The Fire of Innocence in the Darkness of the World

William Blake was a highly versatile universal genius – poet, painter, copper engraver and philosopher – who in the face of the rationally based Enlightenment put the worship of ecstasy, energy, intuition and imagination above all reason. He was inspired by a vision of the prophet Ezekiel as a child and went on to construct a creative cosmos consisting of myths, opposing forces and uninhibited psychic painting. Misunderstood by his contemporaries, he only began to be rediscovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, for example by W. B. Yeats, and subsequently also during the 1960s by various figures including the “beat poets” associated with Allen Ginsberg, filmmakers and numerous modern poets. Enjott Schneider