BLAKE & ROSSETTI

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Thenot Remonstrates with Colinet

Blake's Notebook came into the possession of Dante Gabriel Rossetti almost by chance. Since Rossetti like Blake was both an artist and a poet, it is no wonder that he was interested in it. Much of what Blake had produced in his lifetime was in the possession of Frederick Tatum after Catherine Blake's death. However the Notebook, which Blake treasured as a memento of his deceased younger brother Robert, was given by Catherine to Blake's pupil Samuel Palmer. Somehow Samuel's brother William acquired the notebook and sold it to Rossetti for half a guinea in 1847. Rossetti undertook the task of transcribing much of the text for his own use.

From a doctoral dissertation by J. C. E. Bassalik-de Vries we read that:
" The influence which William Blake exercised on Dante Gabriel Rossetti was of a three-fold nature. He owes much to him:
a) as a philosopher,
b) as a poet,
c) as a painter.
It was however, as I mentioned above, Blake's mysticism, by which Dante Gabriel Rossetti was mostly impressed, and therefore I shall speak of this influence in the first place. It should, however, be borne in mind that Blake's philosophic doctrines were laid down in a literary and in an artistic form, viz: in his poems and in his pictures, and that therefore it is often very difficult and sometimes impossible to separate Blake the philosopher from Blake the artist or the poet, so that when I make this division for the sake of clearness and discuss successively Blake's influence from a philosophical, literary, and artistic point of view, these influences must not be thought of as existing isolated, but as continually supporting and correcting each other."

Rossetti was influential in the writing of the important early biography of William Blake by Alexander and Anne Gilchrist. So, through Palmer, we trace the passing of Blake's impact through the Shoreham Ancients who formed a circle of young admirers of Blake down to Dante Gabriel Rossetti who was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which carried on the tradition of Gothic and Romantic Art under spiritual influence.

Milton, Plate 27 [29], (E 125)
"But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music,          
And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man.
Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only
Science remains thro Mercy: & by means of Science, the Three
Become apparent in time & space, in the Three Professions

Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery:

That Man may live upon Earth till the time of his awaking,
And from these Three, Science derives every Occupation of Men."

Jerusalem, Plate 3, (E 146)
 "I therefore have produced
a variety in every line, both of cadences & number of syllables. 
Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit
place: the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific
parts--the mild & gentle, for the mild & gentle parts, and the
prosaic, for inferior parts: all are necessary to each other. 
Poetry Fetter'd, Fetters the Human Race! Nations are Destroy'd,
or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry Painting and Music,
are Destroy'd or Flourish! The Primeval State of Man, was Wisdom,
Art, and Science." 
 
Descriptive Catalogue, (E 541)
 "Weaving the winding sheet of Edward's race by means of
sounds of spiritual music and its accompanying expressions of
articulate speech is a bold, and daring, and most masterly
conception, that the public have embraced and approved with
avidity.  Poetry consists in these conceptions; and shall
Painting be confined to the sordid drudgery of facsimile re
presentations of merely mortal and perishing substances, and
not be as poetry and music are, elevated into its own proper
sphere of invention and visionary conception? No, it shall not 
be so!  Painting, as well as poetry and music, exists and exults 
in immortal thoughts."    

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 560)
" Poetry admits not a
Letter that is Insignificant    so Painting admits not a Grain of
Sand or a Blade of Grass Insignificant much less an
Insignificant Blur or Mark" 

Annotations to Reynolds, (E 634)
   "Cunning & Morality are not Poetry but Philosophy the Poet is
Independent & Wicked the Philosopher is Dependent & Good
     Poetry is to excuse Vice & show its reason & necessary
purgation"

Annotations to Wordsworth, (E 665)
"One Power alone makes a Poet.- Imagination The Divine Vision"  

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