otherwise.

But what moved me most of all was Blake's philosophy. He argued for the importance of contrarieties. Love could both be selfish and selfless; reason and imagination could be right, wrong, adversaries and brothers in arms. He was a devout Christian and rejected the God of the bible as a false god of reason. The subtlety of his concept of contrariety is delicious. Even as I came at it swinging, armed with thousands of hours of armchair philosophy, and a lifetime worth of contrarianism, it refused to be pinned down - it seems to be somewhere between Daoism and Buddhism and Christianity, but its own thing. So the author settles on a category populated by one - divine humanism. Whatever category it was, with its stubborn subtlety, it found me, grabbed me and held on tight.

What is it then? I certainly cannot argue my way to a convincing description of Blakian philosophy in a book review (even an overly long one). I don't think I can do it even with a book-length effort because even that would miss the point. I would be channeling my reason to convince you of its inflatedness, where I should be using my imagination. Art, I'd have to create, so that you could experience it. And whatever I could create, Blake, who lived his whole life animated by this implacable energy, would already have done a thousand times better. But go read every one of his works - and I'm certain, the veil will part, and you (and me when I do the same) will catch a glimpse of the divinity that Blake spent his whole life trying to show.

As mind-expanding Blake's works are, I'm not sure if they would have reached me five years ago. Now, when I've been shaken by the loss of faith in the Urizonic world view, I've realised that I've been ignoring a vital part of me all along. I fancy if Blake saw me, he'd cheer me on, if a bit irritated at my plodding.

But this book isn't a collection of Blake's works. It is the story of his life. And in his own, Blake was almost totally unfathomable. He was only saved from being locked up in an asylum by his good nature and kindness. While two hundred years on, after the toils of generations of scholars, Blake has been somewhat unmasked, he's been relegated to academia and a niche fandom.

John Higgs belongs perhaps to that niche fandom, but believes that Blake's works and ideas still have great power and could be of value to everyone. But how in the world of neuroscience and tall glass buildings, could they avoid being dismissed as ignorant ramblings? (A strangely similar take to Blake's own lifetime, but for different reasons.)

Here, what John Higgs does is marvellous in its own way. He accepts neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, history and secular philosophy as important tools to understand Blake; but he considers theology, art, occultism and spiritualism as no less important tools. I feared that even a supportive analysis of Blake that would reduce him to mental illness and biology, but John Higgs doesn't do this. With the subtlety and contrariety and respect he brings, and the sharp prose and kind voice he injects, this becomes the most of Blakian of biographies.

(I, on the other hand, say - let subtlety be darned - and now proclaim myself a William Blake fanboy.)

[Maksim Karpitski · Rating 1 out of 5]

John Higgs tries to be hip too much. No, the Earth isn't flat 'in the quantum realm', and no, microchips don't generally rely on quantum mechanics. I love that Higgs is very trusting and respectful towards Blake's ideas, but he's way too flippant with pretty much everything else. A lot of what he gives as fact is just hearsay that he doesn't care to research or fact-check. Like with Michelangelo's God and the cloud that's supposedly an anatomically accurate depiction of human brain. Higgs is actually confusing two stories here: the cloud merely resembles the brain, while the anatomically accurate brain stem can be seen in the neck of another God painted by Michelangelo. More importantly, of course, this might very well be the frequency bias as this 'brain' was noticed by two neuroscientists who probably see brains in the clouds all the time. Higgs, however, is even sure what Michelangelo meant by something he might not have done at all.
It's also upsetting that Higgs never cares to properly research Blake's intellectual preoccupations. For example, his version of Newton's philosophy is simplistic at best, and while discussing Blake's poem on Milton he's more eager to talk platitudes than to engage with Milton's ideas that were obviously important for Blake. Why do all that when you can just use some pop science trivia and the watered down version of 'Zen Buddhism'?

[Kilburn Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Blake vs the World by John Higgs offers a captivating and thought-provoking examination of William Blake's life and art. Higgs contextualizes Blake's genius within its historical framework and highlights the relevance of his visionary ideas today. Through engaging writing and connecting Blake's ideas to current issues, Higgs challenges readers to view Blake in a new light and demonstrates the power of art for societal transformation. The book presents a fresh and insightful perspective on one of English literature's most intriguing figures.

[Kajoch Kajoch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apologies for this lengthy 'review-cum-summary' (extended throughout the comments) but I'm working on an extensive project involving Blake. Were Higgs to complain and ask it removed due to piracy concerns... Well, I might just agree! Nonetheless, this is a portfolio of my thoughts sprinkled between quotations from this incredible, intensive, imaginative work of art that required an...
Indeterminable amount of work and passion
(and now requires your money: go buy this book and enjoy)!

---

1. The End of a Golden String

When Robinson asked him about the divinity of Jesus, Blake replied that, ‘He is the only God. And so am I and so are you.’ [...] ‘I live in a hole here, but God has a beautiful mansion for me elsewhere, [...] ‘I possess my visions and peace,’ he argued. ‘They have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage.’

What a fantastic introduction - witty, delightful, and immediately setting the tone of the characters involved and the life of the titular one. Every page is brimming with an insight into the poet/artist -

‘I thought I should have gone first,’ he said, then remarked that, ‘I cannot consider death as anything but a removing from one room to another.’

- and it's in earnest I don't quote the entire book (I've said that before about the best ones). Higgs then goes onto explain Blake's long lasting appeal: the unveiling of the monument that attracted thousands with a single Tweet; and the exhibition that garnered a quarter-of-a-million ticket sales.

I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

2. Twofold Always

Most accounts of Blake’s life and work explain his visions away as a form of ‘eidetic imagery’ – a vivid mental image which a person can see either in their mind’s eye or externally, as if the mental image was part of the observer’s environment.

We then jump into a discussion of Blake's visions, the pulses of energy and ethereal forms he saw; the scenes that would flicker into his head.

