William Blake
William Blake would have been astonished to find anybody celebrating the anniversary of his birth so long after his death. For when he was alive nobody paid much attention.
Most people at the time just didn’t get this London painter, poet and printmaker. His work, drawing heavily on mysticism and with grotesque cartoonish figures was just too odd. The fact that he publicly proclaimed that he was inspired by his conversations with angels and Old Testament poets made it easy to consider Blake simply mad.
William Blake was born in Broad (now Broadwick Street) in Soho in 1757, dying in London in 1827. A Londoner to the core, he nevertheless was painfully aware of the effect of the filth, business and disease of the city on the souls of its inhabitants. During his lifetime too, he saw the rise of industrialisation and he didn’t like it much.
Most people who know anything about Blake know that he wrote the poem ‘Jerusalem’, which was latterly put to music and became one of the nation’s hymns - a much-misunderstood one by those who lustily sing what they believe is a patriotic paean to England (an England spoiled by ‘dark satantic mills’) but a beautiful piece no less. Generations of children have also learned his poem ‘Tyger, Tyger’.
And Blake has a number of curious connections with the East End, namechecking Stratford and the Isle of Dogs in his epic ‘Jerusalem’ (a different poem to that of the hymn). He also inspired legendary Mile End musician Jah Wobble. And while the East End marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade it is appropriate that Blake should pop up once again. Through his art and poetry he was a devastating critic of slavery (though being Blake his expression of this was rather more esoteric).
The mighty ‘Jerusalem’, (subtitled The Emanation of the Giant Albion) is typical of Blake’s elaborate and complex work, blending visual art and poetry. He produced the poem between 1804 and 1820, and it consists of 100 etched and illustrated plates. With a cast of billions, and allegorical figures representing ‘War’, ‘Reason’ and ‘Inspiration’ it’s not the simplest of narratives, but (in simple terms) tells the story of the fall of Albion or England. His description of the East End and the docks, which he certainly visited, shows his despair:
‘He came down from Highgate thro’ Hackney & Holloway towards London
Till he came to old Stratford, & thence to Stepney & the Isle
Of Leutha’s Dogs, thence thro’ the narrows of the River’s side,
And saw every minute particular, the jewels of Albion, running down
The kennels of the streets and lanes as if they were abhorr’d
Every Universal Form was become barren mountains of moral
Virtue, and every Minute Particular harden’d into grains of sand
And all the tendernesses of the soul cast forth as filth and mire.’
Blake’s lifespan also coincided with the fight against the slave trade and it’s from here that some of his most powerful pictures come. He was certainly aware of the slave trade through the London docks, and in the 1790s he was commissioned to create a series of engravings illustrating the experiences of Captain Stedman, a mercenary soldier in Surinam. Among these is the horrific ‘A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows’, which is part of an exhibition by the Hayward Gallery which is currently touring the country. For Blake, any slavery and enchainment, whether mental or physical, was a horror keenly felt. It was an attitude that often got him into trouble. He was taken to court for treason in 1803 for uttering ’seditious and treasonable expressions against the King’ (though the charges were thrown out). And he was a vocal supporter of the American Colonies’ fight for independence from Britain.
One of the most interesting things about Blake is his influence today, when other poets and engravers, more celebrated in his day, are long forgotten. One of Blake’s latterday fans is John Wardle (aka Jah Wobble). The Stepney-born bass player with John Lydon’s post Sex Pistols group PiL has become a legendary producer and experimenter in music. A deep beliver in the blending of music and spirtuality, he has acknowledged Blake as a major influence on his work and his way of thinking. In 1996 he released ‘The Inspiraton of William Blake’, a stunning blend of poetry and experimental music. It’s a journey that led to him taking a degree in Music and Philosophy a few years back. Lover of freedom, scourge of authority, and oblique observer of the East End … his shadow still falls across contemporary life.