Alexander Pushkin

 

Alexander Pushkin was, by common consent, Russia’s greatest poet. He was also the heroic ideal of the Romantic poet.

He was born in 1799 into a noble Russian family. Brilliant and precocious, his first poetry was published at the age of 14. His romantic narrative “Ruslan and Ludmila”, written six years later, was a runaway success and was recognised as breaking every literary convention of its day.

He displayed huge energy and drive that had the effect of transforming Russian literature. He did this by rejecting the traditional constraints of religion and censorship to create highly original works.

He revolutionised the way Russians thought about their history and drama, and especially the way they thought about their writers.

Among his best-known works was “Eugene Onegin”, written between 1825 and 1832, this being a verse novel that is regarded by some as the finest Russian novel ever written. It was a decisive move away from the allegorical tradition and towards the realism later displayed by writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Nabokov.

Pushkin was a radical in political as well as literary terms. He sympathised with the aims of the aristocratic set known as the Decembrists, who conspired to reform the oppressive autocracy of the Tsars. These sympathies attracted the attention of the autocrats and led to Pushkin’s exile from St Petersburg to some of the more remote parts of Western Russia. In 1825 he had to look on from the outside as a Decembrist uprising was put down and his generation’s dreams of liberty were smashed.

However, Pushkin was allowed back into imperial favour when Tsar Nicholas I made promises of reform that turned out to be less than promised. His radicalism was still very much to the fore, which meant that he fell increasingly out of favour at court. He wanted to retire to a life of literary seclusion, but this escape was denied him. The result was that he gave way to drinking and gambling.

One reason why Pushkin was not allowed to leave the court was that he had married an extremely beautiful woman named Natalya. By flirting with several of the men about the court, including the Tsar himself, she had unwittingly encouraged lustful ambitions that she had no intention of satisfying.

One of these would-be suitors was a French social climber named George d’Anthes. After insulting her in public he challenged Pushkin to a duel, and his challenge was accepted. Pushkin was fatally wounded, dying two days after the event at the age of 38.

The nature of Pushkin’s death, at such a young age, only served to cement his reputation as a Romantic icon. He has therefore gone down in literary history as the epitome of creativity triumphing over the dead hand of bureaucracy and philistinism.

© John Welford

Robert Browning, 19th-century British poet

On 12^th December 1889 the poet Robert Browning died in Venice at the age of 77.

It has to be admitted that Browning’s poetry is not read by many people today, and most people would be hard pressed to name any of his poems. Perhaps one that might come to mind is “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, and others that deserve to be remembered are “My Last Duchess” and “Home Thoughts from Abroad”, but most modern readers have little patience with very long poems, which was the format in which Browning specialised.

It must also be admitted that some of Browning’s poetry is not easy to understand, and people today, if they read poetry at all, do not want the intellectual challenge that Browning sometimes poses.

Indeed, there is a story to the effect that Browning himself had problems with Browning’s poetry! In later life he was asked for the meaning of a particularly obscure passage in an early work, “Sordello”. He read the lines aloud and then said: “When I wrote that, God and Robert Browning knew what it meant – now only God does”.

Robert Browning is probably best known for the romantic story of how he wooed and won the poet Elizabeth Barrett. She was an invalid who was fiercely protected by her father, who refused to allow the love affair, deeply felt on both sides, to proceed. Eventually the lovers married in secret and escaped to Italy, where they stayed for 16 years until Elizabeth died and Robert returned to England.

On his return Browning wrote what is probably his best work, a dramatic monologue entitled “The Ring and the Book” that tells the story of a 17^th century murder and trial in Rome. Sadly, it has few readers today. It prompted the 20^th century writer Anthony Burgess to say: “We all want to like Browning, but we find it very hard”.

© John Welford

Sylvia Plath: American poet

Her early life

Sylvia Plath was born on 27^th October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto Plath, was an expert on bees who had emigrated from what is now northern Germany at a young age. Her mother, Aurelia, was Austrian by ancestry. Otto’s death when Sylvia was only eight had a great effect on her.