The author Philip Pullman, who is a prominent critic of religion, has had similar experiences. ‘The sense that the whole universe is alive – not just inanimate, but alive and conscious of meaning – is one that I’ve felt on two or three occasions, and they made such a deep impression on me that I shall never forget them [...] I just saw connections between things – similarities, parallels. It was like rhyme, but instead of sounds rhyming it was meanings that rhymed, and there were endless series of them, and they went on forever in every direction. The whole universe was connected by lines and chains and fields of meaning, and I was part of it. [...] I’m believing more and more firmly in this thing called panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is actually everywhere.

I'm often inclined to this type of meta-cognition - to hear others speak of epiphany as a visual burst that comes and goes is always fascinating to me.

Most of us would experience a similar phenomenon if we were kept in isolation for long enough, away from other people. It is normal for people to start talking to themselves when they are alone for any length of time, and if isolation continues they may start projecting their inner monologues out into the world and argue with people who are not present.

I have asked people: "Do you speak to yourself? Do you argue with yourself?" & "Have you/do you sob into your pillow, sometimes?" and the answer to all three is more often than not 'yes.'

Now I a fourfold vision see
And a fourfold vision is given to me
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And three fold in soft Beulahs night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newtons sleep

Makes me think my usual thoughts: Borgesian, Forking Paths, prisms, quantum mechanics, probability, precognition. This chapter primarily deals with his ways of seeing double then threefold then fourfold -

This ‘supreme delight’ was not something he created himself, but something he said was ‘given to me’.

3. I Come to Self Annihilation
This part introduces 'state of flow' (Csikszentmihalyi for more details) and how Blake would enter it naturally -

This is perhaps why the countryside, in Blake’s work, has all the qualities of a prelapsarian paradise.

- and how Blake consciously wished for a sense of almost-dissociation, or as he called it 'Self Annihilation.'

his loss of a sense of self, it should be noted, is different to the psychological experience known as dissociation, a state in which the mind becomes detached and disconnected, often as a way of avoiding dealing with trauma. Unlike the loss of a sense of self, it is a fundamentally passive experience.

Every book I read nowadays seems to touch upon the 'infinite recursion' of the self, the ouroboros state of understanding the 'I' - and this book doesn't break the pattern:

Is ‘the self’ like a little person who watches this information, as if on a TV screen, with eyes of their own? If that was the case, would that little person also have another person inside their head, in order to watch what was going on in front of their eyes? That person would then need an even smaller person inside them, and so on to absurdity.

Higgs then goes on to illustrate the 'default brain network' and how synaptic connections form in the brain (in a reductive but understandably simple way), touching on the 'tabula rasa' nature of newborns and how the imagination might come to mutate into the 'twofold visions' witnessed by Blake in an understandable way. I like how this book doesn't demonise Blake or call him a liar; but lends him the ear of the 21st-Century.

The adult mind is, in a sense, in a rut. Once it knows what is likely to happen in the world, it does not usually bother itself imagining scenarios that do not fall into this pattern. A child who has yet to develop a fully formed default mode network may spend time imagining what their life would be like if they had a pet dinosaur they could ride to school and impress their friends with. An adult, in contrast, will think about what they need from the shops and what to watch on Netflix that evening. On one level, this is a much more practical and energy-efficient use of the brain, but it may not be the way to a richer, more fulfilling life.

Solution, perhaps?
Become an artist/writer/creator, and balance delusion with reality! Killing the child isn't a good thing, not at all - the philosopher asks "Why? Why? Why? Why?" until the question loses meaning, much like a child. Keep excitement, imagination, entertainment, but don't tread on others feet, really.

In a 2014 paper called ‘The Entropic Brain’, a team of researchers led by Robin Carhart-Harris from Imperial College London looked at the consequences of what they called ‘entropy’. In this context, the word ‘entropy’ referred to how chaotic or ordered the activity in the brain was, with chaotic, unexpected brain activity being classed as high entropy and calm, predictable brain patterns being classed as low entropy. [...] Addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, depression and rigid or fundamentalist thinking are all the result of a brain that is too efficient, and which has too little entropy. Where these problems arise, a sprinkling of chaos is needed.

I found this part in particular fascinating...

4. Without Contraries is No Progression
this part brings with an introduction to Song of Innocence and Experience, focusing on The Lamb and The Tyger in particular. Then he touches on The Chimney Sweeper and The Clod & the Pebble.

Note that Blake is not trying to remain neutral. His position is not a proto-postmodern belief that all perspectives are equally valid. He is quite prepared to call out one side as good, and the other evil. Instead, his position is that both sides of the clash are necessary, because there is no such thing as light without dark or hot without cold. For Blake, the conflict between these divides is the fuel that moves the universe. [...] Blake introduces the state of Beulah in both of his major works, Milton and Jerusalem, with the line: ‘There is a place where Contrarieties are equally True’.

I don't even need to then talk about subatomic particles and quantum mechanics because he only goes straight onto it. I went into this blind to the author and am leaving impressed!

Urizen is the personification of reason. He is the intellect that creates law, he is controlling and associated with language, and it is he who constructs the human-scale world of rationality and logic in which contrary positions cannot both be physically true. Urizen is the conscious observer that forces Schrödinger’s cat to become either alive or dead.

He then discusses Urizen - the Godly representation of absolute reason, often shown with a compass in his hand. We also discuss his attack on the Newtownian worldview (after all, rationality was opposed to reason in Blake's eyes, I believe).

Because Urizen’s sense of himself as a creator god is built on the denial that there is anything outside of him, he finds this idea extremely threatening and he uses all the logic at his disposal to ridicule it. [...] What he likes above all other things is the idea that he is right, because this takes far less mental effort than understanding error. [...] Like our minds, Urizen has no knowledge of what he doesn’t know and deep down this terrifies him, because it threatens his very sense of identity. He will attempt to belittle, mock, or otherwise deny evidence that there is more than he knows, and that he is not the powerful creator he thinks he is. Deeply insecure, Urizen is the aspect of our minds that needs not just to be right, but to be thought of as right. You will recognise him immediately if you use social media.

