William Blake : conflict of opposites and the alchemical tradition

Abstract

This work aims at analyzing the historical influence the alchemical thought had on William Blake’s work. By comparing the conflict of opposites present in The marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) to the approach given to it in other historically previous texts – as in Meister Ekhardt’s, Jacob Boheme’s and in some ancient Eastern traditions such as Taoism – the idea was to set a background to this spiritual conflict and to set Blake as an ‘inventor of his own precursors’, as Jorge Luis Borges would put. The study of these systems showed some of the reasons why Blake’s philosophy seems so outsider for post-Enlightment readers, filling a symbolic gap that I intended to diminish. Giving new meanings to the past is giving new meanings to the present. In this sense, the work of William Blake may dialogue with issues that have been intensely felt in post-modernity, such as the will for integration, expressed through polyvalence and environmentalism.