She started writing poems and stories when very young, and was aged eight when her first poem appeared in print, although she was eighteen before she achieved success with a story. Early influences included Virginia Woolf, Dylan Thomas and Wallace Stevens. 

She left Bradford Senior High School in 1950 to enter Smith College as a scholarship student. While at Smith she wrote and published a huge amount of material and edited the Smith Review. 

In her third year at Smith she was offered a guest editorship at Mademoiselle magazine, which meant spending time in New York, but began to find the pressure of all her commitments becoming more than she could cope with. She first talked about being in a “bell jar” at this time.

Her first setback was being refused a place at the Harvard writing seminar in 1953, and this was a contributing factor to her mental breakdown that led to a suicide attempt (a sleeping pill overdose) in August of that year. She was lucky to survive, as she was not found for three days.

Cambridge and Ted Hughes

After treatments that included ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) she returned to Smith and graduated in 1955. She then became a Fulbright scholar and spent two years at Cambridge University where she met the British poet Ted Hughes. Their courtship was intense and rapid, and they were married in London in June 1956.

Poetically they were worlds apart, in that Hughes’s poetry was earthy and often violent, taking nature as his subject matter, whereas Plath wrote from feelings deep within herself.  

Following a honeymoon in Spain they returned to Cambridge, and for a short time were very happy together. However, tensions were soon apparent in both her marriage and her poetry, the latter of which was undergoing changes as she began to write with greater passion and a more conversational tone.

America and depression

In 1957 she was appointed to a teaching post at Smith College, but she found this to be very hard and unfulfilling work that made it difficult for her to write. She became severely depressed and underwent psychoanalysis. Her poems at this period reveal her confused state of mind, especially over her feelings towards her husband, mother, and dead father. 

Early in 1969 she attended a seminar at Boston University headed by Robert Lowell, and at which she also met Anne Sexton. Both poets proved to be very influential for her, although she wrote more fiction than poetry at this time.

After Plath and Hughes drove across America and back that summer, she found a new creative urge and completed her first published collection, “The Colossus”. This proved to be one of the most productive periods of her poetic career, coinciding with her first pregnancy.

Back to Britain

They moved back to the UK early in 1960, and Sylvia gave birth to Frieda in April while they were living in a small London flat. Both Sylvia and Ted enjoyed success with their work, although Sylvia suffered a miscarriage in February 1961. In August they moved to the Devon countryside, where their second child, Nicholas, was born in January 1962.

Sylvia began again to be haunted by the memory of the father she had only known as a child, and this was reinforced when they started to keep bees, which had been the expertise of her father. Her poetry at this stage had become darker, with images of drowning and violence becoming more prominent.

Their marriage broke down later in 1962, after Ted had begun an affair, and they agreed to separate in September. The poems she wrote at this time are full of pain and a sense of betrayal.

She stayed in Devon with the two children, finishing “The Bell Jar”, which was in effect her autobiography, as well as a fluent outpouring of intensely felt poems that would later be collected as “Ariel”. 

Suicide

This fluency continued when she moved back to London in December, with her output sometimes reaching three completed poems a day, despite her increasing depression. Her mood was not improved by this being one of the coldest winters on record in England, and both the children were ill with flu, as she was herself. Some of her poems reflect the bleakness of the weather and her mood, but others appear to look forward to Spring and better things.

However, early on 11^th February she took biscuits and milk to her sleeping children, sealed the door of their bedroom carefully behind her, and gassed herself in the kitchen. 

“Ariel” was published in 1965, but the volume was edited by Ted Hughes in ways that would certainly not have been to Sylvia’s liking, including the omission of some poems that were critical of him. 

Her legacy

The appearance of later collections and appreciations of Plath’s work have led to many conflicting views as to her poetic legacy and the motivations behind her life and work. Had she been able to present her work to the world in the way that she would have wanted, the “Sylvia Plath myth” might well have been different. It is not fair to her reputation, for example, to see her whole output as one long slide towards depression and suicide. 