This chapter has been phenomenal - I felt this quantum mechanic interpretation of his artwork and poetry, and it is very validating to see it written back to me (and then some!) Phenomenal insight on behalf of Higgs. I've filled a small Word DOC with pertinent points for my upcoming project (King Monster). While some information was known to me, the context in which Higgs presents it brought me to my own realisations I quickened to record. Brilliant book, so far.

5. The Tygers of Wrath

In the summer of 1780, at the age of twenty-two, Blake encountered King Mob. [...] Blake found himself at the front of the mob as they surged towards the imposing prison at Newgate. [...] Three hundred convicts were set free [...] ‘Showers of sparks and pieces of red-hot metal shot up into the sky as iron bars and flaming beams and great hunks of elaborate masonry tumbled [...] While all the time the screaming, wild, triumphant figures of the “demoniac assailants” [...] Events quickly turned ugly as protestors abused and beat members of the House of Lords [...] On the walls of the burning prison was painted a declaration: these prisoners had been freed, it said, by the authority of ‘His Majesty, King Mob’. [...] For an anxious and sensitive young man like Blake, the experience must have been traumatic. [...] King Mob usually sleeps, but he still dwells within our psyches.

Yeah, no kidding. I'm archiving large swathes of quotes for my research, later, but intend to give my impressions at the top in the end. Higgs then goes onto explain how this experience gave Blake the character/spirit 'Orc' - a satanic contradiction to Urizen representative of fire, violence, and destruction.

One factor in this was the rise of what were called ‘masterless men’. In the hierarchical medieval feudal system, it was assumed that men and women were loyal to the lord who owned the land they lived on. But large parts of the population were becoming increasingly mobile, moving around the country as opportunities for work dictated, and hence had no ‘lord’ to speak of. [...] the experience of being masterless was at the root of many religious and political changes

This reminds me of what occurred in Japan with the disintegration of the samurai class and their evolution into bandits, highwaymen, guards, or vagabonds. Well, it's not directly applicable. What Higgs has to say here is far more profound. He goes onto discuss Blake's impact within the timeframe he existed and created, and how the religious/idealogical world around him is reflected/reflective of his views(reflection) on it all -

Instead of campaigning, Blake created. He spent long hours as a working engraver, fulfilling whatever commercial jobs came his way, as well as producing his own work

- but this does not make him unimportant to the causes of the time.
He was a one-person publishing industry, writing, designing, printing and colouring illustrated works of his own devising. Although he was still in the Georgian era, Blake was practising the ‘do it yourself’ ethos of punk rock. Steeped in the antinomian tradition, Blake had escaped from the belief that other people had authority over him. [...] Those who recognise no masters or leaders must lead themselves and take responsibility for their own life.
We are then given a brilliant deconstruction of the character Los (one of my favourites, currently hosted within Grendel in my King Monster project). Yet another incredible chapter.

6. Conversed Not With Devils

Swedenborg had produced a body of philosophy and theology that seemed to support the reality of Blake’s visions, and Blake studied his books seriously, making many notes and arguments in the margins.

And history somewhat repeats itself. Here, Higgs takes the time to explain Swedenborg's contributions to technology and science, and his eventual visions that took him to conclusions similar (but not parallel, as Blake soon took to writing in opposition). The idea of Swedenborg's that hell and heaven are determined on the life we lived according to our preferences, not any objective morality, is fascinating. As is Higgs astute observation that this can be seen in the modern world via what forum or social media site you frequent (even if it bothers you). Some of us prefer the heat; some the cold. He then described the creation of that work (mentioned before) in aversion to Swedenborg's beliefs, titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I particularly love the sentiment that Blake didn't question Swedenborg's visions happening but of being faulty:

Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions.

Numerous times throughout this book, I've wondered whether Higgs has read Robert Anton Wilson -

Swedenborg was too comfortable in his own reality tunnel to question how limited it was

- but now I'm fairly convinced? Coincidences (coincidances) happen so often, now. What are the chances? (I just read Quantum Psychology).
...just looked into John Higgs a bit only to discover he's wrote quite a bit on Robert Anton Wilson and even adapted some of his works to stage. Well, there's coincidance for you.
His Proverbs of Hell are incredible. Some of my favourites include:

What is now proved was once, only imagin’d. / The most sublime act is to set another before you. / Expect poison from the standing water. / The bird a nest, the spider a web, mankind friendship. / Without Contraries is no progression. / Man has no body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion of Soul.

- with that last one, in particular, wonderfully foreshadowing infinite recursion, the search for the Self, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, etc, etc.
Higgs ends the part explaining Blake's views on the Prolific and the Devourers (which, I've always referred to as the Creator and Consumer. Not for economic reasons, but because the Act of Creation, to me, comprises synthesis/recycling via consumption).

[...] he divides humanity into twotypes of people: the Prolific, who produce and create, and the Devourers, who consume. Other writers might praise the Prolific and condemn the Devourers, but Blake understands that both types are needed to keep the world turning [...]

7. Once, Only Imagin'd
I'll take this opportunity (because where else, when else?) to say: I adore the number '7.' I expect great things from this chapter, accordingly (not really, but my apophenia kicks in where that digit is involved).

In 1926, Sartre took what turned out to be, with hindsight, an excessive dose of mescaline. As a result, he spent many years hallucinating sea creatures, who made a nuisance of themselves while he attended to his duties. [...] ‘after I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?” I would talk to them all the time. I would say, “OK, guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be still and quiet,” [...]

