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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Disciplines:
philosophy
poetry

Summary

Blake's most concentrated philosophical work — an attack on the dualism of Good and Evil, a defense of Energy against Reason, and a series of Proverbs of Hell.

Core Contribution

The Proverbs of Hell: 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom' — Blake's most quotable work. The reversal of conventional values: 'Energy is Eternal Delight' — the devil speaks truth, the angel speaks falsehood. The critique of Swedenborg: whose angels are really devils, and whose heaven is really hell. The plate 'A Song of Liberty': a compressed prophecy of revolution. Blake's poetics of contraries: without contraries there is no progression.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Aldous Huxley borrowed 'The Doors of Perception' directly from Blake: 'If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.' Jim Morrison named The Doors after this phrase.
  • No copy was printed conventionally — every page was engraved, printed in relief, hand-colored. The text as visual art: the words and images are inseparable.

Historical Influences

Emanuel Swedenborg John Milton

Intellectual Lineage

English Romanticism Antinomian Tradition

Allied Works

Songs of Innocence and Experience Milton Jerusalem

Contemporaries & Peers

Songs of Innocence and Experience America a Prophecy

Minds Influenced

Romanticism Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg

Intellectual Posterity

Romanticism Counterculture English Mysticism

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