Sylvia Plath has also been seen by some as a feminist icon, and Ted Hughes was roundly condemned in some quarters as being largely responsible for her death. It is certainly true that she was hugely influential as a woman poet, and her appeal is probably greatest amongst young women readers. However, it is a distortion to regard her as a warrior in the war of woman against man. Her work as a poet must stand up for itself, and this it does as the testament of a woman with a deeply complex psyche who had a true poetic gift in expressing her being in words.

© John Welford

T S Eliot, poet and playwright

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on 26^th September 1888 in St Louis, Missouri, USA, the seventh and easily the youngest child of Henry Ware Eliot, a businessman, and Charlotte Champe Stearns, a teacher and amateur poet.

After being schooled at Smith Academy he went to Harvard University in 1906, although he was only moderately successful as a student, despite discovering the world of poetry.

In 1910 he spent a postgraduate year in Paris at the Sorbonne, where he was introduced to European culture and the conflicting philosophical and political ideas of the age. He returned to Harvard in 1911 to undertake a doctoral level study of philosophy.

He had already started to write some of his best-known poems at this stage, including “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”, “Portrait of a Lady” and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”.

His philosophical studies were wide-ranging, but he became particularly interested in exploring states of consciousness. This led him to study Eastern thought as well as Western, and to be critical of the emerging subjects of psychology and sociology. Among those who influenced him at Harvard were William James, Bertrand Russell and George Santayana.

The influence of his studies on the poetry he wrote at that time can be seen from the themes of madness and unreality that pervade such works as “The Descent from the Cross”, but he found this work to be sterile and unsatisfying.

In 1914 Eliot travelled to Europe, firstly to Germany and then to Britain, his plans being somewhat changed by the outbreak of war. Ezra Pound was shown some of Eliot’s manuscript poems and was greatly impressed, visiting Eliot in London.

Eliot was also introduced to Vivien Haigh-Wood, and they were married in June 1915, which nearly caused a rift with his parents. This weakening of family ties, plus the separation caused by the war, led Eliot to see his future as belonging on the eastern side of the Atlantic. Despite finishing his doctoral thesis, he was unwilling to travel to Harvard to defend it, and so never became “Dr Eliot”.

Eliot needed to support himself in London, starting with teaching and moving on to reviewing and lecturing. He eventually obtained a more regular income by joining Lloyds Bank, which had a need for his foreign language skills. This in turn gave him the impetus to resume his career as a poet, and “Prufrock and Other Observations” was published in late 1917.

Eliot’s connections, particularly with Bertrand Russell who had offered the Eliots their first married home, enabled him to meet some of the brightest stars of the English intellectual firmament of the time. These included members of the Bloomsbury Group, as well as W B Yeats and Wyndham Lewis.

1920 saw the publication of “The Sacred Wood”, a volume of critical essays that proved to be highly influential in shifting the focus of English criticism for the 20^th century.

However, things now took a turn for the worse. Eliot’s father had died in 1919, thus removing the chance for father and son to be reconciled. Vivien’s health deteriorated, and Eliot found the strain too much for him. He therefore, in 1921, took three months out to recuperate, spending part of the time in Switzerland.

This gave him the opportunity he needed to finish a project that had been brewing since 1914 and had been taking shape for a couple of years. The was to be “The Waste Land”, an avant-garde work for the Jazz Age, using highly original rhythmic devices and countless literary, historical and mythological allusions to achieve deep emotional insights. It therefore had much in common with Joyce’s “Ulysses”, which was published in book form in the same year, 1922.

Eliot was invited to become the first editor of a new literary magazine, “The Criterion”, and in 1925 he joined the board, as literary editor, of publishers Faber and Faber, which was the chance he needed to turn his back on banking. From this position, Eliot was able to exert a considerable influence on the British poetry scene in the 20^th century.

