The following essay, though long, detailed, and comprising thirteen parts, focuses on just seven basic questions: Which of Blake’s illuminated works were produced after his death? Who produced them? Where and when were they produced? How were they sold? Why do so many posthumous copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience seem incomplete? Why did posthumous production stop? Answering these questions requires examining closely and thoroughly the bibliographical evidence provided by posthumous prints as well as new biographical facts about Catherine Blake, Charles Heathcote Tatham, and his son Frederick Tatham. It also requires tracing the probable location and movement between 1827 and 1832 of the rolling press used to print Blake’s plates.
{"title":"Posthumous Blake: The Roles of Catherine Blake, C. H. Tatham, and Frederick Tatham in Blake’s Afterlife","authors":"Joseph Viscomi","doi":"10.47761/biq.245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.245","url":null,"abstract":"The following essay, though long, detailed, and comprising thirteen parts, focuses on just seven basic questions: Which of Blake’s illuminated works were produced after his death? Who produced them? Where and when were they produced? How were they sold? Why do so many posthumous copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience seem incomplete? Why did posthumous production stop? Answering these questions requires examining closely and thoroughly the bibliographical evidence provided by posthumous prints as well as new biographical facts about Catherine Blake, Charles Heathcote Tatham, and his son Frederick Tatham. It also requires tracing the probable location and movement between 1827 and 1832 of the rolling press used to print Blake’s plates.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75412063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"William Blake: The Artist (Tate Britain, 11 September 2019–2 February 2020): An Interview with Martin Myrone","authors":"Luisa Calé","doi":"10.47761/biq.242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.242","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview Martin Myrone discusses the upcoming retrospective William Blake: The Artist, which opens at Tate Britain on 11 September.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"140 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76084657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
2018 saw a new edition of Blake’s selected works, the William Blake in Sussex: Visions of Albion exhibition at Petworth House and its catalogue, four monographs, four collections of essays, and six dissertations that are either exclusively about Blake or feature him prominently, and scores of insightful articles, to say nothing of the ongoing work of the William Blake Archive and Jason Whittaker’s Zoamorphosis. In the mass media, there was also much coverage of the new tombstone at Blake’s rediscovered gravesite at Bunhill Fields that was dedicated by the Blake Society on 12 August 2018.
{"title":"William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2018","authors":"Wayne C. Ripley","doi":"10.47761/biq.241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.241","url":null,"abstract":"2018 saw a new edition of Blake’s selected works, the William Blake in Sussex: Visions of Albion exhibition at Petworth House and its catalogue, four monographs, four collections of essays, and six dissertations that are either exclusively about Blake or feature him prominently, and scores of insightful articles, to say nothing of the ongoing work of the William Blake Archive and Jason Whittaker’s Zoamorphosis. In the mass media, there was also much coverage of the new tombstone at Blake’s rediscovered gravesite at Bunhill Fields that was dedicated by the Blake Society on 12 August 2018.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"92 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80344767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Unfortunately William Blake is not widely known in Turkey. This obscurity is partly because of his difficult symbolism. Even people adept at English find Blake challenging and incomprehensible; some relinquish the endeavor after giving it a try, but most never take it up. Even academics in Turkish literary departments tend to stay clear of Blake (with the exception of the Songs, this is true in many places, not just in Turkey); the general public is even less exposed to him. Under these circumstances, this new translation by Kaan H. Ökten (professor at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, İstanbul) is particularly valuable, and an important stepping stone for the introduction of Blake in Turkey.
