Volume 2, Number 11 · July 9, 1964
The Heresy of William Blake
By Wylie Sypher
Hidden Riches: Traditional Symbolism from the Renaissance to Blake
by Désirée Hirst
Barnes and Noble, 348 pp., $8.50
The study of Blake's sources is now a heavy industry, established in 1924 by S. Foster Damon and expanded by Northrop Frye, David V. Erdman, and others who have the academic capital to invest. In 1961 George Mills Harper explicated Blake's platonism; in 1962 Kathleen Raine devoted her Mellon Lectures to Blake's 'enormous' knowledge of Plotinus, Porphyry, the Hermetica, alchemy, mystery religions, and classic myths; now Miss Hirst implies that reading Blake without knowing what he drew from Renaissance symbolism is like reading Joyce without knowing The Odyssey. Maybe. In any case we are fast getting on toward proving that Blake is a more traditional poet than Milton—which rather reverses things, and which may not stick.
Review, 1861 words
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