Eliot now underwent two conversions. One was to the Church of England, into which he was baptised in 1927, and the other was to Great Britain, taking British citizenship in the same year.

His religion, like his politics, now took a distinctly conservative tone as he aligned himself with the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. He took his religion very seriously, becoming a churchwarden and giving lectures at church events.

His poetry also turned more towards religious themes (although religion had always been present in much of his work to date). Notable poems from this time include “The Journey of the Magi”, “A Song for Simeon” and “Ash Wednesday”.

The writing of drama began to dominate Eliot’s literary output from about 1934, although “Sweeney Agonistes” had been started (it was never finished) as early as 1923.  His first completed dramas had overtly religious themes, namely “The Rock” in 1934 and “Murder in the Cathedral” in 1935, both commissioned by Anglican bishops.

His later plays were designed more for the commercial theatre, notable ones being “The Family Reunion” in 1939 and “The Cocktail Party” in 1949.

Just as “The Waste Land” had been precipitated by a crisis in Eliot’s personal life, the same could be said of his other “greatest work”, namely “Four Quartets”.  He found it impossible to maintain full marital relations with Vivien from about 1928, and in 1930 he decided to separate from her, although this was against her will. Vivien was eventually committed to a mental hospital in 1938. Thomas became very friendly with an old flame of his, Emily Hale, especially when she spent the summer of 1934 in the Cotswolds and they visited the abandoned manor house of Burnt Norton together. However, divorce was out of the question for the convinced high Anglican, and so Thomas and Emily never married.

“The Criterion” ceased publication on the outbreak of war in 1939, and Eliot’s war service consisted of being an air raid warden. His sombre mood at a sombre time led to his writing of the Quartets, “Burnt Norton” (finished back in 1935) being followed by “East Coker” (1940), “The Dry Salvages” (1941) and “Little Gidding” (1942).

The Quartets marked the virtual completion of Eliot’s poetical works, as he concentrated after the war on drama and criticism. The latter included the influential “Notes Toward a Definition of Culture” in 1948.

Eliot was recognised far and wide as a leading light of the literary scene both before and after the Second World War, accepting invitations to give prestigious lecture series on both sides of the Atlantic, and receiving a multitude of academic and other honours. These included the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature, both in 1948.

Vivien died in 1947, and Thomas married his secretary in 1957. He died of emphysema on 4^th January 1965, aged 76.  His ashes were buried at East Coker, the ancestral home of the Eliot family, and a memorial service was held for him in Westminster Abbey.

When one considers the life of T S Eliot, the impression is of a deeply philosophical, religious, conservative, and above all serious man. It is therefore a surprise to realise that he was also the author of a very unserious collection of poems, namely “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. These whimsical, light, funny and very “human” poems seem totally out of keeping with the author of “The Four Quartets”, especially when one appreciates that “Old Possum” was written at about the same time (1939 to be precise).

However, it is as the originator of the text for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical “Cats” that most people will know the work of one of the greatest poets and playwrights of the 20^th century.

© John Welford

Edmund Blunden, 20th century poet

Edmund Charles Blunden was born in London on 1^st November 1896, the eldest of nine children of schoolteacher parents. When he was four the family moved to Yalding, near Maidstone in Kent, where Edmund acquired his love of the natural world that was to last throughout his life.

In 1909 he won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School at Horsham, Sussex, where he was very happy. Unfortunately, his school career ended just as World War I was breaking out, and in 1915 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

His war service began in 1916 and he served for two years in the trenches. The rank of second lieutenant was notorious for its high rate of casualties, as these were the officers who led their men “over the top”, but Blunden had something of a charmed life as he survived the war without even a minor injury. He also won a Military Cross for his courage under fire.

However, the war affected him deeply in terms of the loss and destruction that he witnessed all around him. As well as seeing colleagues and friends killed, he also mourned the loss of a natural world that reminded him of the peaceful countryside he had grown up in. These impressions were to form the major themes of his war poetry, although much of this was written after the war had ended.

