My Favorite Artists and Their Art: William Blake

Philosopher.  Poet.  Artist.  William Blake was all of these things.  A central figure of the Romantic movement, and a precursor to Symbolism, Blake utilized Judeo-Christian concepts in his artwork and poetry, all the while exploring the ideas of classical philosophy as embodied by the pagan cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, and mining their mythological pantheon for creative metaphors.  Throughout all of his work, the same themes resurface time and time again, suggesting a deep and ever-evolving commitment to his convictions of faith and social equality.  Rebelling against the dogmas and rigidity of organized religion, Blake confounded his contemporaries who failed to understand why someone with such clear faith in God would reject the church and its doctrines.  The Biblical imagery found in his poetry and art is as complex as Blake himself was and shows him often being at odds with himself and the world in which he lived.  He was woefully misunderstood in his time, but as Western culture progressed, his work was reevaluated and he has become praised for his genius, if not fully understood.  The iconoclast has become an icon to intellectuals, romantics, and rebel spirits, who find within his work an all-encompassing passion and gleaming gems of intelligence.

“The Ancient of Days” (1824)

“The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun” (circa 1803-1805)

“Adam Naming the Beasts” (circa 1810)

“Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels” (1808)

“The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy”, also know as “The Triple Hecate” (circa 1795)

“Newton” (circa 1795)

“Nebuchadnezzar” (1795)

“The Number of the Beast Is 666” (circa 1805-1810)

“The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun” (circa 1805-1810)

“Oberon, Titania, and Puck Dancing with Fairies” (circa 1875)

“The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea” (circa 1804)

“Glad Day” (circa 1780-1795)

“The Creation of Eve” (1808)

“The Ghost of a Flea” (circa 1819-1820)

“The Ancient of Days” (1824)

“The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun” (circa 1803-1805)

“Adam Naming the Beasts” (circa 1810)

“Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels” (1808)

“The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy”, also know as “The Triple Hecate” (circa 1795)

“Newton” (circa 1795)

“Nebuchadnezzar” (1795)

“The Number of the Beast Is 666” (circa 1805-1810)

“The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun” (circa 1805-1810)

“Oberon, Titania, and Puck Dancing with Fairies” (circa 1875)

“The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea” (circa 1804)

“Glad Day” (circa 1780-1795)

“The Creation of Eve” (1808)

“The Ghost of a Flea” (circa 1819-1820)

 

Censorship: Voices Against Suppression

If we do not have freedom to speak to one another and to listen to one another, then we do not have the freedom to learn, and if we are prohibited from expressing the very thoughts we think or the emotions we feel, then our very minds are being prohibited.  The dangers of censorship are very simple:  it is a violation of our freedoms to simply acknowledge our existence.  Censorship is the first step leading down into the prison cell of oppression and tyranny.  It is for this reason that I have gathered the following quotes on censorship, oppression, and the importance of free speech, taken from many different great minds from many different eras.

The First Amendment to the United States’ Bill of Rights guarantees all citizens the right to practice the religion of their choice or to choose not to, to protect freedom of the press, and ensure that citizens can gather collectively in safety to voice political dissent.

 

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  (translation: Who will guard the guardsmen?, alternate translation: Who will watch the watchmen?)”
– Juvenal

“If all printers were determined not to print anything ’til they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
–  Benjamin Franklin

“To limit the press is to insult a nation;  to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves:  such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.”
–  Claude Adrien Helvétius

“Men are not admitted into Heaven because they have curbed or governed their passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings.  The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate un-curbed in their eternal glory.  The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy.”
– William Blake

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
– Mark Twain

“I maintain my right to die as I have lived – a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being.”
– Ida Craddock

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.  All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.  Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
– Evelyn Beatrice Hall

“All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.”
– George Orwell

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
– Harry S. Truman

“Don’t join the book burners.  Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.  Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book…”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.”
– Ray Bradbury

“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries.  These libraries should be open to all — except the censor.  We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms.  Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.  For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.”
– John F. Kennedy

“If you can’t say ‘fuck’, then you can’t say, ‘Fuck the government.’”
– Lenny Bruce

“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values.  Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States – and to hell with the censors!  Give me knowledge or give me death!”
– Kurt Vonnegut

“The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.”
– Tommy Smothers

“In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers’ voices, teachers’ voices, students’ voices – and all because of fear.”
– Judy Blume

“All of us can think of a book…  that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf.  But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf – that work I abhor – then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else.  And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.”
–  Katherine Paterson

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
– Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Why did they devise censorship?  To show a world which doesn’t exist, an ideal world, or what they envisaged as the ideal world.  And we wanted to depict the world as it was.”
– Krzysztof Kieślowski

“There is no such thing as a dirty word.  Nor is there a word so powerful, that it’s going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.”
– Frank Zappa

My Favorite Romantic Poets & Poems

This list of my favorite Romantic poets and poetry was first posted on November 10, 2010 on Lunch.com

I’ve always adored the melancholic romanticism of the 18th and 19th Century poets with their dichotomies of idyllic love blossoming and then unfolding to harrowing outcomes.   The themes of life, death, love, loneliness, hope, despair, degradation, and redemption are so intricately woven throughout romanticism that it makes it nigh impossible not to relate to the poems and artwork of that movement.  The emotional potency, often melodramatic but almost always genuine, that is invoked by their words is both haunting and enigmatic.  Somehow their innate ability to express the highs and lows of love, whether it is unrequited, returned albeit briefly, tragic, or treacherous, seems to resonate with the clarity of truth.  So, without further ado, I present a sampling of my favorite poems of the Romantics…

Voce Deorum

Hear the Voice
by William Blake

Hear the voice of the Bard,
Who present, past, and future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient trees;

Calling the lapsèd soul,
And weeping in the evening dew,
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!

‘O Earth, ‘O Earth, return!
Arise from the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.

‘Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Is given thee till the break of day.’

Venere del Nuovo Mondo

She Walks in Beauty
by Lord George Gordon Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven trees,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Luna

To Night
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Swiftly walk o’er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and clear,
Swift by thy Flight!

Wrap thy form in mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o’er the city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand −
Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

La Belle Cimetière

Bright Star
by John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art −
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:
No, − yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever − or else swoon to death.

Der Rabe

The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore −
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door −
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;  − vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow − sorrow for the lost Lenore −
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore −
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me − filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“‘Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door −
Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; −
This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger, hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure i heard you” − here I opened wide the door; −
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long stood I there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there was spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore; −
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; −
‘Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door −
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door −
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, though,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore −
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning − little relevance bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door −
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such a name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered– not a feather then he fluttered −
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before −
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs burden bore −
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never − nevermore.'”

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore −
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee  − by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite  − respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!  − prophet still, if bird or devil!
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted −
On this home by Horror haunted  − tell me truly, I implore −
Is there balm in Gilead?  − tell me − tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!  − prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us − by that God we both adore −
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore −
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting −
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie they soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!  − quit the bust above my door!
Take they beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted  − nevermore!

Herbstlicher Teppich

Fall, Leaves, Fall
by Emily Brontë

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from every tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow;
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.