Blake's Jerusalem
Apr 13, 2013 10:12:43 GMT -5
Post by Gerard on Apr 13, 2013 10:12:43 GMT -5
Professor Prickett teaches English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow, and his most recent book is Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition. (I suppose there he has in mind a kind of dialectical process - but the modernists had better watch out lest instead of reinventing it they accidentally or on purpose destroy it.)
Anyway, the Professor has written in to tell us a little about Blake's Jerusalem. "Blake's narrative is etched in handwritten form, interspersed seamlessly with tiny sketches, elastic marginal figures, and large enigmatic full-plate illustrations. The result is not quite prose, verse or even picture-story, but a medium quite unlike any other, in that it seems to be simultaneously all three. The drawings do not so much illustrate the written text as constitute a visual part of it. Blake was known to sing his poetry, and called himself 'Poet, Painter and Musician as the Inspiration comes.' Jerusalem has a huge named cast."
Would not Jerusalem make a fine subject for an opera do members think?
Anyway, the Professor has written in to tell us a little about Blake's Jerusalem. "Blake's narrative is etched in handwritten form, interspersed seamlessly with tiny sketches, elastic marginal figures, and large enigmatic full-plate illustrations. The result is not quite prose, verse or even picture-story, but a medium quite unlike any other, in that it seems to be simultaneously all three. The drawings do not so much illustrate the written text as constitute a visual part of it. Blake was known to sing his poetry, and called himself 'Poet, Painter and Musician as the Inspiration comes.' Jerusalem has a huge named cast."
Would not Jerusalem make a fine subject for an opera do members think?
