[HN Gopher] The last days of William Blake
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The last days of William Blake
Author : drdee
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-05-05 21:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
| s5300 wrote:
| One of the coolest, most eccentric, & arguably completely insane
| professors I've ever had the privilege of knowing was a bit of a
| William Blake cultist. As a matter of fact, I believe he
| profoundly claimed he was the reincarnation of William. Made a
| church praising him & everything. Ridiculously talented artist, &
| I recently found out Steve Buscemi apparently has a private
| collection of his artwork.
|
| Local to me for some time, he leaves behind a mural at Ohio
| University & various artworks in random places around the county.
| He apparently sold an earlier house of his that was completely
| covered in his magnificent paintings to a friend... who he knew
| had plans of painting over everything & was surprisingly okay
| with. Only a few pictures of it exist & it's extremely sad IMO.
|
| For the curious:
|
| https://woub.org/2018/11/29/but-how-could-he-be-forgotten-lo...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethelred_Eldridge
|
| https://theoldhouselife.com/2021/09/11/23-acres-golganooza-c...
| (this is not the earlier house mentioned)
|
| https://aethelredeldridge.com (He has a personal website that I
| recall being much different than this, but I currently cannot
| seem to find it)
|
| https://www.ohio.edu/fine-arts/alumni-magazine/aethelred-eld...
|
| https://essexflowers.us/AETHELRED-ELDRIDGE
|
| Edit: I believe this is his personal site.... not sure why it's
| down as it hadn't been too long ago I'd checked it out.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/Albionawake.com
|
| (Also, you can pull the site from archive.ph - was going to
| include here but it's taking a while)
|
| Anyways, super cool dude. Wish I would've gotten to be around him
| a bit more. If you're ever feeling lost in life, consider being
| the reincarnation of William Blake.
| heurisko wrote:
| William Blake's God was the human imagination, which he called
| "Jerusalem".
|
| He saw the creation of the "Vegetable" physical world as the fall
| from this state, which is why he criticised those who thought
| they could be enlightened through only examining the physical
| world, which he represented through a characterised Newton.
|
| There is a statue outside of the British Library of Blake's
| painting of Newton awkwardly--blinkardly-- examining the world at
| the bottom of the ocean.
|
| His "prophetic" works become more comprehensible if seen in this
| light. The characters in the poems are parts of the human psyche
| in conflict; Blake's version of Paradise Lost.
| gilleain wrote:
| Funny to think Blake should have chosen Newton as a symbol of
| excessive rationalism, given Newton's interest in alchemy. He
| was also religious, although an antitrinitarian - possibly not
| relevant to Blake's ideas of the divine.
|
| Anyway, it is also strange to me given that when I worked in a
| scientific field, I had a poster of 'The Ancient of Days' on my
| wall. Oh well.
| uoaei wrote:
| Sounds like the kind of stuff that the Gnostics were getting
| at, too.
| NateEag wrote:
| > William Blake's God was the human imagination...
|
| Did he actually say this?
|
| I know little about Blake, but from the few bits I've read,
| this both strikes me as a plausible interpretation and as
| something he'd not have been likely to put (or perhaps even to
| believe) so plainly.
| blowski wrote:
| Bunhill Fields Cemetery is very close to Old Street in London. As
| well as Blake other notable graves are Thomas Bayes, Daniel
| Defoe, and John Bunyan.
| giordano-bruno wrote:
| Similarly, the ghost of Blake can be summoned to answer the
| mage during Mercury conjunctions, evocations to Tiriel having
| been called.
|
| Should he bring Bayes with him, banish the spirit immediately.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Blake is a maverick I found partly thanks to Philip Jose Farmer's
| filching of characters for his entertaining fiction.
|
| For some reason I appreciate him as I do, though diferently,
| Hieronymus Bosch - another maverick, whose details can be studied
| for hours.
|
| The Tate Gallery in London has extended into a new South Bank
| building for Tate Modern, filled with plenty of XX Century
| cleverness.
|
| Blake is still housed in a out of the way little attic of the
| original museum, now named Tate Britain. I advise a visit.
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