I think we can safely file this into the best information to have in the brain folder and count ourselves lucky. He then illustrates different academic views on 'imagination' and how they played a part in Swedenborg and Blake's visions. Before moving onto a brief illustration of the eight circuit model of Timothy Leary (ie, Quantum Psychology / Prometheus Rising) and how it pertains to the psychological experiences of them both. Then he introduces 'aphantasia' and 'hyperphantasia' and the resulting paintings of his vivid hyperphantasic mind's eye.
The breakdown of hyperphantasia and it's effects on keeping composure during conversation when you have a vivid imagination was very illuminating for me.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant dive into the mind of a brilliant man. More than a typical Biography, this book breaks down the evolution of William Blake’s ideas by analysing his poems in order to get to the crux of his philosophy.

Being a ginormous fan of William Blake, I really appreciated reading some of his poems with extra context and analysis. What I love most about his poetry (particularly Proverbs of Hell - my favorite) is that each line, no matter how innocuous it may at first seem, ends up bearing an endless well of interpretation. There’s been parts of that poem which took me ages to realise, parts which I never understood, and parts which I thought I cracked, until I heard another interpretation; this book continued that journey

Apparently, each line in Proverbs of Hell lists the sayings he heard when he was ‘walking among the fires of hell, delighted with enjoyments of Genius; which to angels look like torment and insanity.’ Which in itself is interesting, because I’ve long wondered how in the hell he came up with a poem like that. It seems though, like everything, it came to him in a vision.

‘Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.’

This is but one of the lines in that poem which has long confused me; I kind of thought that perhaps he was being sarcastic. But as John Higgs divulges, Blake had extremely liberal notions of sexuality, believing sex to be holy and good and a way to get closer to the divine, and he attacked the church for their attempts to control the sexual aspects of people’s lives, thus: Brothels are, in some way, a kind of church.


Higgs spends a good deal of time looking at Blake through a modern, scientific lens, which was extremely interesting (although a couple times I did feel he reached a bit).

It’s well known that Blake suffered from (or was blessed with) intense visions, from which inspired most of his poetry and paintings. Remarkably, according to some of his peers, he used to paint angels as if he was doing a live portrait, constantly looking into the seemingly empty space. On one occasion, after painting for most of the night, he acctually scraped a half finished painting and started again, claiming that the Angel had changed its position.

It’s stories like this which I believe give him credibility because they prove that he really did have visions. The question then, is wether these visions, or at least the wisdom gained from them, are the product of divine revelation? The ‘No’ camp would claim that Blake is not a mystic, but a madman. However, looking through the modern lens, the author claims that Blake may have had a condition called ‘Hyperphantsia’ - where your imagination is just as vivid (sometimes even more) as your sight. In this way, Higgs explains Blake’s visions scientifically, sparing him the title of ‘Madman’, but at the same time, I think perhaps stripping him of the honour of being divinely inspired. But, at the end of the day, you could argue for ever wether or not William Blake was a divine conduit and never get to the bottom of it (wars have been fought over less.)

It doesn’t matter really. The fact is he had visions, and from them he extracted wisdom, beauty and truth. If that’s not the work of a prophet, then perhaps it’s the work of a genius.

His wisdom even touched upon areas not yet conceptualised - having psychological insights that predate Freud.

For example, again in Proverbs of Hell, the line:

‘He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence,’

shares insights on a psychological phenomenon only discovered 200 odd years later - that repression can causes neuroses. He was also anti-imperialist, anti slavery, invented his own printing method in order to self publish, and created his own mythology. He truly believed that mankind could be redeemed and liberated through the power of imagination - to see the world nor for what it is, but what it could be.

I’m reminded of another one of his poems that captures this philosophy well:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”

Is it tragic coincidence that Genius is seldom realised in its time, or is that part of its definition? It’s sad to learn that William Blake, like so many creative geniuses before and after him, died relatively poor and obscure - it was decades, centuries even, before he reached notoriety. Perhaps that’s not despite the fact that he was ahead of his time, but because of it.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’ve ever read a Blake poem and thought wtf is he going on about, you’re not alone. Or, maybe the words seem so simple, you’re like me and can’t find anything more to say about them without resorting to simplistic symbolism. Is the rose just a rose, and the tyger just a tyger? John Higgs gives reassurance that frustration in interpreting Blake is normal. The last chapter of his book is all about how authorities (museums, government, critics) have mistaken his mythologies and how we continue to mistake him and his poetry.

Blake did not have a formal education so came up with his own philosophies about the mind and the soul that were different from tradition and are not easily categorized or aligned to one dogma. He developed his own theory of perception (two-fold, three-fold and four-fold vision) and his own mythological beings Urizen (reason, also featured on the book jacket), Tharmas (physical sensation), Luvah (emotion), Urthona (imagination), all contained within Albion (the stand-in for man and sometimes Britain) which he coded into his poetry. Higgs unpacks Blake’s visions and poetry by bringing in the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose work Blake read and found appealing, as well as sources from outside of Blake’s time and geography: neuro-science and Eastern philosophies (Tao Te Ching, Buddhism). Blake wrote in the early nineteenth-century and left us centuries of academic work to unravel his writing. When Higgs cites one of Blake’s contemporary critics, he concludes “none of [the poem] was comprehensible to [him]” but “when we approach the poem now, it is with the insights of over a century of academic study” (Higgs 266). There is even A Blake Dictionary written by S. Foster Damon to help us out, which is considered a necessary companion to Blake studies.

Blake was not a Romantic, living before the Shelley and Byron crew who made the movement by having the affluence to travel, write in leisure, and publish their works. Blake knew of Wordsworth, and Higgs provides the amusing side note that Blake thought of Wordsworth as brilliant but mad, and Wordsworth thought the same of Blake, and wrote “there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott” (Higgs 302). Higgs explains that Blake is sometimes thought of as the father of Romanticism in retrospect as the Romantics finally gave readers a framework by which to understand him (Higgs 306). Blake’s early rejection of the Enlightenment’s dominance of reason was not understood by many of his life-time. He was either ridiculed by critics or thought of as an odd man but kind and sweet by his friends. He died poor and loved by his wife who helped him with his engravings. Blake was apprenticed to a print-maker as a young man and from there he developed a way to paint his poetry into his illustrations rather than by type-setting which he thought was a revelation, but his contemporaries never caught onto the method (Higgs 188). Higgs’ book includes a Blake illustration at the start of each chapter, which is nice to flip back to while you are reading.