不幸的是，威廉·布莱克在土耳其并不广为人知。这种晦涩难懂的部分原因是他难以象征。即使是擅长英语的人也觉得布莱克具有挑战性，难以理解;有些人在尝试过之后就放弃了，但大多数人从来没有尝试过。即使是土耳其文学系的学者也倾向于远离布莱克(除了《圣歌》，这在许多地方都是如此，不仅仅是在土耳其);公众对他的了解就更少了。在这种情况下，Kaan H. Ökten (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University教授，İstanbul)的新译本尤其有价值，也是将Blake介绍到土耳其的重要垫脚石。
{"title":"William Blake, Vahiy Kitapları [Prophetic Works], trans. Kaan H. Ökten","authors":"Ramazan Saral","doi":"10.47761/biq.237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.237","url":null,"abstract":"Unfortunately William Blake is not widely known in Turkey. This obscurity is partly because of his difficult symbolism. Even people adept at English find Blake challenging and incomprehensible; some relinquish the endeavor after giving it a try, but most never take it up. Even academics in Turkish literary departments tend to stay clear of Blake (with the exception of the Songs, this is true in many places, not just in Turkey); the general public is even less exposed to him. Under these circumstances, this new translation by Kaan H. Ökten (professor at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, İstanbul) is particularly valuable, and an important stepping stone for the introduction of Blake in Turkey.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"76 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86884616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When Jerry Bentley’s article on the Blake dealings of A. S. W. Rosenbach appeared posthumously in the winter 2017–18 issue of the journal, I assumed that it was his last work to be published. I should have known better. Boondoggles are his tales of a lifetime’s travels, a memoir begun with the editing assistance of his daughters and completed by them after his death. That Sarah and Julia brought the project to fruition is appropriate, as the stories revolve around family and derive from the many letters that Jerry wrote to family and friends. His pride in and love for them shine through, as they do for his wife, Beth, who presides throughout as a benevolent facilitator of all things: “For fifty-nine years Beth managed my life firmly and inconspicuously. Hurricanes, revolutions, poverty, respectability—nothing fazed her. Beth could always manage” (6).
杰里·本特利(Jerry Bentley)关于a·s·w·罗森巴赫(A. S. W. Rosenbach)与布莱克的交易的文章在他死后出现在2017-18年冬刊上时，我以为这是他发表的最后一篇作品。我早该知道的。Boondoggles是他一生旅行的故事，这本回忆录在他女儿的协助下开始编辑，并在他去世后由她们完成。莎拉和茱莉亚把这个项目付诸实践是合适的，因为故事围绕着家庭，取材于杰瑞写给家人和朋友的许多信。他对他们的骄傲和爱贯穿始终，就像他们对他的妻子贝丝(Beth)一样，贝丝是一个仁慈的促进者，贯穿始终:“59年来，贝丝坚定而低调地管理着我的生活。飓风、革命、贫穷、体面——没有什么能使她感到不安。贝丝总能处理好”。
{"title":"G. E. Bentley, Jr., Boondoggles: Travels of a Restless Professor","authors":"Sarah Jones","doi":"10.47761/biq.238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.238","url":null,"abstract":"When Jerry Bentley’s article on the Blake dealings of A. S. W. Rosenbach appeared posthumously in the winter 2017–18 issue of the journal, I assumed that it was his last work to be published. I should have known better. Boondoggles are his tales of a lifetime’s travels, a memoir begun with the editing assistance of his daughters and completed by them after his death. That Sarah and Julia brought the project to fruition is appropriate, as the stories revolve around family and derive from the many letters that Jerry wrote to family and friends. His pride in and love for them shine through, as they do for his wife, Beth, who presides throughout as a benevolent facilitator of all things: “For fifty-nine years Beth managed my life firmly and inconspicuously. Hurricanes, revolutions, poverty, respectability—nothing fazed her. Beth could always manage” (6).","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83216374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The autumn 2017 special issue of Huntington Library Quarterly, edited by Mark Crosby, is devoted to manuscript studies of the works of William Blake. Several of these studies were originally presented at a 2013 symposium at the Huntington Library, which, as Blake scholars know, houses one of the world’s finest Blake collections. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the variety of ways in which the close study of Blake’s manuscripts and prints can yield significant new discoveries about his engraving techniques, his working habits, and his influences. Or, as Crosby puts it in his introduction, “the eight essays … range in methodological approach from considering the materiality of Blake’s manuscripts to more conceptual concerns, with particular attention given to discussing the instability of long-term preservation” (363).
