William Blake's Job

William Blake's Job

Kathleen Raine — 9 recordings in the archive.

The book: Blake and Tradition by Kathleen Raine.

Because the tradition is continuous blake links with the platonic tradition through thomas tale of the play twists played honest with the alchemical and other esoterics red in england and then the river flows on into Yeats and here we are picking up that thread that is continuous throughout history it flows on the ground and from time to time it rises to the surface and wherever it rises to the surface it fertilizes and renews the arts and indeed the sciences illustrating the symbolism of the book of Job by reference to Blake's other writings in which similar symbols occur so that all the time one will be interpreting the book of Job not in terms of what I think it means but in terms of Blake's own words about these symbols I think it is quite useless to attempt to give there have been many books interpreting Blake according to Freud according to this debt or the other point of view the only way to take Blake is to interpret his work in terms of his own his own symbolic knowledge it is a very complex process of bringing together the many threads the many scattered things until one concentrates women and discovers the consistency underlying them well that is the title page the book of Job and on the title page as you see Blake has written the Hebrew and the English titles of the book the words invented by and engraved by William Blake 1825 make was then 68 years old he died two years later in 1827 so it was his mature and final statement can we have the other side that is portrait of Blake by his lifelong friend blacksmith the sculptor one of the two or three great sculptors of England has ever produced that is Blake in his youth maturity remarkable lovely face the next slide on the other side that is the house plant and court whose address is given here number three fountain court off the Strand it no longer exists it was rather a poor little Street running down from the Strand to the River Thames and it was Blake's last place of residence where he had a room I think on the first floor poor room in a shabby court to whose door and that may be it seems to be a young painter at the door Samuel…