The last chapter is especially important, as Higgs delivers the so what – what Blake can contribute today. Higgs goes through what we can drop (Blake’s view of women as lessor, nature as something to serve the imagination without a life of its own and his distain for reason) and what we can take away – Blake’s prioritizing of the imagination which can remind us to rebalance our minds. The rational ego needs to be balanced out by the other three zoas. We can strengthen these parts of ourselves (being artistic to activate creativity, engage emotion through empathy, and feel relief from physical sense) to be better people and to cultivate mental wellness.

Lastly, I share a birthday with William Blake so it was rewarding to understand him a bit better with Higg’s expertise. Sometimes you need the professor to guide you through interpretation which does not come from just reading the poetry.

[Jack Skelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blake’s splashes only get bigger. John Higgs records waves in the lit and extra-lit worlds, referencing #AphexTwin #blackholes #DavidHockney #TimothyLeary #GeorgeLucas #TwinPeaks & #AlanWatts . A great chapter on sexual politics, “Seek Love There.” Blake produced engravings for #MaryWollstonecraft 's Original Stories from Real Life (her children’s book), and endorsed her pioneering feminism. Here’s Higgs on Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion: It “explores how the social norms of marriage constrain and repress the healthy sexual appetites of women, explicitly comparing joyless marriage with slavery still being practiced in America. This is an extraordinarily progressive perspective for a male writer in the eighteenth century.”

[Tara Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and accessible introduction into Blakes work

[Dot · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a remarkable, fascinating biography. It goes beyond a linear narrative of Blake’s life and provides insight into psychological, Biblical, political, artistic contexts and concepts which could relate to both the inspiration of his work and modern interpretation. It is educational, yet also humbling and inspiring.

In Blake’s own words: “In your Bosom you bear your Heaven and Earth & all you behold; tho’ it appears Without, it is Within, in your imagination.”

The imagination is a beautiful, limitless source which, I agree, is fundamental.

I thoroughly recommend this to everyone.

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quando ho letto la recensione su questo libro, apparsa su The Spectator, mi sono ricordato di avere scritto anche io sul mio blog qualcosa riguardante la "follia" di questo straordinario poeta inglese. Una "follia" conosciuta sin dai primi tempi di università, quando al secondo anno ci assegnarono un corso monografico su di lui. Di "follie inglesi", a dire la verità, ne ero abbastanza pratico. Ero da poco ritornato dall'Inghilterra dove avevo trascorso un paio di anni di lavoro in un ospedale mentale a nord di Londra, nei pressi della città romana "Verulam", la moderna St Albans, la città di Francis Bacon. Oltre due anni di lavoro con pazienti subnormali, in particolare bambini. Una esperienza che mi ha segnato per tutta la vita e che mi ha portato a comprendere da dentro la realtà e la cultura di quel popolo.

Alternavo gli studi del corso di infermeria, come studente, a quelli del corso di letteratura in un college serale. Serate straordinarie trascorse a leggere i sonetti Shakespeare, le liriche dei romantici e di quel poeta pazzo e bibliomane che fu, appunto, William Blake. Alternavamo i suoi versi con i brani erotici del libro di D. H. Lawrence, appena liberato dalla censura, "L'Amante di Lady Chatterly". E poi ancora il teatro del giovane Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, gli "angry young men", quelli del "Look back in anger"…

Oggi, quella follia, la ritrovo nella lettura di questa poesia da lui dedicata all'estate. E' una poesia abbastanza difficile da interpretare. Rientra nella logica narrativa di un poeta che con il suo fascino, ancora tutto moderno, non si sa come definire, se folle o visionario. 

Dal titolo si capisce che è dedicata all'estate mediante la tecnica della personificazione. Questa ardente stagione viene infatti immaginata come un cavaliere che cavalca furiosi destrieri dalle narici di fuoco. Il "cavaliere estate" viene invitato nella prima strofa a spegnere il calore, mentre nella seconda cavalca il ricordo di passate stagioni non tanto torride come quella attuale, una estate "just right". A questa considerazione segue l'invito a sedersi e a "raffreddarsi", anche se la cosa appare impossibile. 
L'orgoglio di questo cavaliere furente sembra infatti essere il suo calore incontenibile. E' naturale che l'ambiente e la natura dei suoi luoghi ai quali il poeta appartiene non amino queste estreme condizioni. L'isola a cui appartiene Blake non sembra amare gli estremismi in tutte le diverse manifestazioni della condizione umana.

To summer
O thou who passest thro' our valleys in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitched'st here thy goldent tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

O tu che passi nelle nostre valli in forza,
tu che domini i tuoi fieri destrieri, spegni il calore
delle fiamme che escono dalle loro narici, o Estate,
tu sovente hai piantato qui la tua tenda dorata e spesso
sotto le nostre querce hai dormito, mentre guardammo
con gioia le rosee ali e i tuoi fiorenti capelli.

Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard
Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car
Rode o'er the deep of heaven; beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy valleys, on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.

Sotto le nostre grandi ombre abbiamo spesso udito
la tua voce, quando la luna sul suo ardente carro
viaggiava sulle profondità del cielo, vicino alle nostre sorgenti,
siediti e nelle nostre muschiose valli,
su qualche riva di chiare acque di fiume,
stendi i tuoi drappeggi di seta e lanciati nel rivo,
le nostre valli amano l'estate nel suo orgoglio.

Our bards are fam'd who strike the silver wire:
Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.

I nostri bardi sono famosi per colpire le corde d'argento,
i nostri giovani sono più coraggiosi dei pastorelli del sud,
le nostre fanciulle più belle nelle allegre danze,
non ci mancano i canti, nè gli strumenti di gioia,
nè i dolci echi nè le acque chiare come il cielo,
nè le corone d'alloro contro il soffocante caldo.

