Why was William Blake such a madman, Veeky Forums?

Why was William Blake such a madman, Veeky Forums?

Probably the schizophrenia.

He was mentally retarded.

Doors of perception and all that, innit?

Get thee behind me Urizen

Tiger tiger

Got too high on the Lord's Grace.

>the Lord's Grace

Blake rejected Christianity, despite what seems to have been God's attempts to reel him back in.

He didn't die like the other poets

Yes
YES

The Flea, user, THE FLEA.

Christianity as an institution.
He saw the whole picture and how the hardships and obstacles found in life are as important as the heavenly bliss we are so eager to attain. That Lucifer and hell and all those adverse things can shape the soul of a man on his course.
He was fascinated by the aspects a common christian is taught to reject; a believer that wanted to walk the other road, but a believer at the end. He had to acknowledge what he rejected.

Brainlet here whats the best material to brush up with this guy?

John Donne did it better

Bible -> Dante's Inferno -> Paradise Lost
By that time you'll be so into the canon Blake will be speaking your language

>John Donne
wack as fuck, compared with this

Marriage of heaven and hell

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILL!!

true

I bought "Blake's Apocalypse" by harold bloom the other day for .50 and found out it is worth $50 and rare. Pretty neat.

Is there hope for the normies yet?

he saw very little difference between the spiritual and physical worlds; he started having visions of angels walking amongst haymakers/sitting on rooftops from when he was 9.
The impact of this leads - in part - to the concrete ones and figures he created in his engravings and the equal temporal and physical presence of the zoos, their emanations and spectres etc.

His prophetic poems are the best body of english poetry that no one really reads anymore: a route The Faerie Queene is going and that Herrick's Hesperides has already long gone

concrete presentation of figures i mean,
and zoas rather than zoos

Happy 260th Birthday!

bump

>saw God when he was four years old
>conversed with his dead brother on a daily basis
>created his artistic work on the instructions of archangels
>constantly had visions and heard voices

Cool guy.

Tyger*

He thought that the Christian God was evil and thought well of the devil, I really don't think you can call him a Christian.

That's just your bog-standard Gnostic interpretation - he was a big fan of Swedenborg (at least early on).

No

That's unsubtle. He overlapped quite a bit with the tradition of Christian mysticism.