He returned to England before the war was completely over, and was based at a camp in Suffolk when he met and married a local girl in June 1918. He stayed in the Army until 1919. The Blundens’ first child, a girl, was born in July but died within a few weeks, an event that Edmund grieved for the rest of his life. Two other children were born later.

Edmund had been awarded a scholarship to Oxford while still at school, and in October 1919 he took this up by going to Queen’s College. He had already made the acquaintance of Siegfried Sassoon, and Oxford gave him the chance to mingle with other up-and-coming writers.

However, he did not settle into academic life and left Oxford in 1920 to become a part-time literary editor and concentrate on his own writing of poetry. His first poetry collection, “The Waggoner” appeared in 1920, and he also co-edited the poems of John Clare, a fellow poet of the countryside with whom Blunden felt great affinity, albeit one from a previous age. Blunden’s edition did much to rescue Clare’s reputation from obscurity. He also produced a large number of reviews and much biographical and critical journalism. His second collection of poems, “The Shepherd”, appeared in 1922.

As a poet, Edmund Blunden saw himself as a Romantic who refused to be converted to the current modernist trends of poets such as T. S. Eliot, although Eliot was himself one of Blunden’s admirers. Blunden’s themes were based on the natural world, but nature was seen by him as being malign as well as comforting. There are shades of Thomas Hardy in this attitude, and Hardy was a poet whom Blunden much admired. Another constant theme in his work is war, coupled with his underlying guilt at having survived when so many others had not.

In 1924 Edmund Blunden accepted a post as Professor of English at the Imperial University of Tokyo, to which he went unaccompanied by his wife. He was fascinated by Japan, which gave him fresh perspectives and themes for his poetry. However, he also used his time there to produce a prose account of his experiences of World War I. This was “Undertones of War”, published in 1928, which was written entirely from memory with only maps to help him to piece things together.

On his return to England in 1927 his marriage broke up and divorce followed in 1931. In 1933 he married again, his second wife being a novelist named Sylva Norman.

After a year back in his former role as a literary editor he accepted a post at Oxford as a tutor in English at Merton College, where he stayed for 13 years, being highly regarded by his students and publishing more poetry collections and literary studies, including one of Thomas Hardy.

In 1944 he left Oxford, becoming assistant editor of the “Times Literary Supplement” in 1945. His second marriage also broke up, and he married for a third time in May 1945, his new wife being a former student, with whom he had four daughters. In 1946 he published a study of Shelley which was widely regarded as being of the highest quality.

From 1947 to 1950 he was back in Japan, lecturing in English and publishing “After the Bombing” in 1950, a volume of poems that were more searching and contemplative than his previous work.

In 1953 he was appointed Professor of English Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He retired in 1964 to live in Suffolk.

In 1966 he stood, reluctantly, for the elective professorship of poetry at Oxford, which he won easily. This post, which is largely honorary, only requires the holder to give occasional lectures. Blunden had always been happy as a writer and researcher, and a teacher of small groups, rather than being on the public stage, and he did not really relish lecturing to large audiences. He therefore resigned his post after two years. He died on 20^th January 1974 at the age of 77.

His reputation as one of the leading poets of the 20^th century has continued to the present day. It is difficult to pin him down as belonging to a particular group. He counts as one of the war poets of World War I, but he was also a nature poet. He followed no particular stylistic trend, and always retained his own voice, refusing to be carried along on any passing wave of poetic fashion.

Through his meticulous scholarship he was able to bring other poets to public attention and showcase their work, these including Wilfred Owen and Ivor Gurney, and he therefore performed valuable services to literature in general as well as being a poet whose work repays reading.

© John Welford

A short biography of Philip Larkin

Early life

Philip (Arthur) Larkin was born in Coventry on 9^th August 1922. His father was Coventry’s city treasurer. He was educated in Coventry and then read English language and literature at Oxford University, graduating in 1943. He escaped military service due to having poor eyesight. He also suffered from a stammer.