Ora se pensiamo al clima con il quale si susseguono le stagioni sulle Isole britanniche possiamo ben dire che l'irruzione furiosa e potente, con la sua calura di destrieri cavalcati da simili cavalieri, può effettivamente destabilizzare menti e comportamenti. La cosa è vista in maniera quanto mai drammatica. Chi vive su questa isola, ne conosce la mitezza dei luoghi, la moderazione delle stagioni, le temperate manifestazioni umane che ben poco hanno a che vedere con gli intensi calori e persistenti intemperanze delle estati che possiamo avere dalle nostre parti.

Questa poesia di William Blake fa parte di un ciclo giovanile di composizioni chiamate "Poetical sketches" in cui vengono esaminate tra l'altro le quattro stagioni. Scritte tra tra il 1769 e il 1777, sono una specie di laboratorio poetico "avanti lettera" in cui William Blake forgia la vena poetica per la sua futura poetica visione del mondo. Sebbene gli studiosi ritengano che queste composizioni poetiche non siano gran cosa da un punto di vista artistico, esse sono quanto mai importanti per studiare come venne formandosi uno dei più grandi poeti inglesi di tutti i tempi. 

Alcuni critici hanno messo in evidenza il fatto che questi lavori mettono in luce il modo in cui venne a crearsi la grande forza creativa dal punto di vista della immaginazione. Il critico Harold Bloom ha scritto che queste composizioni anticipano le ambizioni poetiche di Blake in termini di sensibilità ereditata da Spenser, Milton e Shakespeare. Gli "sketches"di Blake sono anticipatori della grande imminente forza immaginativa che caratterizzerà in seguito i suoi lavori sia in versi che in prosa o in forma grafica.

Egli disprezzava fortemente le forme poetiche dominanti dell'epoca rifiutando la rima, rompendo i paradigmi, usando invece la rima visiva con la quale spezzava i canoni della metrica convenzionale. Un libro giovanile questo degli "sketches" di cui Blake conservò gelosamente alcune copie stampate privatamente e che vennero ritrovate nella sua biblioteca alla sua scomparsa.

La recensione apparsa su The Spectator:

Whose were those feet in ancient time that walked upon England’s mountains green? That William Blake assumed his readers were on his same wavelength is one of the things, according to John Higgs, ‘that makes his writing a glorious puzzle’. Equally puzzling, argues Higgs, is that the cockney visionary, unsung in his lifetime and buried in a pauper’s grave, has now been absorbed thoroughly into mainstream culture without our having the faintest idea of what he was on about.

Take the 20th-century adoption of ‘Jerusalem’ as England’s alternative national anthem: in its original context as the preface to Blake’s long poem ‘Milton’, the hymn that marks the end of our school terms and party political conferences was intended to describe the overthrow of these very institutions. There is a similar irony, says Higgs, in placing Eduardo Paolozzi’s bronze Newton in the forecourt of the British Library: the object of the Blake print on which the statue is based, ‘Newton: Personification of Man Limited by Reason’, was precisely to challenge the limitations of book-based learning.

The finest of all our misreadings of Blake, however, was when on 28 November 2019 ‘The Ancient of Days’ was projected onto the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Here, squatting naked above the great church with his long hair and white beard blowing in the wind, was Urizen (‘your reason’), marking out with his golden compass the soulless world in which we live. He might look like God but Urizen was, in Blake’s mythology, Satan himself. Higgs explains:

“No one has ever understood everything that Blake wrote, possibly including Blake himself. But as Obi-Wan Kenobi asks rhetorically in Star Wars: ‘Who’s the more foolish — the fool, or the fool that follows him?’

In William Blake vs the World, Higgs makes a laudable attempt to explain Blake to the nation and then, to paraphrase Byron, to explain his explanation. What did Blake mean, for example, by the proverb ‘Without contraries is no progression’, or by his belief that while God created man, man also created God? And how should we interpret his casual accounts of conversing with angels, whether on Peckham Rye, where his earliest vision took place, or otherwise? ‘I have always found,’ said Blake, ‘that angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise.’ Was Blake an artist, a genius, a mystic or a madman, wondered Henry Crabb Robinson, after spending an evening with the elderly poet. He was all of those things, says Higgs, except the last. ‘As the late maverick Ken Campbell used to insist, “I’m not mad, I’ve just read different books”.’

Apart from the Bible, Blake’s great influence was the Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, whose book Heaven and Hell was satirised by Blake in ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’. Starting out as Swedenborg’s student, he ended up as his nemesis, but then ‘opposition is true friendship’. The most engaging of Blake’s oppositions can be found in the contrast between the immateriality of his thought and the ‘infernal’ labour involved in getting his ideas circulated. Blake illustrated, engraved and printed his books himself. This involved not only scratching thousands of lines, dots and crosses onto sheets of copper, but using mirror writing, so the finished text would not read backwards. Higgs compares his one-man publishing industry to ‘the do-it-yourself ethos of punk rock’.

At the heart of Blake’s world was the power of imagination, which faculty he believed would free us from our mind-forged manacles. Imagination, represented in Blakean mythology by Los, is the opposite of the reason, and we cannot understand Blake without understanding what he meant by imagination or taking seriously his visions. Higgs does this admirably, by exploring what we know about the mind while maintaining, for our secular times, the sacred quality of Blake’s attention. For Blake, the dividing line between the external and the internal was porous, and his capacity to see more than the rest of us might be explained by his having hyperphantasia. The mind’s eye of those with hyperphantasia is morevivid — both visually and in every other sense — than it is for the rest of us. ‘To a hyperphantasic,’ Higgs argues, ‘images are not things that you think, they are things that you encounter.’

