Hacking Blake

Abstract

In this extract, the painter Samuel Palmer (1805–81), one of the ‘Shoreham Ancients’ who gathered around Blake in his old age, seems to be suggesting a metaphysics of the book that takes precedent over any idea of the book as being organised by genre or type. In an undated letter to Alexander Gilchrist, Palmer compares a book to conscience: ‘What a wonderful thing is a good book – next to a clear conscience, the most precious thing life has to offer.’2 Yet, the idea of the book that Palmer postulates also refuses to give up the physical presence of the book. In the extract above,

The copy [of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell] I saw was highly finished. Blake had worked so much and illuminated so richly, that even the type seemed as if done by hand.

The ever-fluctuating colour; the spectral pigmies rolling, flying, leaping among the letters; the ripe bloom of quiet corners; the living light and bursts of flame; the spires and tongues of fire, vibrating with the full prism, made the page seem to move and quiver within its boundaries; and you lay the book down tenderly, as if you had been handling something which was alive. As a picture has been said to be something between a thing and a thought, so, in some of these type books over which Blake had long brooded with his brooding fire, the very paper seems to come to life as you gaze upon it – not with a mortal but an indestructible life, whether for good or evil.

My Sin thou hast forgiven me

Canst thou forgive my Blasphemy

(The Everlasting Gospel, F.75–6, E522)