While still at school he showed promise as a writer, and this developed during his time at Oxford. A fellow student was Kingsley Amis, and the two developed a firm friendship before Amis was called up. Another great friend and influence was Bruce Montgomery, who became a writer of detective stories.

Larkin’s poetry at this time was not particularly distinguished. He had yet to acquire a poetic voice of his own, being excessively influenced by the work of Auden and, later, Yeats.  

Leicester and Belfast 

On leaving Oxford he was rejected by the Civil Service, and almost by accident became a librarian. Despite being untrained, he got a job as a public librarian in Wellington, Shropshire. He found the work neither stimulating nor enjoyable, but it did lead to his first romantic entanglement, with a girl who was 16 years old and five years younger than himself. There was a brief engagement, but nothing more.

In 1946 Larkin moved to Leicester, as an assistant librarian at what would become Leicester University. He completed his first novel, Jill, which had been started while he was at Oxford. This, and his first book of poems, The North Ship, were virtual flops on publication. However, his second novel, A Girl in Winter, was published in 1947 and it attracted critical attention and praise. 

At Leicester, Larkin came across Monica Jones, a lecturer in English, who was to become Larkin’s friend and adviser for the rest of his life. 

At this stage of his life, Larkin considered himself to be a novelist who wrote a few poems. However, even his novel-writing was not taking off, and it seemed as though a literary career of any note was unlikely to happen for him. 

Although, during his time at Leicester, he did write a few poems that showed promise of what was to come, it was not until he moved to Belfast in 1950, to become sub-librarian at Queen’s University, that the promise started to be realised. He wrote some of his best poems soon after the move, and had them published in high-circulation journals and read on the BBC.

Larkin was becoming recognised as a poet worth watching, and the literary editor of The Spectator, J. D. Scott, wrote of Larkin as being part of “The Movement”, which included such up-and-coming writers as Iris Murdoch and Larkin’s old friend Kingsley Amis.

Hull

In 1955, George Hartley, the editor of a poetry magazine in Hull, wanted to launch himself as a book publisher, and he asked Larkin to compile a volume that would get the venture off to a good start. The result was The Less Deceived, which was published later that year. Larkin himself arrived in Hull at this time, as the university librarian, a post he held for the rest of his career.

Success now arrived on two fronts. As the university librarian he was widely acclaimed for the transformation he achieved in creating an organisation that was fit for purpose. As a poet, he was recognised as a major force in modern poetry. He still, however, found time for a third important strand in his life, which was jazz. From the early sixties he wrote a regular jazz column in The Daily Telegraph.

Larkin’s poetic achievements

However, it was not until 1964 that his next poetry volume appeared. This was The Whitsun Weddings, which is probably the book for which he is best remembered. It was an immediate success, and it led to many honours flowing his way, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. 

Ten more years elapsed before the publication, in 1974, of High Windows, which proved to be the last poetry volume published in his lifetime. In the meantime he had written many reviews and articles, and compiled The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. This was highly acclaimed in some quarters but derided in others, with complaints being made about the poets whom Larkin had omitted. The book is notable for the space devoted to the poems of Thomas Hardy, whom Larkin greatly admired and championed.

He wrote very few poems during the rest of his life, and his awareness that his muse had largely deserted him was the reason for his rejection of the Poet Laureateship when it was offered to him on the death of John Betjeman in 1984. However, he was very active during his last years in writing prose pieces and serving on a variety of boards and committees, including the judging panel for the 1977 Booker Prize and the British Library Board.

The highest honour he received was that of Companion of Honour in 1985. However, his health failed during that same year and he died of cancer of the throat on 2^nd December 1985, aged 63.

Larkin’s legacy

He will be remembered as an exceptionally gifted poet who never lost the common touch. In his private life he was entertaining, sociable and witty, although some of the views he expressed proved to be very controversial, with accusations of racism and misogyny being levelled at him. His poetry was always eminently readable, although often sparse and direct. His observations of the generation of the “swinging sixties” are incisive, often scurrilous and cynical, but also full of wit and detached amusement.  

