Th Influnce of Microscopic Biologic Subjects in the Works of William Blake

Abstract

A year or so after the death of his brother Robert Blake in 1787, William Blake had one of his "imaginative visions" in which Robert's spirit came to him. The spirit apparently instructed Blake on how to produce what later became his unique way of printing by etching his own writings and illustrations in relief upon copper plate. The end result, as Keynes has·put it, was that "Blake had found the means of pre­senting the written word to his readers as part of a. picture."This combination of word and picture makes an analysis of either word alone or picture alone incomplete. The synergism of word and picture combined gives a reading that represents Blake's total meaning.