Now I a fourfold vision see

I'd say the "concrete manifestation" is more tied to the cities of imagination he mentions in later works, Golgonooza and Jerusalem - that's what he "will not cease from mental fight" to achieve, in opposition to Single Vision.

Hello Beulah

bump for interest

>Now I a fourfold vision see,
Fourfould is all that matters and remember"see"
>And a fourfold vision is given to me:
It's not his vision, so it's the image of something else he sees
>'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
It's complexest in my delight
>And threefold in soft Beulah's night
Night here means seeing of dreams, poetry below pleasure in its folds
>And twofold always, may God us keep
This is an allusion to something that i dont get (twofold always implies a severity of meaning I miss here), but the ethereal is prominent
>From single vision and Newton's sleep!
May God prevent us from seeing a single vision, Newton's sleep, but without dreams, pleasure, and humanity. It's thematically Romantic poetry, but the idea is that via pleasure (Drunken Yourself is this) you achieve a complexer truth. It's bullshit but a pretty line

Where does one start with Blake?

You have to first understand that Blake basically predicted most of Nietzsche. Then everything makes sense.
This is already evident in his early, the Songs, which subvert classical dichotomies and celebrate the body while other romantics are still glorifying the mindspirit.
Something he made up because he can.

the marriage of heaven and hell
and songs of i&e

his prophetic books are something else, they are as work demanding as getting into the system of any philosopher, and even 'harder' for is not just an intellectual thing.

his prose writings are a gem.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Where's that version of the Night of Enitharmon's Joy from? Only ever seen the one where she has darker hair

bump 4 intrigue

there is usually many versions of each work, which he made in different circumstances. theyre all in the online blake archive.

For an absolute beginner I'd say Songs of Innocence/Experience first; both are pretty digestible, but people have probably already heard the Tyger (and maybe London) in school, so would have a foothold in that way, from which they could expand to see the whole thing where each poem in Innocence is a mirror image of one in Experience (like the Tyger with the Lamb, and the two Chimney Sweeper poems). After that I'd actually recommend the Auguries of Innocence, which have his famous "to see the world in a grain of sand" bit, and THEN the Marriage. But the critical thing no matter what you read is to take a look at his art plates, not just the text on a boring black-and-white Penguin Classics page.

i agree with that last thing you said, the thing has to be read in the original plate form. and your suggestion is sound as a start for someone who wants to get into blake's whole world, but if someone just wants a glimpse of the thing to see if it is worth it or not i think the marriage is the best choice. cause the songs, even in their apparent simplicity, remain full of references that are only seen when in context and in the light of the later works.

special mention needs to be made to the early illuminated works that usually pass unnoticed, for i think that everything is there in germ, stated in a style that i regret he didnt keep.

>Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
>Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
>You throw the sand against the wind,
>And the wind blows it back again.
What did he mean by THAT? Same thing.

They approached similar modes of consciousness Blake loved the weak and the tired, Nietzsche pitied them. there is a stark difference between the two

>pic
Is that meant to be a proto-Urizen? I always wondered about the bearded figure on London - seems too close not to be, especially with that poem's emphasis on everything being "charter'd" (ie mapped, ordered, controlled), but there doesn't seem to be anything in the secondary literature to suggest he had the idea for that sort of representation before the actual Book of Urizen.

yeah it could be red as such. and not only. for example here adam and god are the same.