{"title":"Mark Crosby, ed., “William Blake’s Manuscripts,” Huntington Library Quarterly 80.3 (autumn 2017)","authors":"B. Graver","doi":"10.47761/biq.235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.235","url":null,"abstract":"The autumn 2017 special issue of Huntington Library Quarterly, edited by Mark Crosby, is devoted to manuscript studies of the works of William Blake. Several of these studies were originally presented at a 2013 symposium at the Huntington Library, which, as Blake scholars know, houses one of the world’s finest Blake collections. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the variety of ways in which the close study of Blake’s manuscripts and prints can yield significant new discoveries about his engraving techniques, his working habits, and his influences. Or, as Crosby puts it in his introduction, “the eight essays … range in methodological approach from considering the materiality of Blake’s manuscripts to more conceptual concerns, with particular attention given to discussing the instability of long-term preservation” (363).","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78689364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Blake’s stanzas from the preface to Milton a Poem, better known as the hymn “Jerusalem,” are by far the most popular of his poems to have been set to music. While researching versions for a book on “Jerusalem,” I discovered references to some 406 audio recordings and scores (a total that I suspect may still be expanded upon). These date from 1908—when Henry Walford Davies published the first in England’s Pleasant Land, a set of three-part songs—to the reinterpretation of Hubert Parry’s hymn by Tokio Myers and Jazmin Sawyers for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Donald Fitch’s catalogue was published in 1990 and thus misses the vast majority of recordings that appeared following the introduction of the CD in the late 1980s; he also omits more or less completely popular music versions, which had already begun to appear in the postwar period.
{"title":"“Jerusalem” Set to Music: A Selected Discography","authors":"J. Whittaker","doi":"10.47761/biq.234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.234","url":null,"abstract":"Blake’s stanzas from the preface to Milton a Poem, better known as the hymn “Jerusalem,” are by far the most popular of his poems to have been set to music. While researching versions for a book on “Jerusalem,” I discovered references to some 406 audio recordings and scores (a total that I suspect may still be expanded upon). These date from 1908—when Henry Walford Davies published the first in England’s Pleasant Land, a set of three-part songs—to the reinterpretation of Hubert Parry’s hymn by Tokio Myers and Jazmin Sawyers for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Donald Fitch’s catalogue was published in 1990 and thus misses the vast majority of recordings that appeared following the introduction of the CD in the late 1980s; he also omits more or less completely popular music versions, which had already begun to appear in the postwar period.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"19 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83224844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In The Religion of Empire: Political Theology in Blake’s Prophetic Symbolism, G. A. Rosso makes a strong, systematic case for the importance of the character Rahab in Blake’s three longest poems, The Four Zoas, Milton a Poem, and Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It is an interesting case because Rahab is a relatively late arrival into Blake’s work, and, as Rosso himself admits, she “never speaks directly in Blake’s entire corpus” (185). Nonetheless, in an introduction and six chapters he logically and clearly moves from Rahab’s roots in the Bible to what he sees as the character’s initial appearance in Night VII of The Four Zoas as the “Shadowy Female,” her increasing ascendancy through Milton and Jerusalem, and her crucial role as part of the “dark Hermaphrodite” that menaces Albion in Jerusalem.
