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Radical Blake: Influence and Afterlife from 1827
Shirley Dent and Jason Whittaker

Aidan Campbell

The best that can be said about this book is that it usefully lists those authors and artists subsequently influenced by the writings and art of mystic artist and poet William Blake (1756-1827).

These include Symbolist poet Algernon Swinburne and American beat rhymester Allen Ginsberg; artists stretching from the staid Victorian John Ruskin to young British artist Chris Ofili; novelists from Aldous Huxley to JG Ballard; and rounding off with mavericks like Satanist Aleister Crowley, film director Derek Jarman and punk singer Patti Smith.

Radical Blake is wrapped in unnecessary academic jargon, which suggests to me that the authors are somewhat defensive about their central thesis. This is the superiority of mind over matter (well, the imaginative mind anyway).

In their opinion, Blake was hostile to materialism in all its forms, but he demonstrated how art could be used to inspire political projects aimed at alleviating its dire impact on humanity. Evidence is accumulated throughout the text to establish this argument. Critic Anna Balakian is quoted explaining the affinity between Blake and 1930s Surrealism: 'By refusing to make nature the object of aesthetic creation, Blake had removed painting and verbal imagery from the controlling factors of phenomenal reality. Blake had been admired by the Surrealists because like them he made poetry a way of life.'(p38). First World War artist Paul Nash is also cited claiming, 'Blake is said to have hated Nature, and his work certainly shows a contempt for natural appearances' (p39).

Dent and Whittaker themselves assert that 'Blake was no atheist but he denied the hegemony of the "God of this World". This worldly god is the brute force of natural morality and natural religion, the apparently self-evident and binding material ideology of [Francis] Bacon, [John] Locke and [Isaac] Newton' (p146). Interestingly, there are few explicit illlustrations of anti-materialism provided from Blake himself ('dark satanic mills' perhaps?).

What is to take the place of nasty Nature and other forms of deplorable materialism? Art and its multitude of symbols. Dent and Whittaker repeatedly hint at the microcosmic powers of this imagery without ever satisfactorily explaining how it can address serious political issues. Thus we have the 'political power of the made (and re-made) symbol' (p79) and 'Emancipation via social imagining is one of the longest-burning torches of Blake's fame' (p102). Dent and Whittaker castigate Swinburne for his elitism, but excitedly quote his literary aim of 'reversing the principle of moral or material duty' (p154). They conclude from this that the 'parallelism between the material and the moral aligns the empirical world with a world of religious orthodoxy'. If you miss this allusion to the threat posed by contemporary versions of brute fundamentalism to more culturally refined humanity, Dent and Whittaker then go on to interpret Aleister Crowley's interest in Blake as a reaction 'to the callous and materialistic Christian colonialism that opened up the religions of the east as it simultaneously sought to proselytise them out of existence' (p159). Once again, enlightened artistic spiritualism is counter-posed to blindly malevolent materialism. Even the Satanist Crowley has a part to play in this good fight.

The intention of the authors to use Blake's legacy to implement superficial alterations in the existing political establishment is confirmed when they bizarrely decide to devote four pages of their book to calling for a replacement of the British national anthem. They want Blake's 'Jerusalem' as sung by Fat Les (actor Keith Allen, artist Damien Hirst and Blur's Alex James) during the Euro 2000 football competition substituted for the turgid 'God Save the Queen'. The reason they prefer Blake's poem is that it celebrates the 'Mental Fight' instead of 'material and corporeal war' (p90). In their eyes, before it had been hijacked first by 'materialistic Christian colonialism' and then by 'the recurring spectre of English football supporter violence'(p93), Blake's 'Jerusalem' was an appeal for 'a return to Eden before hereditary power, before tribalism and before nationalism' (p94). 'Jerusalem ' may have been incorporated into the establishment's repertoire, but Dent and Whittaker contends it 'still has the power to change meaning, to re-envision what that establishment means' (p94).

Contrary to Radical Blake, William Blake's real literary and artistic project was not to challenge society but rather to reform the English religion. He wanted to provide Protestantism with a hagiography, and so invented a whole gamut of English saints and angels to replace those iconoclastically removed by the puritanical reformation over a hundred years before he lived. The English church never accepted Blake's vision, but the resulting immense solitary and individualistic effort on his part produced a wonderful artistic and poetic aesthetic that is set to last even longer than that Church, now apparently on its last legs. Blake's political views are incidental to this superb accomplishment, and anyway are not a significant feature in the life and works of the man.

According to Dent and Whittaker, Blake believed that our world is too materialistic and not sufficiently artistic. The authors take pains to point out that many of Blake's fans have misinterpreted him to suit their own agenda. I can't think of a better way to sum up Radical Blake.

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