William Blake

MAD

Some people judge William Blake was mad by two reasons.

The stories of visions.

The pe'culiar habit in his poem.

(1) The stories of visions.

Blake claimed to have seen visions from his young age through his life.

When Blake was 13 years old, he lost his brother and Blake could see him in his imagination.

Blake could casually drop into conversation with the dead poets or kings.

He saw romantic visions.

Blake thought the imagination was real, while Shakespeare thought that the fancy was the facts he wrought from.

So WC Dandy in his book The philosophy of Mystery (1841), stated that Blake was mad.

About his poems.

He had a habit that he always wrote about the same sentences in different poems for no reason.

Some example :

a.

( Blake's patron gave him a commission when he wanted to do something else )

Blake became very angry and wrote about :

And when he could not act on my wife

Hired a ‘villain to be'reave my life

There's no trace here of any al'lusion to fact.

b.

In four or five poems, without any apparent connection with those poems, occur those two sentences.

The ‘caterpillar on the leaf

Repeats