{"title":"G. A. Rosso, The Religion of Empire: Political Theology in Blake’s Prophetic Symbolism","authors":"R. Yoder","doi":"10.47761/biq.236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.236","url":null,"abstract":"In The Religion of Empire: Political Theology in Blake’s Prophetic Symbolism, G. A. Rosso makes a strong, systematic case for the importance of the character Rahab in Blake’s three longest poems, The Four Zoas, Milton a Poem, and Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It is an interesting case because Rahab is a relatively late arrival into Blake’s work, and, as Rosso himself admits, she “never speaks directly in Blake’s entire corpus” (185). Nonetheless, in an introduction and six chapters he logically and clearly moves from Rahab’s roots in the Bible to what he sees as the character’s initial appearance in Night VII of The Four Zoas as the “Shadowy Female,” her increasing ascendancy through Milton and Jerusalem, and her crucial role as part of the “dark Hermaphrodite” that menaces Albion in Jerusalem.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90739319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Works by Blake’s circle and followers had a stronger presence in the 2018 auction season than his own productions. Henry Fuseli’s Vision of Orestes, offered by Christie’s New York in January, was bid a few steps over its high estimate to achieve a hammer price of $175,000 ($218,750 including the buyer’s premium). Another dramatic composition by Fuseli, The Faerie Queene Appears to Prince Arthur, fetched almost three times high estimate at Christie’s London in July, thereby setting a record price for a drawing by the artist.
在2018年的拍卖季中，布莱克的圈子和追随者的作品比他自己的作品更有影响力。亨利·富塞利(Henry Fuseli)的《俄瑞斯特斯的幻象》(Vision of Orestes)今年1月在纽约佳士得拍卖行(Christie’s New York)拍出，成交价比最高估价高出了几步，达到17.5万美元(包括买方佣金在内，成交价为21.8750万美元)。富塞利的另一幅戏剧性作品《仙女女王出现在亚瑟王子面前》(The fairy queen appearance to Prince Arthur)今年7月在伦敦佳士得拍卖行(Christie’s London)拍出了几乎三倍于估价的高价，创下了这位艺术家作品的最高价格纪录。
{"title":"Blake in the Marketplace, 2018","authors":"R. Essick","doi":"10.47761/biq.232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.232","url":null,"abstract":"Works by Blake’s circle and followers had a stronger presence in the 2018 auction season than his own productions. Henry Fuseli’s Vision of Orestes, offered by Christie’s New York in January, was bid a few steps over its high estimate to achieve a hammer price of $175,000 ($218,750 including the buyer’s premium). Another dramatic composition by Fuseli, The Faerie Queene Appears to Prince Arthur, fetched almost three times high estimate at Christie’s London in July, thereby setting a record price for a drawing by the artist.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"518 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77164156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” Thus Wordsworth looked back at the heady days of Paris in 1789 from the vantage point of 1805. Such nostalgia, of course, is a hallmark of Romanticism. Nor is it a simple recollection, but a multilayered process of memory: in this case, Wordsworth looks back at a time of looking forward, much as Blake writes in 1793 a “prophecy” of America in 1776. Then there is the memory of memory, as in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” where the speaker remembers how a remembered scene has sustained him in the intervening five years. In the 1799 Prelude, he turns back to his earliest memories—“Was it for this?”—in an attempt to resolve his writer’s block. Looking backward in order to move forward is a quintessentially Romantic exercise, one complicated further by the uncertainty of imagining what “might will have been,” as Emily Rohrbach has shown (2). Such was the case when I visited William Blake and the Age of Aquarius at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, curated by Stephen F. Eisenman. The exhibition explored how and why Blake became a role model for artistic revolutionaries in postwar America, building up to the countercultural upheaval of the 1960s. But this was not a straightforward study of one-way influence in which Blake served as background. In the catalogue, Lisa G. Corrin, director of the Block Museum, expresses “hope that seeing Blake against the backdrop of the ‘Age of Aquarius’ will enable us to reconnect to the radicalism of this iconic figure and to find in his multidimensional contributions meaning for our own tumultuous times” (vii). As Eisenman adds, “the products of both periods are potentially valuable resources for social movements still to come” (6). In a Romantic act of meta-recall, this exhibition recalls the recollection of Blake. Back in 1995, Morris Eaves referred to Blake’s perennial status as “the sign of something new about to happen” (414). That “something new” begins, as ever, with a Romantic glance backward.
