This passed Summer, the New York Times Book Review reviewed a new book about Gnostic Catholic saint William Blake, WILLIAM BLAKE VS. THE WORLD By John Higg. An excerpt reads:
“Higgs’s Blake is not the tripped-out proto-hippie of some renderings, nor is he a Blake for everyone — although Higgs, despite his book’s pugilistic title and his close examination of many of the major quarrels in Blake’s life, sometimes presents a suspiciously conciliatory portrait of a poet who, he says, ‘accepts all sides.’ A glance at Blake’s annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s discourses shows how scathingly he could reject ideas he knew to be appalling; a quick reading of his damning poem “London” would do the job, too. Higgs’s Blake is, instead, a Blake for anyone whose sensibilities harmonize with Higgs’s interests in neuroscience and quantum mechanics, ‘Star Wars’ analogies, and discussions of Carl Jung and Eckhart Tolle.”
Read the whole article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/books/review/william-blake-vs-the-world-john-higgs.html.