Like Betjeman, he regretted what was being lost in a country that was too ready to throw away the best things of the past and fail to learn the lessons of history. Hiowever, his language was far more raw and savage than that of Betjeman. Perhaps a fair assessment of Larkin’s legacy would be to say that he voiced Betjemanian thoughts in language resembling that of Ted Hughes – who was coincidentally the poet who acquired the Laureateship that Larkin turned down.

© John Welford

William Blake, English poet and artist

William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 in London. His father James was a dealer in hosiery (stockings). William was the third son of four (one of whom died young) and he also had a younger sister.

Early life

Little is known about his early life, except for his own later accounts of seeing strange things as a child, such as angels in trees. He was clearly interested in drawing pictures, and the only school he appears to have attended was one devoted to drawing. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver and printmaker, and he spent seven years learning this craft. Through this apprenticeship, in researching the subjects for engravings and talking with clients, Blake acquired an education of sorts in such things as science and archaeology.

On completing his apprenticeship, Blake became a freelance copy engraver, mainly working on book illustrations. However, he was more interested in doing original work and he enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts, where he stayed for six years. He specialised in creating drawings and paintings of historical subjects.

He made several friends among the artistic community, and on one occasion was arrested as a suspected spy when, with two other friends, he was caught sketching near the Chatham naval base.

He was married to Catherine Boucher in 1782. Although they had no children, it was a happy, lifelong marriage, and Catherine proved to be a great support to William in later life.

Poetry and printing

Blake had written poetry from an early age, alongside his interest in drawing, and his first collection of poems, “Poetical Sketches” was published privately in 1783.

In 1784 he started a printing business partnership, but this was short-lived. However, three years later he invented a new method of printing, relief etching, that allowed an engraved image to be printed on the same plate as written text, which proved to be a faster and cheaper method than what had gone before, because both image and text could be applied directly to a copper plate without the need for a separate engraving process. The only drawback was that the words had to be written in mirror-image so that they would print the right way round.

Blake produced “Songs of Innocence” in 1789, his first illuminated book of poems. With his wife’s help, he was able to control the whole process of creation, production and distribution of his work, especially as he sold directly to collectors rather than through any middlemen.

His first longer poems, “Tiriel” and “The Book of Thel” were also produced at this time. These combined themes from ancient Greece and Israel with British history and mythology, and contained allegorical meanings that were a foretaste of the “prophetic” works that were to follow.

As well as his own work, Blake continued to take commissions from booksellers for copy engravings, which paid well. Joseph Johnson was a bookseller/publisher who brought a lot of work Blake’s way, as well as publishing some of Blake’s own work and introducing him to important literary and artistic figures.

Blake became acquainted with the religious ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, but soon rejected them as he developed his own religious philosophy. This is apparent in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” published in 1790, which ends with a revolutionary outburst calling for the end of tyranny.

The revolutionary theme was continued in “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” (1793), and his “continental prophecies” of 1793-5 (“America — a Prophecy”, “Europe” and “The Song of Los”). In all of these he sought to place contemporary people and events within a context that stretched from Biblical times through to the Apocalypse.

1794 also saw the publication of “Songs of Experience”, which were soon combined with “Songs of Innocence” to form a single volume. This is probably Blake’s best-known work (apart from “Jerusalem”), but it is still much misunderstood by those who see experience as being a less desirable state than innocence. Blake’s concern was to recognise each as being dependent on the other. Innocence has no value unless it is completed by experience.

The “Songs” are therefore in the same league as the rest of Blake’s work in pointing to the human condition as being in suspense between the past and the future. However, Blake was also very much concerned with the miseries of the present, as evidenced by the social protest of such poems as “The Chimney Sweeper”.  Perhaps Blake’s second best known poem is “The Tyger” (“Tyger, tyger, burning bright”) which is another “Experience” poem.

