The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Essay - 2342 Words

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Although many of the Romantic poets displayed a high degree of anxiety concerning the way in which their works were produced and transmitted to an audience, few, if any, fretted quite as much as William Blake did. Being also a highly accomplished engraver and printer, he was certainly the only one of the Romantics to be able to completely move beyond mere fretting. Others may have used their status or wealth to exert their influence upon the production process, but ultimately, they were at the mercy of editors, publishers, and printers and relied on others to turn their visions into published works. Blake, on the other hand, was his own editor, engraver, printer, and publisher. He was able to control to†¦show more content†¦About his actual method Blake was very secretive and never published it. In fact, not even his closest friends were given the privilege of watching him work on his relief etchings. He does, however, repeatedly allude to this â€Å"infernal method†, which he claimed was given to him by his deceased brother Robert in a vision. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a devil wrote with â€Å"corroding fire† upon the side of the abyss of the five senses, and Blake says that he would â€Å"print in the infernal method, by corrosives . . . melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid† (plates 7 14). Although scholars differ in their opinion of what Blake’s method was and acknowledge that since Blake guarded it very tightly, there is little chance of ever ascertaining the precise details of his technique, much progress has been made to discover the general principle of his relief etchings. In 1947, William Hayter, Joan Miro, and Ruthven Todd made an attempt to discover Blake’s method by experimenting with making relief etchings that would reproduce the distinctive appearance and feel of his illuminated works. Using as reference his printed works, a fragment of a rejected copper plate for America, and electrotypes for some of the Songs of Innocence, they were able derive a method of using acids to make satisfactory relief etchings on copperplates (Bindman, 106). Much of what we know or can conjectureShow MoreRelatedThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell Essay922 Words   |  4 PagesThe Marriage of Heaven Hell William Blake The Romantic Period We, as members of the human race, have been endowed with five senses. We have the ability to reason and to be reasonable. We are able to present, receive, and mentally process information logically. The period in history when the importance of these innate functions was stressed is known as the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment. Also important to this age was the use of science, scientific methods, and theories. 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