Higgs compares Blake to the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu; also to Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and Lennon and McCartney: ‘To judge Blake by Songs of Innocence is like judging the Beatles by the song “Yellow Submarine”.’I grew weary of these analogies — further misreadings, perhaps, which do little to explain Blake’s sublime strangeness; but then this book is not written for my generation. William Blake vs the World is a primer for the future. Witness the statement: ‘Blake appears to have been cisgendered and heterosexual, but there may have been a transgender aspect to his sense of self.’ It might be one of the Proverbs of Hell.

WRITTEN BY
Frances Wilson - The Spectator -3 July 2021

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of interesting information and ideas, and it’s fun to read. I was embarrassingly enthusiastic about this book at the outset but only very happy I read it by the time I got to the end. Here’s why:

I occasionally go to New York City. When there, I usually stop by the Strand Bookstore near Union Square. It’s the doddering last remnant of a once-thriving district of retailers of books, both new and used, and going there in these times sometimes feels like visiting the last standing cathedral of a lost but profound religion. I feel like I should support the Strand Bookstore by buying something, even though my bookshelves are already groaning with unread volumes. In these moments, I gravitate to the poetry section because, unlike prose, books of poetry can be opened at random, years after purchase, and sometimes yield a result which is pleasant, or profound, or both. This is how I’ve acquired and read many of the books of poetry which are crowding the other unread dusty volumes populating the homestead shelves.

A few years ago, at the Strand, I acquired the Penguin Classics paperback edition of William Blake’s complete poems. It is pocket-sized in height and width but, at over 1000 pages, not in depth. (In this respect, it is rip-out-the-lining-of-your-pocket-sized.)

Opening this book at random is normally an exercise in bafflement. In spite of Blake’s otherwise somewhat erratic punctuation, he is fairly consistent about the capitalization of proper names, which at least gives some clue about the barrage of unfamiliar words that come thick and fast at nearly every page. They are usually proper names. They would be difficult to recognize these names as such without the capitalization, because they are not, for example, Betty, William, Claude, etc. They are (I open at random to page 288) Urizen, Tharmas, Los, Enitharmon, Luvah, and Vala, for example. To decode these characters, one must travel to the 170 pages of Penguin-supplied endnotes (which, to be fair, are very well organized and as clear as the source material allows them to be) and, often, onward to the fifteen following pages of eyestrain-inducing “Dictionary of Proper Names” (also clear and organized).

I want to know about Blake because he is claimed as a hero by both the political left and the political right. I want to know about him because a wide variety of people of varying opinion and era seemed (and seem today) to think that he was/is worth paying attention to, and also because Blake, usually just when I am about to throw my hands up in disgust and return to whatever chore or duty I am currently neglecting, will (metaphorically speaking) turn around and slap me in the face with an incredibly apt observation or turn of phrase, which read like he just stepped through the intervening decades just to deliver them, all the while poking me in the chest in the style of President Lyndon Johnson.

I also want to know about Blake because he was subject to visions his whole life and, in my dotage, I am less likely to dismiss such people as cranks or in need of medication, even though I remain completely unburdened by visions myself.

So, when a Goodreads friend placed this upon her bookshelf, I read the description with interest and resolved to add this to the many volumes I had in progress. Shortly afterward, I got a copy from the public library, where readers were, inexplicably, not clamoring to get their hands on it.

It started very promisingly. I was so excited about this book at the beginning that I recommended loudly and repeatedly it to my friends who read, even though they already think me odd enough without hearing me enthuse about how clearly John Higgs explains (starting pg. 20) the time when Blake, while out for a stroll in the countryside, got into an argument with a thistle, which Blake, while simultaneously understanding that the thistle was a thistle (and thus not capable of conversation, much less argumentation), saw it also as a vision of an old man who berated Blake about his lifestyle and spiritual opinions.

Yes, the beginning of the book appeared to be what I was looking for: an entertainingly-written taxonomy of the baffling names of Blake’s characters, plus an explanation of the significance of each. An example (pg. 61):

Urizen is the personification of reason. He is the intellect that creates law, he is controlling and associated with language, and it is he who constructs the human-scale world of rationality and logic in which contrary positions cannot both be physically true. Urizen is the conscious observer that forces Schrodinger’s cat to become either alive or dead.

For better or worse, the whole book is not like this, but, to his credit, Higgs points you (on pg. 266) to another volume which promises to perform this task: S. Foster Damon’s A Blake Dictionary, published dog’s years ago but apparently still the gold standard for attempts at Blake-comprehension.

Higgs has other fish to fry, intellectually speaking. The book rockets around to various topics in a way that I found interesting if unlinear. Sometimes it read like I was reading a book-length representation of that internet meme where a short guy with uncombed hair, a cigarette, and an animated expression, stands before a bulletin board covered in tacked-up documents and notes, connected by a crazy quilt of various color-coded yarn. Does that sound like a bad thing? I don’t mean it that way.

Sometimes the narrative just got away from me. (Now, Grandpa is going to indulge in a metaphor which the kids nowadays might not understand, or at least not experienced personally.) It was sort of like driving a car with the radio on (which is what we did before Spotify) and you gradually got out of range of the signal, at which time the content you were enjoying just became so much static. If you were just going through a tunnel or behind a large concrete building, the signal might come back loud and comprehensible, and so it is with this book.

I was lucky in that much of the author’s experience overlapped with my own. For example, I have an unread copy of William James’ Variety of Religious Experience gathering dust near the poetry on my shelves and have actually been in a Swedenborgian church. If your experience is different, you may find the book more static and less signal.

Still, I guess it’s kind of an endorsement that I’m going to hang on to this book for as long as the library lets me, and I’m going to try to snag that used copy of A Blake Dictionary that a Goodwill store in Colorado is selling through Amazon for less than $12. I’m even trying to decode the early poem “The Book of Urizen” as a prelude to later, more impenetrable, longer poems. Higgs’ book convinced me that it was worth my time. That’s a successful book, right?

