We cited this quote from William Blake in class today. When I went looking for it online I found a quote of his that I thought summed up the anagogic mindset even better:
“The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist.” (Blake)
That sounds like exactly what we're getting at with this religious, woo-woo, idea of art and poetry in the anagogic phase. But anyways, back to Blake, he's my critic but I hadn't done any research on him yet, only a list of questions about his criticism that I had intentions of researching and getting the answers to eventually. But, today was the last straw. Every single time we mention Blakes name, it is followed by excess or exhuberance and I can't stand it any more! I need to know what the connection is here between Blake and excess, exhuberance, what does this mean! For starters, dicitonary and thesaurus: exhuberance, because truth be told, i'm not sure i exactly know what that word indicates in it's most literal form, so before applying it to Blake's mentality, dictionary definition:
Of all the synonyms, the one i grasped best was "enthusiasm", which we etymologically traced to mean "in theos" , "in god" as in overtook by the spirit of god, which makes since in this context, the exhuberance of art, the religious aspect of art.
exhuberant: joyously unrestrained or enthusiastic
sounds like rhapsody to me. I imagine the behavior of an exhuberant person as sparking a lot of sideways glances and "woo-woo" critiques. Which leads me to some Blake artwork I found (apparently he was as famous a painter and engraver as he was a poet!)
The abundance of William Blake paintings out there really surprised me, first because i've always heard of William Blake in the context of poetry and had no idea he was a painter/engraver as well and second because these painting are OUT THERE, exhuberant, OVER-THE-TOP, wooo wooooooooo............
((More on Blake to come))
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