Later work

Blake next embarked on a much larger project with “The First Book of Urizen”, an alternative Book of Genesis, but there was no second book.

For a time, Blake turned back to his pictorial work, which earned him a better income than poetry, and he produced some fine relief etchings and tempera and watercolour paintings, many of them on Biblical subjects.

In 1795 Blake was commissioned to illustrate Edward Young’s poem “Night Thoughts”, and over the next two years produced more than 500 watercolours on this theme. However, the project collapsed before he was properly paid for his work and it turned out to be a financial disaster from Blake’s perspective. Despite this, Blake went on to paint more than a hundred watercolours for a similar commission on the poems of Thomas Gray.

Blake had not abandoned poetry completely, and he worked for some time on “Vala; or the Four Zoas”, another massive work on mystical and mythological themes, which he eventually left unfinished.

He made the acquaintance of the writer William Hayley and visited him at his home at Felpham on the Sussex coast (Felpham is now part of the seaside resort of Bognor Regis). Hayley offered him illustration and engraving work and the Blakes moved out of London in September 1800 to rent a cottage near to Hayley’s home. At first the arrangement worked very well, but Hayley’s efforts to control and refine Blake led to a falling out, which was not helped by both William and his wife suffering from poor health.

There is evidence that Blake was subject to growing mental instability at this time, and that his wish to respond to his internal visions through poetry was clashing with the need to carry out etching and portraiture commissions that would earn him a living. Blake’s mental state had convinced him that Hayley was now an enemy rather than a friend, and he determined to leave Felpham when the lease expired on his cottage.

However, before this could happen, Blake found himself in trouble of a different kind. In August 1803 he forcibly ejected a soldier from his garden, mistaking him for an intruder. The soldier then accused Blake of seditious slander against the King, and the case came to court in the following January. Blake was acquitted on all charges, but the incident did nothing to improve his mental state and he was subject to bouts of paranoia for the rest of his life.

Back in London, Blake had to look around for engraving work, but his mental and psychic condition improved somewhat and he once more felt himself capable of writing.

The results were probably Blake’s two greatest epic poems, “Milton” and “Jerusalem”, both started in 1804, but which took several years to complete.

As with Blake’s earlier epics, the poems are peopled with characters that represent aspects of the human psyche, both male and female, plus historical, Biblical and mythological figures, and there are copious references to incidents in Blake’s own life.

Confusingly, the short poem that is commonly known as “Jerusalem”, and is sung to Hubert Parry’s music as the anthem of the Women’s Institute, is not from the much longer poem of that name, but forms part of the preface to “Milton”.

From 1805 onwards, Blake found it difficult to make money from commercial illustration work, as his style was less well-favoured than that of his competitors, but he did manage to acquire several patrons who commissioned his work privately. Without this work it is certain that he would have had great difficulty in making ends meet.

In 1818 Blake met John Linnell, an artist who became a firm friend and introduced Blake to a number of people who commissioned work from him and even made him gifts of money. These commissions included illustrations for the Book of Job, a project that brought Blake a small but regular income for nearly two years, and another series for Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, unfinished at his death.

In his last years, Blake became something of a sage and a curiosity, visited by many up-and-coming artists, including Samuel Palmer.

He died on 12 August 1827, apparently from liver failure, possibly brought on by years of inhaling copper fumes whilst engraving. He was buried in the nonconformists’ burial ground of Bunhill Fields, close to the graves of his parents.

Known in his lifetime largely as a talented but eccentric artist and printmaker, it was many years before he was fully appreciated as a major English poet. Despite his influence on such poets as W. B. Yeats, he is still best remembered for a handful of poems, due to the impenetrability of much of his corpus of mystical and mythological works. However, it was fitting that he should be memorialized by Paolozzi’s bronze of Milton, based on Blake’s 1795 print, placed in the forecourt of the new British Library 200 years later.

© John Welford