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part Blake biography, part Blake mythology, and part Blake wisdom for the world.

"The systematic and rational left hemisphere is what Blake called Urizen. The other three zoas are the domain of the right hemisphere, which is creative, emotional and in touch with the body. Bolte Taylor’s account of losing her left hemisphere reveals the extent to which Urizen has become dominant and works to drown out the other aspects of our mind, or even attempts to convince us that they are not real. This Urizenic domination is what Blake sees as the Fall of man and the cause of the sleep of Albion. It is what cuts us off from Blake’s divine spirit, which is the deep holistic ‘right brain’ bliss that Tolle and Bolte Taylor experienced after trauma to their left hemisphere or sense of ego. If they are to be believed, Blake may be right when he says this divine spirit will return when Urizen is tamed and the zoas brought back into balance."

[Cliff M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is as mad and as brilliant as Blake himself. The ability of the author to link Blake’s work, ideas, beliefs and opinions to everything that has happened in religion, philosophy, science, politics, the arts, and popular culture knows no bounds. There is a definite trend in popular science books to follow this style, but Higgs does it better than most (perhaps better than any). Rather than reading this book to find out who Blake was, you should read it to find out why he matters (though if you are a university graduate or went to an English public school you might stop singing Jerusalem once you know what the poem is really saying).

[Risteárd Caomhánach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Higgs rages against the 'mind-forg'd manacles' of coherence and structured criticism and treats the reader to endless, light digressions on tangential topics. Maybe Urizen had a point after all?

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first started reading this new, neurobiological take on Wm Blake, I was a bit disappointed at what I felt like was its rather amateurish lack of awareness of even the critical tradition I had mastered in my undergraduate studies. I mean he was quoting mostly from Gilchrist (1863) and Foster Damon (1965). No Frye, no Erdman, and only Bloom's pot-boiler Critical Views, not his definitive Visionary Company or book on Blake's argument. Snotty little academic that I am, I was annoyed by certain presumptions that Blake's system was incoherent, and a pyscho-biographical tendency to explain poems in terms of Blake's personal animosities or manic-depressive tendencies. I still am not sure whether the comment that Blake was hard to understand if you only had Damon's Encyclopedia and Wikipedia was a revelation of his sources or a play to the common reader. However, eventually I did suspend judgement enough to listen all the way to the end. For a popular book, it did a fairly good job of explaining some aspects of Blake's vision. Dumb of me to expect that anything available on Audible would have real scholarly heft. It DID, however, get me re-interested in Blake. Not sure what I am going to do about that. Now looking for an up-to-date review of recent Blake studies.

PS: I re-listened to it and liked it better the second time around. A book by an enthusiast rather than a scholar, but pretty comprehensive nonetheless.

[Dan Sumption · Rating 5 out of 5]

This immensely enjoyable book explores the life of Blake from multiple perspectives. It is, in part, a biography of Blake but, as with all of Higgs' books, it goes far beyond its ostensible topic, pulling knowledge from the worlds of psychology, religion, quantum physics and more, to try to get to the bottom of how Blake saw the world, and how we can apply Blake's apparently unique perspective in our own lives. Readers of Higgs' earlier books will know that he uses the concept of Reality Tunnels to explain peoples' very different perceptions of the world, and it appears that Blake himself was very familiar with the way in which the mind creates the world. Familiar concerns crop up, placing Blake firmly in the Higgs Cinematic Universe.

There are certainly more detailed and thorough biographies of Blake out there, but I'm not sure that any can be quite as entertaining and enlightening as this one. Occasionally explaining Blake's visionary philosophy and "madness" through modern concepts felt like a bit of a reach, but I can allow that in such a fun and singular book.

[Mathew Ruberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book about poet/engraver William Blake who said that imagination is divinity. He was an iconoclast and definitely not a people pleaser - he would say weird ass shit totally against the thoughts of the day and spun yarns of his own mythology. Reason, in his mythology known as Urizen, was actually a hated creature. The problem with reason was that it was limiting. It’s hubris was that it thought it could identify and categorize everything, to conquer the uncertainty that seems inherent in all meaningful things. Instead, it was imagination that was divine.

It got me thinking a lot about the play between reason ←→ emotion. That maybe thinking that way is a more limited spectrum than what is truly real. Coming straight out of the page from there is imagination. You can have either reason or emotion but without imagination it is going to be stale and stupid.

How do you build your imagination? How do you find the courage to believe it’s worth gambling your status, your sanity, your tenuous grasp of the world??

[Giovanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Higgs has broken my brain. I loved this book and the accompanying cognitive dissonance - it was fascinating and uncomfortable. Blake is brilliant and Higgs' writing does him justice. This text is illuminating; ostensibly aimed at literary nerds like me but the biographical elements of our beloved Blake are mired in mind-bending leaps into quantum physics, theories of time, space, religion and perception. I often laughed and nearly cried. Plenty of out-of-body, 'Is the world around me really here and does it matter either way?' moments. This review may feel a bit unhinged because my mind is currently ajar.

[C.L. Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty awesome book, though it's quite long and definitely more academic than my usual reads. I've always loved the poems and art of William Blake, especially the artwork and poetry of Songs of Innocence and Experience. This book, however, delves into the life of William Blake and those he personally knew, as well as scholars who have studied him throughout the years. William Blake vs the World is primarily about discovering Blake and his work through our own interpretation and encourages us to examine why his works resonate with so many in unique and personal ways. A good read for anyone who wants to delve more personally into Blake and his works.

[Davide Delli Gatti · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of the life and thought of William Blake, perfect for people who have an intermediate understanding of the poet. While the multiple pop culture references were painfully dorky, I appreciated the fact that the many observations based on quantum physics (a field that has been butchered by writers for decades), were surprisingly accurate.

[Bethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writer of this book is some sort of polymath genius. So many ideas fused together and we’ll explained. It was like being back at uni and having your mind stretched into a new shape. Really inspiring.