“在那黎明里活着是多么幸福，但年轻就像天堂!”因此，华兹华斯从1805年的有利位置回顾了1789年巴黎令人兴奋的日子。当然，这种怀旧是浪漫主义的标志。它也不是简单的回忆，而是一个多层次的记忆过程:在这种情况下，华兹华斯回顾了一个展望未来的时代，就像布莱克在1793年写的1776年美国的“预言”一样。然后是记忆的记忆，就像华兹华斯(Wordsworth)的《丁丁修道院》(tinintern Abbey)中那样，说话者记得回忆中的场景如何支撑了他五年的生活。在1799年的《序曲》中，他回想起自己最早的记忆——“是为了这个吗?——试图解决他的写作障碍。回顾过去是一种典型的浪漫主义行为，正如艾米丽·罗巴赫(Emily Rohrbach)所展示的那样，想象“可能会发生什么”的不确定性使这种行为变得更加复杂(2)。当我参观斯蒂芬·f·艾森曼(Stephen F. Eisenman)在西北大学玛丽和利·布洛克艺术博物馆(Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art)展出的《威廉·布莱克与水瓶座时代》时，情况就是如此。这次展览探讨了布莱克如何以及为什么成为战后美国艺术革命者的榜样，并在20世纪60年代掀起了反文化浪潮。但这并不是一个以布莱克为背景的单向影响的直接研究。在目录中，布洛克博物馆馆长丽莎·g·科林(Lisa G. Corrin)表示，“希望在‘水瓶座时代’的背景下看到布莱克，将使我们能够重新与这位标志性人物的激进主义联系起来，并在他的多维贡献中找到我们这个动荡时代的意义”(vii)。正如艾森曼补充的那样，“这两个时期的产物对未来的社会运动来说都是潜在的宝贵资源”(6)。这个展览唤起了对布莱克的回忆。早在1995年，莫里斯·埃夫斯就把布莱克的长期地位称为“新事物即将发生的标志”(414)。这种“新事物”一如既往地以浪漫的回顾开始。
{"title":"William Blake and the Age of Aquarius, Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, September 2017–March 2018; Stephen F. Eisenman, ed., William Blake and the Age of Aquarius","authors":"J. Michael","doi":"10.47761/biq.231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.231","url":null,"abstract":"“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” Thus Wordsworth looked back at the heady days of Paris in 1789 from the vantage point of 1805. Such nostalgia, of course, is a hallmark of Romanticism. Nor is it a simple recollection, but a multilayered process of memory: in this case, Wordsworth looks back at a time of looking forward, much as Blake writes in 1793 a “prophecy” of America in 1776. Then there is the memory of memory, as in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” where the speaker remembers how a remembered scene has sustained him in the intervening five years. In the 1799 Prelude, he turns back to his earliest memories—“Was it for this?”—in an attempt to resolve his writer’s block. Looking backward in order to move forward is a quintessentially Romantic exercise, one complicated further by the uncertainty of imagining what “might will have been,” as Emily Rohrbach has shown (2). Such was the case when I visited William Blake and the Age of Aquarius at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, curated by Stephen F. Eisenman. The exhibition explored how and why Blake became a role model for artistic revolutionaries in postwar America, building up to the countercultural upheaval of the 1960s. But this was not a straightforward study of one-way influence in which Blake served as background. In the catalogue, Lisa G. Corrin, director of the Block Museum, expresses “hope that seeing Blake against the backdrop of the ‘Age of Aquarius’ will enable us to reconnect to the radicalism of this iconic figure and to find in his multidimensional contributions meaning for our own tumultuous times” (vii). As Eisenman adds, “the products of both periods are potentially valuable resources for social movements still to come” (6). In a Romantic act of meta-recall, this exhibition recalls the recollection of Blake. Back in 1995, Morris Eaves referred to Blake’s perennial status as “the sign of something new about to happen” (414). That “something new” begins, as ever, with a Romantic glance backward.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90054709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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