250 years ago today, William Blake was born into the family of a London hosiery dealer. The young Blake had visions, took drawing classes from the age of ten, and at age 14 apprenticed as an engraver. The adult Blake had a print shop and eked out a living illustrating and engraving other people's works, while writing and illuminating his own poetry on the side. Valuing imagination over reason, William Blake associated with such revolutionary thinkers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestly, and Thomas Paine, but was neither well-known nor financially successful in his lifetime.
Now, of course, Blake is admired as one of the most powerful and evocative poets to ever write in English. He has been discovered and re-discovered by generations of artists, ranging from William Butler Yeats, who admired how Blake "beat upon the wall/Till Truth obeyed his call;" to Aldous Huxley (who titled his book on psychedelic drugs Doors of Perception after the Blakean line " if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite") to Patti Smith, who speaks of the poet's visionary experience, compassion, and protest work.
Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.
